The US Congress passed a law Thursday, December 19, raising the minimum age for buying tobacco and electronic cigarettes from 18 to 21 years across the United States. Tobacco and electronic cigarettes will join alcohol and cannabis – in states where it is legal – as products limited to adults 21 years of age or older. So far, 19 of the 50 states have imposed this minimum age, most since this year.
The new federal law generalizes it everywhere, from Alaska to Florida, and the change will be effective in about nine months, the time to issue implementing decrees specifying the sanctions against violating stores.
This increase aims to combat the dazzling popularity of vapers among middle and high school students in recent years, while fewer and fewer young people are consuming alcohol and traditional cigarettes: 27.5% of high school students " twelfth "(equivalent to the terminale) said they had vaped in the last 30 days, according to the annual survey conducted by the government in 2019, against 11.3% in 2016.
Another benchmark survey published Wednesday, Monitoring the Future, shows that 52% of high school students said they had drunk alcohol last year, compared to 73% in 2000. For cigarettes, the proportion of high school students who smoked in the last month fell to 5.7%, almost half less than in 2016. Not only is vaping increasing, but more and more young people are vaping cannabis. 14% of high school students said they had done so in the 30 days preceding the questionnaire.
Donald Trump's concessions
But the measure voted on Thursday is far from what the government of Donald Trump was considering in September: an outright ban on flavored electronic cigarettes, popular with young people.
Summer has also seen a health crisis added to the problem of young e-cigarette smokers: vapers, often in their twenties, have started to get seriously ill with their lungs. An extensive health survey has revealed that the cause was an ingredient often added in cannabis infused refills sold on the black market, vitamin E acetate. To date, 2,409 patients have been identified, and 52 people are dead.
The American president, initially in favor of the ban on flavorings, finally backed down, apparently persuaded by advisers that it would cost him votes in the presidential election of November 2020. The industry and the owners of "Vape shops" had protested outside the White House under the slogan of "We vape, we vote".
In the meantime, the leader in e-cigarettes, the American Juul, associated with the tobacco giant Altria, has voluntarily stopped selling its fruit, mango or cucumber flavors in the United States, leaving only the tobacco and menthol flavors (in other countries, the brand continues to sell other flavors). Donald Trump and industry have all stood behind the solution of raising the minimum age to 21. Anti-smoking and vaping activists remained scandalized by this compromise.