In the United States, you will soon have to be of age to buy cigarettes

In a major change, cigarettes join alcohol and cannabis: buyers will have to be of age to purchase them on the new continent. This follows a new law adopted by the United States Congress. Here is an explanation.

A rise in vaping among young Americans

Young Americans have been consuming less tobacco and alcohol for some years now, but they are turning to electronic cigarettes. Users are getting younger, since these devices are turning up in school playgrounds. In the 2019 annual survey, 27.5% of final-year pupils said they had vaped in the previous 30 days, against 11.3% in 2016.

What is more, since the summer of 2019 a large number of young people aged around 20 have fallen seriously ill after vaping. A total of 2,409 cases were recorded and 52 deaths were linked to the use of black-market e-liquids to which vitamin E acetate had been added.

The legal age for buying cigarettes rises from 18 to 21

Until now, you had to be 18 to buy cigarettes legally in the United States. Congress has settled the matter by adopting a text that raises the legal age for buying cigarettes and vaping devices to 21.

Tobacco therefore joins cannabis and becomes a product available only to those aged 21 and over. That is not all: electronic cigarettes follow the same path. The measure was introduced in the wake of the Juul brand’s wide take-up in secondary schools.

19 of the 50 states had already imposed the measure

Of the 50 states that make up the United States, 19 had already set this legal age for buying tobacco or vaping products. A number of them had had the law in place since 2019.

The federal law passed recently puts every state on an equal footing. But there are still 9 months to go before it takes effect: the implementing orders setting out the penalties faced by shops that continue to sell tobacco or electronic cigarettes to minors have to be published first.