Smoking killed Patrick Reynolds' family. His grandfather, father, aunts, brother and cousin all died of cancers, most of them directly related to tobacco use.
Ironically, tobacco is also how that family made its fortune. Reynolds' grandfather founded the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company in 1875.Wednesday, Reynolds brought a strong anti-smoking message to Utah during the 17th annual Fall Conference on Substance Abuse in Park City. Tobacco, he said, kills more people each year than AIDS, alcohol, auto accidents, suicide, cocaine and heroin use combined. It is also the second-most heavily advertised product today. Each year tobacco companies spend $4,500 in advertising per new smoker who becomes addicted. And that investment pays the companies back as those smokers develop a lifetime addiction.
Such advertising needs to be banned, according to Reynolds.
The good news, he said, is America can - and will - become a smoke-free society eventually. But much must be done to achieve that, beginning with stopping the flow of tobacco-lobby money to influential members of Congress. The Republican Party's "pro-business attitude" has been of great benefit to the tobacco companies, which contributed more than $1.5 million to the GOP, he said.
Reynolds believes that the tax on cigarettes must be raised, so that children will be less able to buy the product. America has the lowest cigarette taxes in the industrialized world. And since children are freely able to buy cigarettes almost anywhere, he supports banning vending machines entirely.
Tobacco companies have justified advertising tobacco as a free-speech issue. Reynolds said that is now being challenged as "commercial speech, which must endeavor to tell the truth." The truth, Reynolds said, is tobacco kills.
An unnamed county tackled its youthful smokers problem recently. The county licensed merchants to sell tobacco, then used the licensing revenue to run sting operations. Merchants found selling to youths a third time lost their right to sell tobacco. The youth access rate fell from 80 percent to 1 percent.
Stopping youths from starting smoking is crucial, he said, because 60 percent of the 54 American million smokers started before they were 14. A full 90 percent were smokers by 19. He tells youths if they can resist the temptation to smoke until they are 19, they will never smoke.
"One of these days, we are going to have a smoke-free, drug-free environment," Reynolds said. "It's going to happen. We never thought we'd get smoking off airplanes. One of these days - and it might be in our children or grandchildren's times - we're going to look back and say, `Did people ever smoke?' "