MILWAUKEE — It’s an issue that impacts one in five high school students in Wisconsin. A recent study shows that’s how many underage teens admitted to using e-cigarettes within a month of the survey.
Doctors at Children’s Wisconsin say state lawmakers need to help address the problem. They’re frustrated with what they call ‘mismatched laws’.
You’ve probably seen the signs outside convenience stores that say you have to be 21 to buy nicotine products. It’s been the federal legal age to purchase tobacco and e-cigarettes since 2019, but Wisconsin law hasn’t caught up. It’s still age 18 here.
Watch: Wisconsin doctors urge state lawmakers to match federal Tobacco 21 law
While federal law takes precedence, experts say having two laws with different age restrictions creates conflict and confusion.
“I think it’s kind of ironic that Wisconsin discovered the cases, but we’re one of the few states that have not raised the age of purchase of tobacco to 21,” said Dr. Louella Amos.
Dr. Amos is one of the pulmonologists at Children’s who identified a troubling trend among teens needing intensive care for inflamed lungs five years ago.
That year, Children’s Wisconsin says it treated 24 underage teens for severe lung damage stemming from black market vape cartridges.
The team of doctors alerted the nation about the crisis. In the aftermath, Dr. Amos traveled to the capitol to advocate for change.
"I feel like we're kind of at a stand-still now. It’s kind of up to I think our government to work at it,” Dr. Amos said.
"If an 18-year-old has it, a 16-year-old has it and then it's going to end up in your middle schools,” added Dr. Michael Meyer.
While Children’s has seen far fewer cases of severe lung damage from vaping since 2019, the year the federal age requirement took effect, Dr. Meyer says health concerns haven’t gone away.
“Children’s doctors brought this to lawmakers years ago and nothing’s been done about it. Is that frustrating?” TMJ4 reporter Ben Jordan asked.
“Oh, I think it’s amazingly frustrating,” said Dr. Meyer. “We learned this with alcohol consumption right? Wisconsin no longer has just beer bars at 18, right? So it took away the ability of getting alcohol further away from children that are teenagers and we should think about the same thing in smoking.”
WATCH: Wisconsin pulmonologists push to raise tobacco and vape purchase age to 21
Gina Larsen with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services says two different laws cause a pair of problems.
“I think there’s a lot of confusion in the marketplace about whether or not retailers understand that they’re obligated to follow the federal law,” she said.
In addition to confusion amongst sellers and buyers, Larsen says police are unable to enforce the federal Tobacco 21 law because state law isn’t aligned.
She leads a program that sends students ages 16 to 20 into hundreds of stores each year to find out how often sellers are out of compliance.
"That rate has gone up quite dramatically since the pandemic,” Larsen said. “We had gotten that number down to 5.5 percent. And our most recent 2023 numbers from a November report from November 2023 showed 13.6 percent of sales are to underage people.”
Tobacco21.org shows Wisconsin is one of only seven states where the legislature has been unsuccessful in trying to match the federal Tobacco 21 law.
"It’s not the state legislature’s intent to see any child harmed, but yet they’re being harmed and they’re being harmed from tobacco products,” said state Senator LaTonya Johnson.
Johnson says thinks there’s a lot at stake if they don’t act soon.
“We have to give law enforcement the ability to be able to enforce the law locally and statewide and right now, that’s age 18,” she said. “The only thing law enforcement can do is to refer it to the FDA. The Food and Drug Administration, but they have their hands full.”
Children’s doctors say even five years after teen vaping injuries were first discovered, the long-term health effects remain unknown. Pulmonologists say it could be decades before they know that answer.
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