PD Editorial: No smoke: Tobacco law reduces use

Needham, Mass. is just west of Boston, one of many densely populated suburbs separated primarily by lines of a map.

Ten years ago, Needham raised the minimum age for buying cigarettes and other tobacco products from 18 to 21, an approach that’s now gaining traction in other parts of the country, including here in California.

The reasoning is simple. Two-thirds of smokers light up for the first time before turning 18, and more than eight in 10 are hooked before they turn 21. So if adolescents can’t buy tobacco products, smoking will taper off quickly and dramatically.

In turn, that would mean fewer premature deaths and big savings on health care.

Of course, it also hurts the bottom line for tobacco companies and merchants who sell their products. And they have argued, often successfully, that raising the smoking age won’t deter teenagers as long as they can rely on adults or buy cigarettes legally in another town.

Which brings us back to Needham.

A study published this summer in the health journal Tobacco Control concluded that the proportion of local teenagers who smoke declined by almost half - from 13 percent to 7 percent - within seven years after the city banned tobacco sales to anyone under 21.

In 16 nearby towns that still allow tobacco sales to 18-year-olds, researchers from the MetroWest Health Foundation said, the smoking rate declined from 15 percent to 12 percent during the same seven-year period.

Talk about clearing the air.

No amount of industry smoke can obscure the fact that Needham’s law is working, even though nearby jurisdictions didn’t follow suit.

MetroWest’s findings are consistent with the national Institute of Medicine’s conclusion that raising the age to purchase tobacco reduces youthful experimentation and habitual smoking because “those who can legally obtain tobacco are less likely to be in the same social networks as high school students.”

Experimentation is an important consideration. It’s well established that the parts of the brain responsible for decision making, impulse control and susceptibility to peer pressure aren’t fully developed until adulthood and that adolescent brains are especially vulnerable to the effects of nicotine.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so much less common for a 25- or 30-year-old to take up smoking than it is for a 17- or 19-year-old.

Indeed, Massachusetts health data show that Needham’s adult smoking rate is well below the state average, so teenagers aren’t simply waiting longer to light up.

Healdsburg is among a handful of cities that have raised the age to buy tobacco products, acting over objections from merchants and industry lobbyists. The Needham study is reason for confidence that these laws will reduce teen smoking, but a state law would be a better approach.

A bill cleared the state Senate earlier this year, but it stalled in the Assembly. The special legislative session on health care offers another chance, and state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, and Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, are carrying bills that would make 21 the minimum age to buy tobacco. When the smoke clears, we hope one of those bills becomes law.