David and Goliath.

You're about to hear someone use that comparison while talking about big tobacco versus health care advocates trying to keep Kentuckians healthier by cutting down or cutting out tobacco use.

And experts at this week's Kentucky tobacco control conference in Lexington say minorities and young people in particular are at a higher risk of being targeted by tobacco companies.

We are outspent 17 to 1, at least 17 to 1 by the tobacco industry.

So the vector here, the cause of disease, frankly, is the tobacco companies, the tobacco industry, not necessarily the farmers, but the tobacco companies are still a challenge.

And they it's a David and Goliath story.

I always say that.

A big thing is advertising and also the placement of their products.

So think about when you go into a gas station, you see all of the vapes or the cigarets right next to candy and things like that right at the checkout.

You know, if you go to a Walmart or Target, as you're walking through the checkout, you see the sodas and the candies and things like that, and you're more enticed to buy it.

Tobacco companies try to do the same thing with their products more towards the cash register area at a gas station and things like that.

And they also have a lot of clusters of the tobacco retail areas in minority communities as well.

They'll put a lot more of those retail stores in those minority communities.

Like if you think about different areas, like even in Lexington, when you drive around and see that in minority communities, there are a lot more of those gas stations or tobacco retail shops that sell these products to people.

Tobacco companies know that to sell their products, they have to make a pivot and they have they've pivoted to these novel products.

And so that continues to be a challenge for young people, youth and adults, quite frankly.

Making sure we have law enforcement going into these gas stations to do compliance checks, make sure people are selling to underage people, because obviously we know tobacco products, she has to be 21 to purchase.

But a lot of times, especially in Kentucky, people under the age of 21 are able to purchase these products with no problem.

One thing we focus on is youth vaping, vaping and e-cigarette use in high schools and middle school.

Specifically, those students are heavily targeted using social media.

A lot of these vape companies will use Instagram and post on Instagram and things like that to target use.

They'll even make their vapes look like, you know, high hitters or things that school age students would be really interested in.

So yeah, a big trend right now, especially for youth, is vaping and e-cigarette use, and that's what we try to prevent.

Vapes are still led by big tobacco.

That same industry that had cigarets popular is the same industry, the same big companies like Altria and things like that that are using vapes and they're doing the same targeting tactics that they are with youth.

We do have drastically higher rates than the national average, especially with our high school students.

You know, nationally vaping is it?

It's still a concern, but the numbers aren't overly high.

But in Kentucky, we are much higher than the national average because, you know, we were a tobacco state, we were a big tobacco producer.

Those tobacco companies know to target Kentuckians bit.

You know, here we've got all this money, millions and millions of dollars being spent promoting tobacco products in Kentucky, and we're only spending two 2 million a year in tobacco prevention and cessation.

So we have got to step up our game in Kentucky.

We've got to spend we've got to invest in what we know works to help people quit and not start.

And thanks to the work of advocacy groups, roughly 35% of Kentucky adults are covered by smoke free workplace laws.