Mass. Smoking Age Could Raise to 21

By Katie Lannan, State House News Service

BOSTON - Anti-smoking advocates are renewing their push to raise the tobacco-buying age to 21 across all of Massachusetts.

More than 140 cities and towns in Massachusetts have passed ordinances lifting the minimum purchase age for tobacco products from 18 to 21, and a bill that would make the higher age a statewide policy passed the state Senate 32-2 last year.

Last week, a group of more than 100 cancer patients, survivors, families and volunteers with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network visited Beacon Hill to ask lawmakers to support a tobacco control bill that includes the three-year age boost. The lobbying continued this week as a former smoker featured in Center for Disease Control videos met with legislators.

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Brian Hayden, who quit smoking eight years ago and participates in the CDC's "Tips from Former Smokers" campaign, said he "started playing with cigarettes in elementary school" and was smoking at least a pack a day by the time he enrolled in the Air Force in 18. At 35, he suffered a heart attack while stationed in England.

"If it wasn't for the fact that I worked for the flight surgeon, whose office was right next door to mine, I certainly would have been dead," Hayden said in an interview.

Hayden quit smoking in 2008, two years after a stint in a hospice when he lost his opportunity for a heart transplant after doctors found nicotine in his blood. He had a successful heart transplant in 2012 and was later diagnosed with lung cancer.

Hayden said raising the tobacco age to 21 "may be the most important thing that our Legislature is going to have to do this year."

"They don't maybe realize that it's this important, but it is this important. Our children's lives depend on them to do the right thing," he said.

Supporters of the higher age restriction say it would keep tobacco products out of the social networks of younger teens, who are more likely to go to school with or have other ties to 18- and 19-year-olds who could illegally provide them with cigarettes.

According to the Coalition for Responsible Retailing, 86 percent of minors who use cigarettes obtain them in ways other than purchasing them at a retail store.

The coalition -- comprised of the New England Convenience Store Association, New England Service Station and Auto Repair Association, Retailers Association of Massachusetts and National Association of Tobacco Outlets -- takes the stance that additional limits on tobacco sales restrict adults' rights to purchase legal products without protecting minors.

Instead, the coalition calls for a regulatory structure it says would treat tobacco like alcohol, including fines for adults who provide tobacco products and language that would make the underage purchase of tobacco -- rather than just the sale to a minor -- illegal.

Along with raising the purchase age to 21, the tobacco control bills filed by Sen. Jason Lewis and Rep. Paul McMurtry would ban the use of e-cigarettes in public places, and prohibit tobacco sales in pharmacies and other health care facilities.

Both bills (S 1218 and H 2864) are before the Joint Committee on Public Health, which Lewis co-chairs with Rep. Kate Hogan.

The Senate passed similar legislation last April, and the House did not take it up.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo, during a WCVB interview Sunday, said raising the tobacco age is "something this year that we ought to take a look at."

The Retailers Association of Massachusetts opposed the tobacco control bill last year, calling it "anti-local business and anti-consumer as it seeks to ban licensed stores from selling a legal product to adult consumers."

Hawaii and California each raised their tobacco age to 21 last year.

More than half of the municipalities and counties that have raised their minimum legal sale age to 21 are in Massachusetts, according to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. As of March 16, 2017, the campaign said at least 220 localities-- 144 of which were in Massachusetts -- had adopted the higher age. Also on the list were Washington, D.C.; seven New York counties and New York City; Central Falls, Rhode Island; and Portland, Maine.

Here are all of the Massachusetts municipalities on the list:

Acton
Adams
Amherst
Andover
Arlington
Ashland
Attleboro
Belchertown
Belmont
Blackstone
Boston
Braintree
Brewster
Bridgewater
Brimfield
Brockton
Brookline
Buckland
Cambridge
Canton
Carver
Charlemont
Chelmsford
Chelsea
Cohasset
Concord
Danvers
Dedham
Deerfield
Dover
Duxbury
Eastham
Easton
Egremont
Essex
Everett
Falmouth
Foxboro
Framingham
Franklin
Gill
Gloucester
Grafton
Great Barrington
Greenfield
Hadley
Halifax
Hamilton
Hanover
Hatfield
Holbrook
Holyoke
Hopedale
Hudson
Hull
Kingston
Lanesborough
Lawrence
Lee
Lenox
Leverett
Lexington
Lincoln
Lowell
Malden
Mansfield
Marblehead
Marion
Marlborough
Marshfield
Mashpee
Maynard
Medfield
Medford
Medway
Melrose
Mendon

Methuen

Middleton
Milford
Millis
Milton
Montague
Natick
Needham
Newton
Norfolk
North Adams
North Andover
North Attleboro
North Reading
Northborough
Northampton
Norwell
Norwood
Orleans
Peabody
Pittsfield
Plainville
Provincetown
Randolph
Raynham
Reading
Revere
Rockport
Salem
Saugus
Scituate
Sharon
Shelburne
Sherborn
Somerville
South Hadley
Southampton
Southborough
Southwick
Stockbridge
Stoneham
Stoughton
Sunderland
Swampscott
Tewksbury
Topsfield
Townsend
Tyngsborough
Wakefield
Walpole
Waltham
Wareham
Watertown
Wayland
Wellesley
West Boylston
Westfield
Westford
Weston
Westwood
Whately
Whitman
Williamstown
Wilmington
Winchester
Worcester
Yarmouth

Photo by Norlando Pobre via Flickr