Student Leaders Ask Legislators To Fund Anti-Tobacco Programs

Dressed in plastic ponchos and carrying umbrellas, high school students from all over the state rallied at the capitol Tuesday in support of House Bill 5108 for the annual Tobacco Free Day at the legislature. The rally was called the “Rally to Support Increased Funding for Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.”

The bill has been introduced in the House of Delegates and has been sent to both the Finance and Banking and Insurance committees, but hasn’t moved any farther. 

“House Bill 5108 directs $5 million of interest from the Rainy Day B fund into tobacco prevention,” Doug Hogan, the Government Relations Director for American Cancer Society, Cancer Action Network, said. “That $5 million really is a drop in the rain bucket, or the rain gauge, so to speak.”

That explains the ponchos. 

Hogan said the $5 million is about six weeks of interest from the fund. West Virginia has two Rainy Day funds. Together they hold nearly $1.4 billion. 

“When a youth comes forward and says, ‘This is something that I’m passionate about, this is something that needs to be changed,’ it changes the way that our lawmakers and leaders of West Virginia understand and see that issue,” Breanna Cutright, a senior at Robert C. Byrd High School in Clarksburg, said. 

West Virginia currently has the highest adult smoking rate in the country, and over 28.5% of high school students use tobacco products, including vaping, according to the American Cancer Society. 

“I especially started seeing it within my peers, starting in, like, the seventh grade time sneaking off to the bathroom,” Cutright said. “So it’s starting to smell like cotton candy in the bathrooms and multiple feet under the stalls. And you just know that it’s not perfume that they’re spraying in there.”

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The state spends a little more than $300,000 a year in smoking cessation, and lost all federal funding last summer with the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. That federal funding was used to support programs like the state’s Quitline and educational programs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the state spend around $27 million on cessation and intervention programs. Nearly 38% of cancer deaths in West Virginia can be attributed to smoking — the highest smoking-attributable cancer death rate in the country.