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“It is now illegal for a retailer to sell any tobacco product—including cigarettes, cigars and e-cigarettes—to anyone under the age of 21 years,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Saturday, Dec. 21.
This comes one day after President Donald Trump signed a pair of spending bills that covered a vast array of topics, including additional funding for his Mexico border wall, increased military spending and more. Nestled in the “Miscellaneous Provisions” section is a small bombshell: By amending the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the government effectively raised the minimum age of smoking from 18 to 21; while smoking itself is not banned, it is illegal to provide youth younger than 21 with tobacco products.
In the past few months, a “vaping disease” (EVALI, which stands for e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury) has been headline news and has caused lung injury in more than 2,500 people, as well as at least 55 deaths across the U.S. Many EVALI patients suffered after vaping illicit marijuana cartridges. In reaction, several states banned vaping products, making the regulation of smoking a major issue for the Trump administration.
The spending bill gives the secretary of health and human services 180 days to draft a final rule and then 90 additional days to fully enforce it, but the provision has already been signed into law, meaning stores will stop selling products to young adults during the transition period we have just entered. This means tobacco, itself, of course, but it also includes hookahs, vape pens, rolling paper and filters, as well as any product that helps to deliver nicotine into the body—which happen to be largely the same products used to consume marijuana.
Marijuana and Youth
The stated objective of this new legislation is to protect young people from the well-documented harmful effects of tobacco. It is the result of a long-standing movement to change the smoking age, which was pushed nationally by organizations such as Tobacco 21.
In an FDA-sponsored study, the National Academy of Medicine did find that “the initiation age of tobacco use is critical. Among adults who become daily smokers, approximately 90% report first use of cigarettes before reaching 19 years of age.” The study concludes that raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco products to 21 would prevent more than 220,000 premature deaths, as adults 21 and older are less likely to be in the same social networks as high schoolers, thus greatly lowering the chances teenagers have to obtain smoking products. However, it seems that tobacco will not be the only—or even the main—target of this law.
In August 2019, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reported that “in 2018, an estimated 672,000 adolescents (2.7%) aged 12 to 17, and 6.5 million young adults (18.1%) aged 18 to 25, smoked cigarettes in the past month.” While this shows how widespread consuming tobacco still is, it also shows that tobacco is overwhelmingly used by older people: Out of 47 million current tobacco smokers, 39.8 million are age 26 and older. By comparison, marijuana is far more likely to be consumed by youth: “In 2018, 3.1 million adolescents aged 12 to 17 (12.5%), and 11.8 million young adults aged 18 to 25 (34.8%), were past-year users of marijuana.” As such, it seems inevitable that the new legislation will affect marijuana use more than tobacco use among young people.
Reducing marijuana use among youth has been a key point of marijuana reform, as pot is suspected to have a negative impact on the proper development of the brain if consumed before the early-to-mid 20s. In the past, studies have concluded that using marijuana as a teenager could lead to the loss of a few IQ points and might influence neural connections. However, a more recent study focusing on the effects of marijuana use by one member of a pair of twins does not support that finding. That is to say that the effects of marijuana use on the developing brain are not well-understood, and the question remains open.
The new age of smoking falls in line with the trend to limit use of drugs in the U.S. to adults 21 and older in an attempt to limit negative consequences on teenagers, following the precedent set by alcohol regulations. All states that have legalized recreational cannabis forbid its sale to people younger than 21, although medical marijuana patients can legally obtain it starting at age 18.
However, as is clearly shown by the fact millions of teenagers consume marijuana without being of age or while living in states where it remains illegal, obtaining cannabis under the table won’t be a roadblock for them. We might be headed towards a head-scratching situation where marijuana will be easily obtainable by people younger than 21, but where the hookah or rolling paper needed to smoke it will become difficult to obtain.
