Cigarette smoking was in the news in a few Northern Colorado cities this week, including Boulder. The Boulder City Council voted unanimously Feb. 3, 2015, to expand the city’s outdoor smoking ban.
Boulder’s history with smoking bans is a rich one, spanning 30 years now. The city was one of the first to enact municipal restrictions on indoor smoking, including in theaters and workplaces — restrictions that were controversial at the time. In 1985, Boulder required larger restaurants to have non-smoking sections. Flash forward a mere three decades, and such sections are unheard of in Colorado, which has prohibited smoking in restaurants since 2006.
All over the country, awareness campaigns and especially smoking prohibitions are credited with a major decline in smoking rates in the United States. Of particular concern are younger smokers: According to the American Lung Association, a full 70 percent of adults who smoke started before they turned 18 years old.
Boulder’s record of smoking bans that go beyond what other municipalities enact continues. The outdoor smoking ban expanded this week includes the use of electronic cigarettes. It includes areas around bus stops, along multi-use paths, and the area around Boulder High School. Advocates of the measure and children’s health urged council to keep the high school area smoke-free.
The Community Foundation’s TRENDS report follows youth smoking closely: It’s one of the key indicators in public health. The good news is smoking has been on a steady decline since 2003. The most recently available CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey results show that 39 percent of high-schoolers in all of Boulder County had tried smoking, counting even just one or two inhalations. But only 14 percent were current smokers, and less than 5 percent were “frequent” smokers, meaning they smoked a cigarette in 20 of the last 30 days.
There are groups, however, who are more at risk. Latino teens were more likely to smoke cigarettes. And LGBT teens were far more at risk to be cigarette smokers. About 17 percent of Latino kids were current smokers compared with 12.5 percent of white non-Latino kids. Among LGBT students, 41 percent were current smokers, compared with just 12 percent of straight students.
