California just became the second state, after Hawaii, to increase the smoking age to 21.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) enacted five public health bills on Wednesday representing the tightest tobacco regulations in decades. The new laws tighten regulations on the use of e-cigarettes, expand smoking restrictions in the workplace and at schools, raise the licensing fees for cigarette retailers, and ban anyone below the age of 21 from buying tobacco.
Lawmakers and advocates cheered the legislation, calling it a rare victory over powerful tobacco interests.
“It’s been decades since we’ve actually done anything to reduce tobacco use,” the author of one of the bills, Sen. Ed Hernandez (D), said in a statement. “The fierce opposition from Big Tobacco on this measure proves just how important this law is and how much their business model relies on targeting our kids.”
It’s been decades since we’ve actually done anything to reduce tobacco use.
Nine out of ten current smokers picked up the habit before they turned 18, according to the Institute of Medicine. Smoking, the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, has caused 14 million medical conditions and kills more than 400,000 people annually — at a cost of some $133 billion to our health care system.
The bill’s proponents expressed hope that the legislation would catalyze a national movement. San Francisco and New York City already have 21-to-buy laws on the books, and Hawaii raised its smoking age in January. If the whole United States follows suit, “by the time today’s teenagers [are] adults, there would be a 12 percent decrease in the prevalence of tobacco use among those adults,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found.
The new restrictions were not a total loss for tobacco interests. Brown vetoed a tax hike on tobacco products, to the delight of lawmakers concerned about raising taxes on the tobacco industry.
“Although California has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation, I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot,” Brown said in a statement explaining the veto.
Veterans associations got their way, too. They successfully lobbied for an exception to the law allowing active members of the military to smoke between ages 18 to 21.
But the electronic cigarette industry had no such victory to cling to. The new law treats e-cigs just like paper cigarettes — a serious blow to the burgeoning industry.
“California took a step backwards today by reclassifying vapor products as tobacco,” the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association told The Sacramento Bee. “Stigmatizing vapor products, which contain no tobacco and treating them the same as combustible tobacco while actively seeking to economically penalize smokers attempting to switch is counterproductive to public health.”
The number of teens who have tried e-cigarettes has tripled since 2011, with e-cigarette teen smokers outnumbering those who smoke regular tobacco cigarettes. E-cigs have fewer toxins, researchers agree, but smoking these vapor products still carries health risks like heart disease.
The bill’s opponents hope to put a measure on the November ballot asking voters to reject the new laws, a move that requires 366,000 valid signatures by August.
Cory Herro is an intern at ThinkProgress.