Maine’s workforce scarcity is high of thoughts for enterprise homeowners throughout the state. Whereas addressing it should require a number of approaches, there’s one concrete motion we are able to take now to spend money on a more healthy workforce for the longer term. We have to maintain youngsters from getting hooked on tobacco.
Tobacco use is the main reason for preventable dying and illness in the US, and right here in Maine it kills 2,400 adults yearly. That must be purpose sufficient for lawmakers to take motion to curb tobacco use. However there’s another excuse to behave: Tobacco use is unhealthy for enterprise.
Constructing a community-oriented model like Otto’s Pizza means valuing prospects’ experiences. Having employees outdoors the entryways smoking, or reeking of smoke inside whereas they work together with individuals, turns prospects off. Hiring people who smoke additionally means having to lean on different staff to cowl smoke breaks, and fill in when people who smoke are out sick as a result of individuals who smoke are typically much less wholesome and miss extra work than non-smokers. The issue isn’t distinctive to Otto; it cuts throughout the service business, building and manufacturing. In keeping with the Maine CDC, smoking prices Maine’s financial system almost $1.5 billion a yr in related healthcare prices and misplaced productiveness. Tobacco dependancy is a scourge on peoples’ well being, and its penalties current yet another problem to discovering dependable employees in a chaotic labor market.
It’s essential that present tobacco customers get the assets and assist they should stop. Nevertheless, almost 9 out of 10 adults who smoke day by day began smoking earlier than they turned 18. That’s why we have to maintain youngsters from ever touching tobacco merchandise within the first place.
We’ve a variety of work to do in Maine to maintain younger individuals from beginning down the street to tobacco dependancy. The newest knowledge from the Maine Built-in Youth Well being Survey (2021) reveals that 1 out of each 5 Maine highschool college students had been present customers of a tobacco product in 2021. That’s properly above the nationwide common of 13.4%. That pattern desperately wants reversing to maintain younger individuals wholesome now and sooner or later.
Whether or not it’s a cherry-flavored e-cigarette, a menthol cigarette or a rocky road-flavored cigar, flavored merchandise appeal to youngsters and make it simpler for them to start out utilizing tobacco. It’s no shock that research have proven that 4 out of 5 younger individuals who have ever used tobacco began with a flavored product: Surveys persistently cite interesting flavors as a major purpose why younger individuals say they use tobacco.
The federal authorities is transferring too slowly and never boldly sufficient to take flavored tobacco merchandise off the market and, to this point, Maine’s state legislators have did not act. That’s why Portland, Bangor and Brunswick handed native ordinances to finish the sale of flavored tobacco merchandise. We’re already seeing some optimistic outcomes from these native actions. Brunswick Excessive College noticed a decline in college students vaping after the city’s ordinance on flavored tobacco went into impact lately. Different localities, together with South Portland, are contemplating taking flavored tobacco off the market.
Native actions are key to defending youngsters from a way forward for tobacco dependancy. Lowering youth tobacco use will create wholesome communities the place companies can succeed. If younger individuals by no means begin utilizing tobacco, then once they finally enter the workforce, they’ll be more healthy and extra productive staff. That’s a win for Maine’s communities and a win for the companies, like Otto, which are such a central a part of these communities.
Ultimately, we’ll want state motion to finish the sale of flavored tobacco merchandise. Within the meantime, South Portland ought to swiftly approve its native ordinance, and different cities and cities ought to comply with go well with.
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