We are a student body of 1,864 and we each have our own story of how tobacco has impacted us, our friends and our family members. The use of tobacco products in high schools like e-cigs and cigarettes is increasing rapidly and something needs to be done about it.

Currently, Washington legislators allocate $1.5 million for tobacco prevention when $64 million is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends we spend, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids “Broken Promises to our Children” annual report. We spend only 2.9 percent of what the CDC recommends! Alaska allocated 95.4 percent of what the CDC recommended they spend on prevention and they have experienced the largest drop in tobacco use of all 50 states.

Furthermore, our state spends $2 billion each year exclusively on health-care costs directly related to tobacco use, the report adds. The leading cause of preventable death in the United States is tobacco use — this isn’t something that can be ignored any longer. These are lives that are being lost every single day. With more than $500 million coming into Washington from tobacco taxes each year and $76 million from tobacco-related settlements, none of that money is going toward tobacco prevention.

The tobacco company master settlement agreement occurred in 1998, which is the year many of us were born. The money from this settlement was intended to fund prevention education for our generation, and it has failed us! Let’s not fail the next generation. These are lives we are talking about. More money allocated to prevention education means more lives saved. It means more generations saved.

The student body of Redmond High School