I had just bought a home in Aurora three years ago when I found out I was going to become a mom. I quickly found out that the public perception of Aurora was that it was an unsuitable place to raise small children. What I experienced was very different: a warm, diverse community of people from all walks of life, most of whom had small children playing in the backyards neighboring mine on the weekends. It’s the kind of place where we all know each other’s first names and have an annual barbecue, where people have lived in the same home for decades, where the same guy sets off small fireworks in his driveway every Fourth of July.
As someone who has worked in health policy communications for more than 10 years, most of it in tobacco control, I am more familiar than most with the ways the tobacco industry has interfered with so many Americans’ health and longevity. Not by accident, but by deliberately lying about their products’ addictiveness and deadliness, and by preying on those they thought were most vulnerable.
As the communications lead for the Colorado Tobacco Education and Prevention Partnership, I spent years speaking with the public and state lawmakers about the damage the tobacco industry had done in our state, which at the time had the highest rate of youth vaping in the nation. A bipartisan group of Colorado’s leaders took swift and decisive action, including a stronger statewide tobacco retailer license, an evidence-based policy to reduce tobacco sales to minors. Our collective response reduced the youth vaping rate from 27% to 9%…