Trump administration passes law raising legal age to buy tobacco

On Dec. 20, 2019 President Trump signed legislation to amend the Federal Food and Drug and Cosmetic Act, raising the tobacco buying age from 18 to 21. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that this policy is now in effect, and it has 180 days to implement and enforce the law. Currently, about 30 organizations have already endorsed the national buying age of tobacco to 21. However, this was also not the first time the tobacco buying age was raised to 21.

Tobacco use among adolescents has been a critical key to ending the tobacco epidemic in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Each day in the U.S. about 1,600 youth under 18 years of age smoke their first cigarette and nearly 200 youth under 18 years of age become daily cigarette smokers.”

Prior to the federal law banning the selling of tobacco products to individuals under 21, 16 states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont and Washington—as well as the District of Columbia had already increased the minimum age to 21, Hawaii being the first state to raise the minimum legal sale age (MLSA) to 21 in Jun. 2015. Arkansas, Texas and Virginia also raised the sales age to 21 prior to the federal law, but the provisions that were implemented were less effective. 

The Tobacco 21 movement started in 2005 in Needham, Mass., when a law was enacted raising the MLSA to 21. Its purpose was to keep harmful, addictive products such as cigarettes, cigars, and electronic nicotine systems away from adolescents. The policy aimed to keep harmful, addictive products, such as cigarettes and electronic nicotine systems, out of the reach of young people. As a result of the new policy, smoking rates, in Needham, decreased by 47 percent in four years, which was triple the amount seen in surrounding cities. New York City announced their decision to raise the MLSA to 21 in 2013, influencing other communities nationwide till over 530 cities and counties across 31 states raised the MLSA to 21 as of December 2019.

Under Section 604 Sale of Tobacco to Individuals Under the Age of 21, state expenditures for a fiscal year will go towards tobacco prevention programs. Grants that states receives under the subsection would go towards tobacco cessation activities, strategies to prevent the use of tobacco use of individuals under the age of 21.

Poolesville junior Dineth Meegoda agrees with the use of state expenditures and grants, “A step in a better direction, as shown by Scandinavian countries, would be to focus on addiction treatment rather than jail time and make it less probable that one might buy drugs from illegal sources where they cannot be regulated,” Meegoda said.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s study, “Monitoring the Future,” it was reported that 2.4 percent of 12th graders smoke cigarettes daily and 11.7 percent vape nicotine daily. The number of high school seniors who reported to vape due to being “hooked” has more than doubled from 3.6 percent to 8.1 percent. 

The American Lung Association, an organization that has advocated for increasing the age of sale for tobacco products claims that it will help save lives as 94 percent of adult smokers had their first cigarette before the age of 21, 81 percent before the age of 18. By implementing the bill, the tobacco industry’s efforts to target young people at a critical time when many move from experimenting with tobacco to regular smoking will decline.

In a report done by the National Academy of Medicine in 2015, it was hypothesized that if the minimum age was increased to 21, tobacco use would decrease by 12 percent and smoking-related deaths would decrease by 10 percent. It was also predicted that smoking initiation will be reduced by 25 percent among 15 to 17 year-olds and 15 percent among 18 to 20 year-olds. Finally, nationally, 223,000 deaths among those born between 2000 and 2019 could be prevented, including 50,000 fewer deaths from lung cancer, the nation’s leading cancer killer.

Richard Montgomery junior Bridget McKirgan said, “Time after time we’ve seen the dangers of nicotine for the brain, especially on those that aren’t fully developed, which 18 year-olds aren’t. If we can keep tobacco further away from the high school age groups that would be best.”

Article by Sarasi Gunasekara of Richard Montgomery High School

Graphic by Helena Yang of Richard Montgomery High School