MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A new federal regulation is now in effect that prohibits anyone under 21 from buying tobacco products along with e-cigarettes and vaping products.
A spokesman with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday the new provision takes effect immediately. It was included in the massive federal spending bill passed by Congress on Dec. 20. Some states already had 21 as the legal age for tobacco product purchases but not West Virginia.
WVU School of Medicine Assistant Professor for General Pediatrics Lisa Costello believes increasing the legal age from 18 to 21 will save lives.
“We think this will have a positive public health impact, based upon the 22 states where we’ve seen some type of this legislation enacted,” Costello said Friday on MetroNews “Talkline.”
A bill upping the age to 21 made it through the state Senate earlier this year but died in the House of Delegates health committee. Costello said the new federal mandate supersedes any efforts at the state level.
“This legislation does not require states to pass their own individual laws. It will be a federal mandate similar to back in the 80s when the alcohol legal age was raised to 21,” Costello said.
The FDA spokesman told reporters the new provision takes effectively immediately because it simply changes the age in current law and doesn’t create a new law.
There’s been no comment so far from state agencies in West Virginia on how the new age would be communicated to retailers and enforced.
.@LisaCostelloWV, Assistant Professor General Pediatrics at the WVU School of Medicine, joins @HoppyKercheval to talk about raising the smoking age to 21. WATCH: https://t.co/wkudfIAoe1 pic.twitter.com/I8az2Rqdbt
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) December 27, 2019
Statistics show there are many children under the age of 18 in West Virginia that smoke cigarettes and use tobacco products. Costello said making it illegal for 18 to 21-year-olds to purchase the products should reduce those numbers.
“If you’re 18 or 19, 20 you buy it for your friends who are 16 or 17. So if we can cut that down we believe this will have a positive impact,” she said. “There have been some projections that millions of lives will be saved. That age of 18 to 20 is a very susceptible time where people kind of move from experimenting with tobacco use to becoming daily users.”
Costello said it’s important that the legislation covers vaping.
“Vaping has taken over the market and that’s another reason why this legislation is timely,” she said.
State Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, announced during an appearance on “Talkline” in October that he would introduce the tobacco age bill again in the legislative session that begins Jan. 8. That won’t be necessary now.
Takubo, a pulmonologist, said he understands the argument about personal freedom, but certain products create public health hazards, such as cigarettes and second-hand smoke.
“What you do with yourself is your business as long as it doesn’t affect me, but at the same time — from a public health perspective — we need to do everything we can for these kids,” he said on “Talkline.”
Takubo noted human brains are still developing until someone reaches 23 years old.
“We know if you don’t start any addictive thing before the age of 21, the chances are single digits that you’ll ever pick that up in your lifetime,” he said.
Ohio implemented a new tobacco age law in September.