The new year started with some new hopeful additions following the US lead in raising the legal smoke age to 21.
First, anti-smoking campaigners in Australia hope that Tasmania will be the country’s first state to raise the smoking age to 21 and setting off a domino effect that would see the legal smoking age increased across the country, like the Tobacco 21 (T21) laws in the US in recent years. T21 started in 2005 in Boston, MA. In 2019, the legal smoking age went up across the country. The government in Tasmania previously proposed raising the smoking age, but rejected the idea, concerned about the potential for a black market for cigarettes.
India is also wants to raise the legal smoking age to 21. The Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products Amendment Act, 2020 was drafted to raise the age for allowing sale of cigarettes and tobacco products to 21 years from 18 years. This is part of the new bill being piloted by the Union Health Ministry and seeks to further amend the previous anti-tobacco act of 2003.
Singapore, on the other hand, implemented a new legal smoking age of 21 as of January 1, 2021. Singapore’s Parliament passed the law back in November 2017, raising the minimum smoking age from 18 to 21 over three years. The health ministry said that this “… aims to prevent youth from picking up smoking by limiting access to tobacco products, and to further de-normalize smoking particularly for those below 21 of age.”
In the US, where T21 is already federal law, even the Department of Defense (DOD) no longer sells tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21, including service members. The office of the under secretary of defense published policy making it unlawful for any retail outlet on DOD installations and facilities within the US and its territories and possessions, and on US naval vessels at a US port, to sell tobacco products, including electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), to any person younger than 21 years of age.
However, despite it being federal law, T21 compliance across the US is still not complete. In Wadena county in Minnesota, for example, the county tobacco ordinance has not yet been updated to T21. The ordinance follows the state’s statute that started on August 1, 2020 that matches the federal law. Wadena County has a tobacco ordinance, which was last updated in 1998. The county ordinance will need to reflect the state statute. Public Health is also working with cities in the county to update their ordinances.
A proposed ordinance and additions – the clerk’s age for selling tobacco products, tobacco retailers having to be a distance of 500 feet away from youth-oriented facilities, and banning flavored tobacco products - were presented to a board of commissioners last December and resulted in a split vote. Even without the additions, the ordinance was not passed.