Pediatricians’ Group Calls for Raising Legal Smoking Age to 21

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is calling on the U.S. government to raise the legal smoking age to 21 for both traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes.

The group also urged the Food and Drug Administration to regulate e-cigarettes the same way it regulates other tobacco products, according to HealthDay.

“Most adolescents don’t use just one nicotine product but will commonly use or experiment with several,” said Dr. Harold Farber, one of the lead authors of the statement and a pediatric pulmonologist at Texas Children’s Hospital. “Research to date shows that adolescents who experiment with e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes are much more likely to go on to become regular cigarette smokers and less likely to stop cigarette smoking.”

The statement appears in the journal Pediatrics.

Earlier this month, 10 U.S. senators proposed raising the nationwide smoking age to 21. The Tobacco to 21 Act would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure compliance.

In June, Hawaii became the first state to pass a law raising the legal smoking age to 21. The law also outlaws the sale, purchase or use of e-cigarettes for anyone under 21. The measure will take effect on January 1, 2016.

The legal age to purchase tobacco is 19 in Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey and Utah. The minimum age has been raised to 21 in dozens of cities and towns, including New York. Legislators in Washington state and California have also introduced measures to raise the legal smoking age to 21 in recent months.

The Institute of Medicine issued a report earlier this year that concluded if every state were to immediately ban tobacco sales to those under 21, the smoking rate would fall 12 percent. The decrease would prevent 249,000 premature deaths among the generation born between 2000 and 2019, the report noted.