A grass roots movement to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes and other tobacco products to 21 years from 18 is gaining traction, shaping up as the next serious challenge to the $100 billion U.S. tobacco industry.
On Monday, the city council in Evanston, Ill., home to Northwestern University, banned tobacco sales to anyone under the age of 21. Next month, the board of health in Columbia, Mo., home to the University of Missouri, is expected to recommend the same to its city council.
Those initiatives may not sound too threatening to Big Tobacco except they follow a rapidly growing list of communities passing laws over the past year banning sales to anybody under 21, from New York City to Healdsburg in Sonoma County wine country. In Massachusetts alone, 30 communities have passed or enacted such regulations in the past year, inspired by a big drop in teen smoking in the town of Needham.
States are taking notice. New Jersey’s senate in June approved a bill to raise the purchase age to 21; its house is expected to vote next year. Colorado’s legislature defeated a similar proposal in March but is expected to revisit the issue.
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