nothin Bill Would Raise Tobacco Sales Age To 21 | New Haven Independent

Bill Would Raise Tobacco Sales Age To 21

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn, the bill’s spnsor.

A new proposed city law would bump up the minimum legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21 years old.

If passed, New Haven would join six states and over 400 different municipalities around the country in an attempt to curb teenage smoking by pushing tobacco products a bit further out of reach of high schoolers.

That law is included in the latest packet of proposed legislation attached to the agenda for this Tuesday’s full Board of Alders meeting.

The proposed law, communicated to the board by Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn, would raise the city’s minimum legal sales age for all tobacco products from 18 to 21 years old. The state’s minimum legal tobacco sales age is 18.

The Tobacco 21” law would apply not just to cigarettes, but also to vaping products, flavored cigars, JUULs, and other e‑cigarettes that have become increasingly popular among teenagers in recent years.

State and local policymakers must support proven policy interventions that reduce tobacco use,” Tobacco 21 advocate Ken Farbstein wrote in Clyburn’s Feb. 21 communication to the full board, so our children can grow up not as next generation smokers but as the first tobacco‐free generation.”

Board leadership will now assign the communicated law to a committee for a public hearing before a final vote.

According to a statement from Victoria Davis, JUUL Labs’ senior director of communications, the company shares the surgeon general’s desire to prevent young people from becoming addicted to nicotine.

We are committed to preventing youth access of JUUL products,” Davis said in the statement on the maker’s website. We cannot fulfill our mission to provide the world’s one billion adult smokers with a true alternative to combustible cigarettes if youth use continues unabated. As we said before, our intent was never to have youth use JUUL products. We have taken dramatic action to contribute to [solving] this problem, which is why we implemented the JUUL Labs Action Plan to address underage use of JUUL products.”

Markeshia Ricks photo

Ken Farbstein passes around examples of tobacco products aimed at teens at a recent Dwight management team meeting.

The supporting documents associated with the proposed Tobacco 21 law run 25 pages long, and include a fact sheet on current Tobacco 21 laws and the risks of teenage tobacco use, an academic article about tobacco as a gateway drug, and a copy of the Tobacco 21 law that Hartford passed in October 2018, which goes into effect in the capital city in April.

Citing the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and reports from the Philip Morris cigarette company, Farbstein laid out the case for increasing the minimum tobacco sales age to 21.

Only 10 percent of smokers start at 21 or older, he wrote.

Raising the legal minimum age for cigarette purchase to 21 could gut our key young adult market,” he quoted from a 1986 Philip Morris report.

According to a 2015 Institute of Medicine report, raising the minimum age to 21 would result in around 223,000 fewer premature deaths among those born between 2000 and 2019, Farbstein wrote.

The nicotine in these products can rewire an adolescent’s brain,” he quoted Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb as saying in April 2018, leading to years of addiction.”

As a model for New Haven’s law, Clyburn and Farbstein included a copy of the Tobacco 21 law that Hartford’s Common Council passed last October.

Tobacco use is the foremost preventable cause of premature death in the United States,” Hartford’s law reads, responsible for more than half a million deaths per year in the United States and costing the nation approximately $300 billion in healthcare and lost work productivity costs each year.”

The law raises the minimum legal age for all tobacco products to 21, and explains that the vast majority of those who provide nicotine and tobacco products to youth 17 and under are themselves between 18 and 20, and can therefore purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products legally.

The Hartford law require all capital city retailers that sell tobacco products to secure a license from the city’s health department. By state law, tobacco retailers only need a license from the state health department.

Retailers have to renew their city licenses annually, according to the Hartford law. And they must display their licenses at their stories at all times.

No retailer or retailer’s agent or employee shall give, sell, or otherwise distribute any tobacco product to any person under 21 years of age,” the Hartford law reads.

Retailers must ask to see a customer’s ID if that customer appears to be under the age of 30.

That a person appeared to be over the age of 21 shall not constitute a defense to a violation of this section,” the law reads.

The city’s health department is charged with conducting at least two under-age youth-based, unannounced compliance checks per retailer per year.” Random re-inspections of all non-compliant retailers have to take places within three months of any violation.

Retailers will have to pay the city a minimum fine of $250 for each violation of the municipal Tobacco 21 law. Depending on the number of violations, the city can also suspend a retailer’s tobacco sales license.

City Must Prepare For Legalized Marijuana

Yale Alder Hacibey Catalbasoglu.

Meanwhile, while Clyburn’s proposed law seeks to make tobacco more difficult to access for city teens, one of her colleagues on the board is looking to help make it easier for adults to smoke pot.

Yale Alder Hacibey Catalbasoglu sent a letter to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers requesting a public hearing on the regulation of adult recreational use of cannabis.

At least forty-seven Connecticut General Assembly members have jointly introduced HB5595 for cannabis legalzation,” he wrote, and the political atmosphere suggests that the bill will pass during the current session. New Haven should have the necessary procedure in place to ensure the successful implementation of such a bill upon passage.”

Catalbasoglu said that he would like the public hearing to focus on the reinvestment of tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales into public education, protection of small and minority business owners, limits on public use of cannabis, the licensing of cannabis dispensaries, and restorative initiatives to the victims of the drug war.”

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