prop­erly hyp­ing the drugs or un­der­stat­ing their ad­dic­tive qual­i­ties. 

In ad­di­tion, the at­tor­neys gen­eral in 40 states are con­duct­ing a joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion into drug­mak­ers and dis­trib­u­tors. That probe has the po­ten­tial to yield a com­bi­na­tion of civil and crim­i­nal pen­al­ties. And Ohio has a sep­a­rate law­suit against Pur­due, which is now in the pre-trial phase in Ross County.

Some have spec­u­lated that the moun­tain of lit­i­ga­tion even­tu­ally will lead to a global set­tle­ment like the states’ 1998 land­mark agree­ment with the to­bacco in­dus­try, which agreed to drop cer­tain mar­ket­ing prac­tices and pay $206 bil­lion over 25 years. Just as some of the to­bacco agree­ment money was spent on pre­ven­tion pro­grams, the pay­outs in opi­oid set­tle­ments should be used to fund pre­ven­tion pro­grams and treat­ment ini­tia­tives. It also should be used for law en­force­ment’s anti-drug work and for even broader pur­poses, such as eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment in de­pressed towns.

The opi­oid ep­i­demic has many causes, not least the hope­less­ness that comes from liv­ing in eco­nom­i­cally strug­gling com­mu­ni­ties, and us­ers have many ac­cess points, such as mail drops of syn­thetic drug va­ri­et­ies il­le­gally shipped here from China.

But drug­mak­ers should pay for what­ever role they played in cre­at­ing, then fu­el­ing, a night­mare health cri­sis. They also should ad­mit re­spon­si­bil­ity for their role and say they’re sorry.

Nearly all — 95 per­cent — of peo­ple who smoke be­gan their habit be­fore they were 21 years old.

And many life­long smok­ers who de­velop the deadly and avoid­able health is­sues as­so­ci­a­tion with smok­ing — lung dis­ease, can­cer, pul­mo­nary dis­ease, heart dis­ease, and other ail­ments — deeply re­gret their choice to ever start smok­ing.

Now Gov. Mike DeWine wants to change Ohio law so that more 18, 19, and 20-year-olds will never take up a deadly habit. The gov­er­nor wants to raise the age to buy to­bacco prod­ucts from 18 to 21.

Cru­cially, the gov­er­nor wants to in­clude all to­bacco prod­ucts — cig­a­rettes, chew­ing to­bacco, and va­p­ing prod­ucts. This is im­por­tant be­cause while teen smok­ing rates have been de­clin­ing, the num­ber of teen­agers who vape is on the rise.

In re­cent years, the Amer­i­can Cancer So­ci­ety has made rais­ing the to­bacco-pur­chas­ing age a pri­or­ity. Lo­cally, pub­lic health re­search­ers from the Univer­sity of Toledo have cam­paigned for mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, in­clud­ing Toledo and its sub­urbs, to raise the pur­chase age.

Among the ar­gu­ments against rais­ing the to­bacco-pur­chase age in a com­mu­nity was that 18-year-old smok­ers would just drive to the near­est town with a lower pur­chase-age to buy to­bacco prod­ucts, harm­ing the

con­ve­nience stores and other to­bacco-sell­ers in the towns with higher le­gal pur­chase ages. Mr. DeWine’s pro­posal to raise the pur­chase age across the state makes this a non-is­sue.

Six states have al­ready raised the pur­chase age to 21 — Cal­i­for­nia, Hawaii, Maine, Mas­sa­chu­setts, New Jer­sey, and Ore­gon. Ohio should join them.

In­creas­ing the le­gal age to buy cig­a­rettes, va­p­ing prod­ucts, and other to­bacco will help states re­duce dis­ease rates and con­trol health-care costs.

The move also could save the lives of an un­count­able num­ber of to­day’s teen­agers by as­sur­ing they have a few years to ma­ture be­fore they can le­gally buy ad­dic­tive prod­ucts that can con­trib­ute to their early deaths.

Of course, teen­agers will al­ways be able to get to­bacco prod­ucts even if they can’t buy them le­gally. That is not a good ar­gu­ment for leav­ing the le­gal pur­chase age at 18. In­stead, it is an ar­gu­ment for more of the ed­u­ca­tional pro­grams like the anti-smok­ing cam­paigns that have helped drive down the na­tion’s smok­ing rate over­all.

Rais­ing the le­gal age to buy to­bacco to 21 will help re­strict ac­cess to a deadly ad­dic­tive prod­uct and save Ohio­ans’ lives. The Gen­eral As­sem­bly should move quickly to do it.

The glory days of Bowl­ing Green State Univer­sity hockey have seemed like a dis­tant mem­ory — un­til this week.

The BGSU men’s hockey team has bro­ken a nearly 30-year drought, earn­ing a spot in the NCAA men’s hockey tour­na­ment that starts this week­end. Bowl­ing Green will play de­fend­ing na­tional cham­pion Min­ne­sota-Duluth in the first round in Al­len­town, Pa., Satur­day.

The Fal­cons — once a pe­ren­nial pow­er­house — last ap­peared in the tour­na­ment in 1990.

Since then, plenty of stars and fu­ture NHL play­ers have come through the pro­gram. But fail­ing to make the NCAA tour­na­ment year af­ter year has been pain­ful — par­tic­u­larly to any­one who re­mem­bers the uni­ver­sity’s 1984 na­tional cham­pi­on­ship.

BGSU hockey is leg­end­ary. It has pro­duced play­ers and coaches who have won the Hobey Baker Award, the Stan­ley Cup, and Olym­pic med­als. Former BGSU room­mates Brian MacLel­lan and George McPhee faced off last year as man­ag­ers for the teams in the Stan­ley Cup fi­nals.

(MacLel­lan’s Wash­ing­ton Cap­i­tals beat McPhee’s Las Vegas Golden Knights.)

But just a de­cade ago, the hockey pro­gram — af­ter years of de­cline and fac­ing a bud­get crunch — was in jeop­ardy of end­ing. Alumni and Fal­cons hockey fans would not hear of it.

Alumni in the NHL joined in the “Bring Back the Glory” cam­paign and do­nated to the ef­fort, as did lo­cal fans, and hockey at BGSU was spared.

Then be­gan the long, some­times slow, re­build­ing.

BGSU Coach Chris Bergeron is in his ninth year with the pro­gram. In 2017 and again last week his Fal­cons came ag­o­niz­ingly close to win­ning the WCHA con­fer­ence ti­tle.

Get­ting over that this year will be eas­ier since the team has a chance to play for a na­tional cham­pi­on­ship for the first time in a gen­er­a­tion.

Bowl­ing Green hockey fans are glee­ful to cheer for a tour­na­ment team. Re­viv­ing a proud leg­acy is worth cel­e­brat­ing. Best of all, though, is that BGSU’s best hockey days may be ahead.

young peo­ple.

Noth­ing should be more im­por­tant or par­ti­san-free. As much as Park­land re­quires ex­tra­or­di­nary as­sis­tance un­der its ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, it is just one com­mu­nity among many. Re­cent sui­cides il­lus­trate wide­spread sui­cide and men­tal health chal­lenges in Flor­ida. The fed­eral Centers for Dis­ease Con­trol and Preven­tion tracked a 30 per­cent in­crease in sui­cide rates among all Amer­i­cans from 1999 to 2016 (the most re­cent year for which the CDC has data). More than 45,000 peo­ple took their own lives in 2016.

The in­crease in Flor­ida was not as dra­matic at 10.6 per­cent over the same pe­riod, but that was in part be­cause Flor­ida con­sis­tently has a higher sui­cide rate than the na­tional av­er­age. The rest of the coun­try is catch­ing up. Young adults were not im­mune to the trend. The Flor­ida Depart­ment of Health re­ports a rate of 10.9 sui­cides per 100,000 Flo­rid­i­ans aged 16 to 21. A de­cade ear­lier, the rate was only 8.5.

The great­est chal­lenge in reach­ing peo­ple be­fore they make that fate­ful de­ci­sion is iden­ti­fy­ing who needs help. More than half of peo­ple who kill them­selves don’t have a

rec­og­nized men­tal health con­di­tion.

That dif­fi­culty is mag­ni­fied among mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, where trust in gov­ern­ment al­ready is strained. As law­mak­ers con­sider de­vot­ing new re­sources to men­tal health ser­vices, they must in­clude in­ten­si­fied out­reach to those groups. They also must en­sure that re­sources re­main avail­able to help fam­i­lies suf­fer­ing through trag­edy.

The state can’t do it all, though. The first line of de­fense to pre­vent teen sui­cide re­mains par­ents and other adults. That’s a les­son learned in Park­land, where of­fi­cials are en­cour­ag­ing par­ents to have un­com­fort­able but es­sen­tial con­ver­sa­tions with teens. Other adults should al­ways be on the look­out for warn­ing signs such as ex­treme mood swings, sub­stance use, in­creased anx­i­ety, and iso­la­tion.

The odds are that teens who dis­play one of those signs are not about to com­mit sui­cide, but what adult would want on their con­science the knowl­edge that they’d seen a warn­ing sign and not in­ter­vened?

Some­times all it takes is a sym­pa­thetic ear or point­ing a trou­bled young per­son to re­sources that can re­store hope.