Massachusetts lawmakers push for an effort to ban all tobacco sales over time
A handful of Massachusetts lawmakers are hoping to persuade their colleagues to support a proposal that would make the state the first to adopt a ban meant to eliminate the use of tobacco products over time
BOSTON — A handful of Massachusetts lawmakers are hoping to persuade their colleagues to support a proposal that would make the state the first to adopt a ban meant to eliminate the use of tobacco products over time.
Other locations have weighed similar “generational tobacco bans,” which phase out the use of tobacco products based not just on a person's age but on birth year.
Under a Massachusetts law signed in 2018, the age to buy any tobacco product — including cigarettes, cigars and e-cigarettes — was raised to 21. Massachusetts also has banned the sale of all flavored 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 purchase 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 cutoff date would be adjusted when passed to ensure everyone age 21 and above at that time would not be affected.
Brookline, a town of about 63,000 neighboring Boston, was the first municipality in the country to adopt such a ban in 2020. Instead of raising the age for purchasing cigarettes, the bylaw blocks the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 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
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