New Mexico lawmakers seek ‘overall strategy’ to combat youth nicotine addiction

New Mexico lawmakers are looking for a streamlined strategy to prevent nicotine addiction in the state’s youth.

Lawmakers on the interim Tobacco Settlement Revenue Oversight Committee met in Santa Fe Tuesday to review the balance of the Tobacco Settlement Permanent Fund — which they project to grow to nearly a half-billion dollars in the upcoming fiscal year — and to discuss the New Mexico Department of Justice’s ongoing efforts to hold accountable retailers for their alleged role in contributing to New Mexico’s outsized rates of nicotine addiction in youth.

“Nicotine’s a gateway. We want to keep kids from falling into other addictions,” Sen. Martin Hickey (D-Albuquerque), a retired physician who serves as committee chair, said at the Tuesday hearing. 

Hickey pointed to the state’s approaches to other chronic issues, such as substance use, housing and behavioral health. State leaders have yet to take a similarly streamlined approach to youth nicotine addiction, he said. 

“We really don’t have an overall strategy to approach it,” Hickey said, adding that the state attorney general’s ongoing efforts to that end seem to be an important step in that direction.

Anthony Juzaitis, deputy director of the New Mexico Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Bureau, testified before the committee and briefed them on the state attorney general’s ongoing lawsuit against convenience store companies that sell vapes.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez in March announced a lawsuit against Circle K and other retailers that sell vapes, accusing them of selling vapes in colorful packaging to subliminally advertise to children.

Torrez accused the retailers of violating the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act — the same law he invoked in the state’s lawsuit against social media giant Meta. A Santa Fe jury in March found that Meta had endangered New Mexico’s youth and ordered the company to pay the state $375 million in damages.

“We’re very proud of the Circle K litigation,” Juzaitis told state lawmakers. “It’s pretty clear that what is in the vape smoke is undetermined. It is clear that the nicotine yields in a modern vape are many times the nicotine in a cigarette. It is also clear that flavored vapes have demonstrated youth appeal.”

Penalties under the state Unfair Practices Act are capped at $5,000 per violation. 

Juzaitis said NMDOJ officials hope to “increase the cost of selling these vapes to a point where companies will think very hard about whether or not that’s a product they want to market in New Mexico.”