A group of lawmakers in Massachusetts are urging their colleagues to support a proposal making the state the first to adopt a ban that would eliminate the use of tobacco products over time.
Other locations in the US have weighed similar “generational tobacco bans”, which phase out the use of tobacco products based on a person’s birth year, not just their age, reports TIME Magazine
Under a Massachusetts law signed in 2018, the age to buy any tobacco product was raised to 21. Massachusetts also has banned the sale of all flavoured tobacco products in an effort to reduce youth interest in nicotine.
The new proposal, which lawmakers plan to file next year, would expand the effort to curb smoking by gradually ending all sales of nicotine and tobacco products. If the Bill is approved, young people not old enough to legally buy nicotine and tobacco would never be lawfully able to purchase them in Massachusetts, thereby creating no more new users.
It would not apply to marijuana, and the cut-off date would be adjusted when passed to ensure everyone aged 21 and above at that time would not be affected.
First town to enact ban
Brookline, a town of about 63 000 in neighbouring Boston, was the first municipality in the country to adopt such a ban in 2020. Instead of raising the age for buying cigarettes, the bylaw blocks the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after 1 January 2000. The rule went into effect in 2021.
That would mean at some point in the future no one would be allowed to buy any tobacco products in the town. The measure was challenged, but the state’s highest court weighed in earlier this year, upholding the ban.
Other Massachusetts cities and towns have already approved similar tobacco bans.
In 2022, New Zealand became the first nation to pass a law intended to impose a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes by mandating that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after 1 January 2009. The law was later axed.
In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposed raising the legal age that people in England can buy cigarettes by one year, every year, until it is eventually illegal for the whole population. The proposal failed to win approval earlier this year.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Britain takes first step with vote to ban smoking
New Zealand dumps stringent world-first tobacco ban
BMA backs radical plan to ban cigarette sales to millennial generation