VIDEO: Young Releases New Tobacco 21 Video from South Bend

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Following press conferences last week in South Bend and Terre Haute, U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) today released a new video regarding his Tobacco to 21 Act, which would raise the federal minimum tobacco age to 21. The video features footage from Senator Young’s South Bend press conference, and includes comments from Abby Naumann, a junior at Edison High School, and Latorya R. Greene, Manager of Community Health & Well-Being and Tobacco Initiatives at Saint Joseph Health System. 

“This is something that is so important to our youth,” Naumann says in the video.

“Definitely thankful and appreciative of Senator Young for introducing this bill and to be able to have the conversation started on the federal level,” Greene says in the video.

“The CDC estimates that approximately 4.9 million middle and high school students nationwide are current users of some type of tobacco product. In our state specifically, tobacco use continues be the single most preventable cause of death and disease,” Senator Young says in the video.“Most of these are good kids that don’t understand how powerful these vaping or e-cigarette devices can be. We need to protect them, and that’s what this T21 legislation does.”

Senator Young recently introduced the Tobacco to 21 Act along with Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah). The bipartisan bill has received widespread support by health organizations and advocates, and recent polling shows that 75 percent of Hoosiers support raising the legal age. The South Bend Tribune, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Terre Haute Tribune-Star, Indiana Business Journal, and KPC Newspapers in northeast Indiana have all endorsed the Tobacco to 21 Act. 

For the full video, click here.