Boston raises minimum sales age for tobacco to 21

The Boston Public Health Commission voted on Dec. 17 to update the city’s tobacco sales health regulation to raise the minimum legal sales age from 18 to 21 and to restrict the sale of flavored tobacco products to certain adult-only establishments.
 
Boston joins 85 Massachusetts cities and towns, with a total population of more than 2.7 million (41 percent of the state’s population) that have adopted this policy. Ten years ago, Needham was the first municipality in the country to raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products.
 
There have been minimal compliance issues and no lawsuits in municipalities with the higher minimum age.
 
The public health rationale behind the change is threefold:
• To deter youths from tobacco use by making it more difficult to obtain
• To minimize, or eliminate, the number of high school students who can currently obtain tobacco legally for under-aged schoolmates
• To conform to the minimum legal sales age for alcohol
 
In the recent report “Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products,” the national Institute of Medicine concludes that raising the minimum age of legal access to tobacco products to 21 will reduce tobacco initiation, particularly among teens from age 15 to 17, and will improve health across the lifespan and save lives.
 
Boston also enacted a policy that extends the 2009 federal law that banned flavored (except menthol) cigarettes to include all tobacco products. The policy limits the sale of these flavored “other tobacco products” to qualifying adult-only establishments such as tobacconists, smoke shops, “vape” shops, cigar bars and hookah bars.
 
This policy duplicates one that was adopted by the Providence, R.I., City Council as an ordinance in 2012. Several tobacco manufacturers and two tobacco trade associations sued the city, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the ordinance.
 
Because Massachusetts shares the same federal court jurisdiction with Rhode Island, municipalities are able to mimic the policy relying on this legal precedent. Since the 2013 court decision, 40 Massachusetts municipalities, with a population of more than 1.5 million, have enacted the Providence policy.
 
The 2009 federal ban on the sale of flavored cigarettes was based on the government’s findings that these flavors are attractive to youths. The ban, however, drove manufacturers away from flavored cigarettes to an explosion of youth-friendly flavors in cigars, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarette nicotine solutions. Data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (in 2011) and the U.S. Surgeon General (in 2012) have stated that flavored tobacco products are considered to be “starter” products that help establish smoking habits that can lead to long-term addiction.
 
Municipalities wishing to adopt either or both of these policies may contact D.J. Wilson at the MMA for assistance.