Following the lead of several municipalities within the state, Massachusetts is considering raising the state-wide legal smoking age to 21 in an attempt to lower student smoking rates within the region.
A bill that would make it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase nicotine products in the state has already been signed by almost 60 senators and representatives, according to the Associated Press. While the Legislature's Public Health Committee will not decide until next year whether to advance the bill, the city of Boston's Board of Health is set to have a hearing on Thursday, which, if successful, will lead to a vote that would ban the sale of nicotine products to anyone under 21 in Boston, effective as early as February of next year.
Massachusetts would be the second state in America to raise the legal smoking age to 21, following Hawaii, which voted to raise the smoking age to 21 in June, a move that will become effective in the new year. Other municipalities have also raised the legal smoking age, including New York City, which raised the smoking age in the city to 21 in 2013.
The small suburb of Needham, Mass. was the first municipality to raise the smoking age from 18 to 21 in 2005. In the first five years following the decision, a study published in the academic journal Tobacco Control concluded that the smoking rate among students in the suburb dropped by almost half, The Boston Globe reported back in June.
The rationale behind raising the legal age for purchasing tobacco products is in part to limit the ability for high-school students to obtain these products. "Raising the MLA to 21 will mean that those who can legally obtain tobacco are less likely to be in the same social networks as high school students," states a report published by the Institute of Medicine outlining the implications of raising the legal smoking age.
