 The tobacco industry spends $110.5 million each year promoting tobacco products in Minnesota. That amounts to over $12,000 every hour alone. A newly formed coalition in Brainerd is working to combat the rising use of tobacco in Minnesota. Reporter Rachel Johnson has more. A recent survey conducted by Curwing Energized found that the amount of people in Curwing County that use tobacco products has increased to 23.3 percent from 17.7 percent just in the last four years. Between our last two community health surveys there was a 5 percent increase in tobacco use in Curwing County, which is pretty much opposite of kind of all of the national trends. A new coalition in Brainerd founded by Curwing Energized is working to figure out why. Hopefully we'll be able to get that number down of the overall tobacco use, which right now is about 23 percent, so it's almost one in four. The rise of tobacco use in the county is surprising and concerning for the coalition. Tobacco and smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S. It affects overall health. I mean there's so many things, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancers. One reason the coalition is looking at it as to why the rate of tobacco use has increased is the emerging popularity of e-cigarettes. According to a study by the Minnesota Department of Health, over 40 percent of e-cigarette users would never have used tobacco products if not for e-cigarettes. The use of other devices such as e-cigarettes or vaping, same thing, kind of another gateway into using tobacco later on in life. The coalition has many possible routes that they are looking at taking to reduce tobacco use. Some involve just things like different media campaigns, educational campaigns. It could also include different things at a policy level, either at the city or county levels. I know that they've been working in Duluth and Herman Town raising the limit to 21 for buying tobacco products, hoping to offset that younger youth population starting with any nicotine products because that can eventually lead into tobacco use as adults. The coalition plans to meet regularly and work together so that instead of increasing, tobacco use starts decreasing in Corwing County. Reporting from Brainerd, Rachel Johnson, Lakeland News. The next meeting of the Tobacco Coalition will be on February 20th at 11 in the morning at Ascension St. Joseph's Medical Center. Anyone from the community is welcome to attend. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.