Tougher tobacco regs go into effect Jan. 1

The town of Canton is about to get a whole lot tougher on tobacco.

Beginning next Wednesday, January 1, Canton will join neighboring Sharon, Needham, and a handful of other Massachusetts communities in raising the minimum purchase age for tobacco products from 18 to 21, per order of the Canton Board of Health.

The new regulations, inspired by the efforts of two local pediatricians and approved in August by a unanimous vote, will apply to traditional tobacco products and electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes or personal vaporizers, as well as nicotine replacement therapies such as nicotine patches and gum. Health officials also took the added step of banning an assortment of “nonmedical” nicotine products that seem to target young people, including flavored blunt wraps, snus, and dissolvable tablets.

“I’m pretty confident that this is going to have some positive effect,” said Public Health Director John Ciccotelli, who helped draft the new regulations and will be tasked with enforcing them.

Ciccotelli said the health department recently mailed reminder notices and new signage to all Canton retailers, and they will continue to conduct routine compliance checks a “couple times a year” with the assistance of the Police Department.

“We’re going to run everything exactly the same,” he said, referring to the enforcement measures.

Cicotelli has made it clear on numerous occasions that the age increase was not designed to penalize Canton retailers, which he said have an “excellent track record” in tobacco-related stings. Rather, the real target of the regulation changes, he said, are those individuals ages 18-21 who purchase tobacco for their younger siblings and friends.

As he stated at the hearing in August, “The main purpose of this regulation is to raise the age of purchasing tobacco to 21 in order to keep cigarettes and nicotine out of middle school and high school aged kids’ hands, which is the time where they’re most vulnerable and where most people in general start smoking.”

In this respect, health officials agreed wholeheartedly with Dr. Jonathan Winickoff and Dr. Lester Hartman, a pair of anti-tobacco crusaders who have gone town to town to argue the benefits of an older purchase age, stopping in Canton last April.

Winickoff and Hartman ultimately succeeded in convincing the board to try the stricter age requirements for a period of five years — a compromise achieved through a “sunset provision,” whereby the age would revert back to 18 if the measure fails to produce a positive effect on teen smoking rates.

To test its effectiveness, the Board of Health will conduct an annual survey of Canton middle and high school students that focuses on nicotine use as well as access to tobacco products. The first round of surveys was distributed in the schools last Wednesday, December 18.

In the meantime, Canton becomes just the sixth town in the commonwealth to raise its smoking age to 21. The town of Needham was the first in the country when it went to 21 in 2005, followed by Dover and Sharon in May of this year. Two more towns, Ashland and Dedham, will join Canton on January 1, and a seventh community, Arlington, will gradually increase the purchase age to 21 by 2015.

Last month, New York City made history when it became the first major city in America to raise its purchase age to 21 (effective May 2014), and just last week the mayor of Hawaii County signed similar legislation, with the change set to take effect July 1.

In both locations, politicians and other supporters have pointed to Massachusetts as a model and a leader in the “tobacco 21” movement, and Ciccotelli, for one, is hardly surprised.

“What I foresee happening is that I suspect the state is going to be taking some action in the near future,” he said, alluding to a possible statewide age increase.

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