Gov. Phil Scott has signed into law a bill that will raise the legal age to purchase tobacco or e-cigarettes in Vermont from 18 to 21 — capping years of lobbying by health advocates.
The governor signed S.86 on Thursday, to the delight of groups such as the American Heart Association. Because most smokers pick up the harmful and addictive habit before they are 21, fewer people will start, health advocates reason.
The law takes effect September 1, 2019.
Similar legislation failed in 2016 and 2017. This year, lawmakers cited concerns about young people being exposed to more and more products.
“E-cigarettes, vaping, Juuling are taking over,” Sen. Debbie Ingram (D-Chittenden), a sponsor of the bill, warned in February. Flavored smokes appeal to kids, she added, and raising the legal age to 21 would make it harder for teens to get around age restrictions.
E-cigs have “infested our school community,” Montia Peart, an Essex High School senior, told Seven Days earlier this year.
Montpelier High School senior Willem Slade said the Juuls were everywhere at school and the e-cigarette brand had become part of the teen lexicon. “Juuling in the bathroom, any free time you have; in the back of class because they’re so easy to conceal,” he said.
Rep. George Till (D-Jericho), a physician who has long advocated for the change, said he had little support several years ago. But the notion of upping the age to 21 had been incrementally gaining ground each year. In an interview Friday, he said the U.S. Surgeon General’s warning late last year of a teen youth vaping “epidemic” proved influential.
“It got people’s attention,” Till said. “Not only did [the bill] pass, but it passed by huge margins this year.”
Scott also signed H.26 on Thursday, which bans the internet sales of e-cigs. And he has previously indicated he’d support another measure lawmakers have sent to his desk, H.47, which would tax vaping products at the same rate as tobacco.
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Am 18 year old should sue.
My body my choice.
Great news. Cigarettes should just go away, and e-cigs should be much more regulated than they are. Vaping CBD is a much more legitimate use than vaping nicotine.
If you can vote and go to war when you are 18 and considered an adult then you should be able to smoke when you’re 18!!
These laws are about protecting their income stream from the taxation of cigarettes and nothing else. It was already illegal for kids to get vapes. They just want to make all of us “undesirable types” to pay a ton of taxes and to die Young from smoking. If they actually cared about people they’d support vaping as it is clearly safer that combustible tobacco.
The progressive governor joined his fellow progressives once again. I am anti-smoking personally but the government has no right to restrict a legal adult’s freedom for three years. The nanny state forces its will again.
i don’t smoke cigarettes , but to push laws like these are crazy , i see young people who join the military go fight for the freedom you are taking away , 18 a legal adult but you keep taking away rights , please now raise the voting age to 21 , driving a car to 21 , getting married to 21 , buying a home 21, having children 21 taking out school loans 21 , the list an go on . sad
If nothing else I hope this will encourage young adults to get out and vote. Vermont used to be a state about freedom and respecting peoples rights. Now we are the socialist nanny state.
18 isn’t the problem. 13 is the problem. The idea that middle-schoolers are less likely to pass as adults than they are to pass as college students may have a tiny bit of validity, but the arbitrary and capricious nature of disparate ages of majority invites the kind of anti-authoritarian indignation seen here. Reflect that, come September, an 18yo terminal patient may elect self-administered suicide via barbiturates in Vermont, but not self-administered slow suicide via tobacco. One possible solution: embrace arbitrariness! Stop pretending 21 is a rational threshold. If it’s a public health issue, make the legal age to possess nicotine products 60, unless certified by a physician to be likely to die soon anyway, and promising to only smoke under the bleachers where other kids won’t see.
Kids are smart! They should be able to vote!
Kids are dumb! They can’t be trusted to make a decision about whether or not to smoke!
Kids are smart! They should be involved in the political process! Isn’t it cool when they protest something all by themselves?
Kids are dumb! They can’t be trusted to buy a firearm!
Great stuff.