Wisconsin Highlights

Commercial tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States and in Wisconsin. To address this enormous toll, the American Lung Association calls for the following actions to be taken by Wisconsin's elected officials:

In 2024, tobacco control advocates worked with partners and volunteers to defeat a bill that would have opened a loophole in Wisconsin’s clean indoor air law that prevents people from smoking tobacco indoors. Wisconsin has been a leader in protecting all of its citizens from the known, indisputable hazards of secondhand smoke in the workplace and public places since 2009. Advocates also provided input into a new law that placed e-cigarette shops into the existing tobacco retail licensing structure.

A new legislative session will begin in 2025, and we hope to see the reintroduction of the bill to raise Wisconsin’s legal age of sale for tobacco products to 21 to match the federal law. This will help eliminate confusion from retailers about who they can legally sell to, and is an important component of a comprehensive public health approach to reducing tobacco use.

There was an important local victory in Superior, which passed a zoning ordinance that restricts where new tobacco retailers can open, prohibiting them from locating within 1,000 feet of a school, park, playground, library, or childcare facility, and within 500 feet of another tobacco retailer. This ordinance went a step further than a similar one passed in Milwaukee in 2023, capping the total number of retail licenses available in the municipality.

In the coming months, the Lung Association will work with our local volunteers and coalition partners on our 2025 legislative priorities, including strategizing to garner additional support for Tobacco 21. Advocates hope to send a message to Big Tobacco that Wisconsinites are not softening their stance, understand the detrimental impact of commercial tobacco products, and will continue to fight against these harmful products.

A September 2024 research paper by UW-Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention and the Wisconsin African American Tobacco Prevention Network addresses how Wisconsin has had the worst disparity in tobacco use between Black and White residents in the nation, a rate that still stands at 20.2% for Black residents and 13.7% for white residents. The paper, published in the Wisconsin Medical Journal, calls on clinicians to make a more concerted effort to help Black patients address their tobacco use.

Tobacco industry lobbyists for Altria are among the top 25 groups spending time in the Wisconsin State Capitol, paying their lobbyists almost $200,000 in the first half of the 2023-24 legislative session. They were able to sneak an ineffective e-cigarette registry bill into a larger bill that updated other licensing rules. These types of bills are a tactic by RJ Reynolds, Altria and Juul to cut out their competitors that manufacture other types of e-cigarettes.

With your help, the American Lung Association will ensure that our leaders pay attention to lung health as we advocate for action to pass laws and put in place programs that will reduce commercial tobacco use and save lives in 2025.