The fight against smoking is taking a step forward in the Western United States. Lawmakers will be debating a sweeping proposal in the coming days.
Its name: “Assembly Bill 935”. This text is inspired by a New Zealand text from 2022, banning tobacco products there for all people born after 2009. Brookline, a town of 60,000 inhabitants in Massachusetts in the eastern United States United States passed a similar law for anyone born after 2000.
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In California, where the sale of tobacco is already prohibited for at least 21 years, it would therefore be from 2007. People who buy tobacco despite everything do not risk a fine or a prison sentence. It is the sellers who would be financially sanctioned. Cannabis, legal here, and hookahs are not affected by the ban. On the other hand, since a referendum in 2020, no one can buy vaping cartridges with a flavor, a fruit taste for example.
The coercion of tobacco
Behind this law, we find Damon Connolly, a lawyer elected to the California Assembly in the last election in November 2022. He says that this legislation would not take away any rights from anyone and that it will prevent a new generation to end up addicted to nicotine. Above all, he wants California to set an example and that beyond its borders, other states think about the issue. Cigarettes kill 480,000 Americans every year. And it would seem that restrictions, laws – and marketing of course – have an impact on tobacco consumption. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 11.5% of Americans smoked cigarettes in 2021, almost half the number in 2009.
Still, not everyone is satisfied. Some wonder about the effectiveness of such a law when the regulations around tobacco are already very strict in California. Won’t those who want to smoke at all costs resort to the black market, sometimes finding even more dangerous counterfeits? Won’t they go to neighboring Nevada or Arizona to find cigarettes?
A shortfall of more than a billion dollars
The approximately 20,000 stores that sell tobacco in California are not thrilled either. Charles Janigian, their representative, repeats to the American media that people should have the right to smoke if they want to. His association will undoubtedly attack this law in court if it is passed. He speaks of a waste of time for the legislature and insists on the jobs in danger or the money that the Californian state will no longer receive, estimated in 2021 at around 1.5 billion dollars in tax. A sum normally donated to health programs.
But for his part, Damon Connolly, the elected official behind the bill, rightly considers that fewer people who smoke means fewer sick people and therefore a positive impact on public health spending.