New poll shows most Kentuckians want to raise tobacco buying age
More than half of surveyed Kentuckians still favor raising the legal age for purchasing tobacco products, according to a new study from a statewide health organization.
Roughly 1,600 people across the state last year were surveyed by phone for the latest Kentucky Health Issues Poll, released on Tuesday and paid for by Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and Interact for Health. Completed annually since 2008, the poll provides snapshots of health issues across the Commonwealth and gauges residents’ opinions on accompanying state and federal policies. The 2018 survey focused on tobacco and substance use, and health care policies.
Approximately 56 percent of those surveyed statewide were in favor of raising the minimum age one can purchase tobacco products, a rate that has stayed roughly the same since 2016, according to the survey.
Backed by Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, sought legislation to this end in May by sponsoring a bill aimed at curbing the spike in youth smoking and vaping by lifting the legal age for purchasing those products to 21 nationwide. Nearly 20 states have already taken similar measures.
Kentucky continues to have some of the highest rates of lung cancer in the nation. For this survey, 23 percent of the population said they currently smoke cigarettes -- western and Eastern Kentucky claimed the highest rates, at 27 and 25 percents, respectively -- and one in four adults said they’ve tried vaping with an e-cigarette. Close to 70 percent of residents polled support comprehensive smoke-free laws in public spaces such as bars, restaurants and workplaces.
Kentuckians who reported struggling the most with substance use disorder in the survey were in eastern and western parts of the state, but they were more likely than others in Louisville, which leads the state in fatal drug overdoses, to enter drug treatment programs, the survey found.
Fifty-four percent of Eastern Kentucky residents who reported having a friend or family member with substance use disorder say they entered treatment, compared with Louisville, where more than half said their loved one never entered treatment, and Lexington, where 37 percent never entered treatment.
Twenty percent of Eastern Kentuckians said they’ve known someone in the last year who struggled with heroin use, and 22 percent said they knew someone struggling with methamphetamine -- the highest reported amount since 2013. In Louisville and Lexington, 30 percent of those interviewed -- the state average -- reported knowing someone who had abused prescription drugs in the last year, compared with 38 percent of Eastern Kentucky residents.
The strongest opposition to needle exchange programs, which allow intravenous drug users to exchange dirty needles for clean ones, is concentrated in Appalachian parts of the state, where meth use is the highest and where the risk of Hepatitis C and HIV outbreaks are the greatest. Roughly half of Kentuckians support syringe exchanges, overall, and support is exaggerated in larger cities.
The survey also polled respondents on their health insurance coverage and whether residents support federal health care reform measures. Increasingly, the survey found, they do.
In 2017 and 2018, Kentuckians had more favorable than unfavorable opinions about the Affordable Care Act, in rural and metropolitan parts of the state. In Eastern Kentucky last year, 45 percent of adults supported the ACA, a slight uptick from 2017. Roughly 33 percent didn’t support it and 26 said they “don’t know,” according to the survey. Support jumped to roughly 50 percent in Lexington and Louisville.
The rate of adults ages 18 to 64 statewide without health insurance remained virtually unchanged, at 11 percent. Eastern and northern Kentucky claimed the highest rates of uninsured residents, at 13 percent.
Between 2009 and 2018, the rate of Kentucky adults who delayed paying for health care because it was too expensive declined from 32 to 21 percent. But 25 percent of residents in northern and Eastern Kentucky still said they delay medical care because of cost. Thirty-four percent of Eastern Kentuckians and 32 percent of Lexingtonians avoid dental care because of cost, compared with the statewide average of 26 percent.
Statewide, 24 percent said they have no primary care doctor, 26 said they don’t have a dentist, and 8 percent visit an emergency room or urgent care clinic as their usual source of health care.
