Lost amid last month’s frenzied news regarding the latest COVID variant was a landmark announcement by the government of New Zealand of a bold new countermeasure aimed at the eventual eradication of an even greater killer: tobacco. In what is known as the “Smoke-Free Generation,” starting in 2027 the legal age for the purchase of cigarettes will increase by a year annually in that country, so that anyone under 18 will never be able to legally buy them, amounting to a lifetime

This coming week is National Non-Smoking Week. Unfortunately, one of the great silent ironies of (non-pandemic) life in Vancouver and other Canadian cities today is that many of us can usually get up, take smoke-free transit to our smoke-free workplaces, afterwards eat dinner in a smoke-free restaurant.

Raising the minimum legal age for sale of tobacco and vaping products to 21 is a smart and needed component of both reinvigorating our longstanding, but stalling, battle against smoking, as well as constructing a defense with any hope of countering the tsunami- like rise in youth vaping currently underway.

On Nov. 1, the minimum legal age for purchasing cigarettes in the state of New Jersey was raised to 21. Hawaii and California already have “Tobacco 21” laws in effect, while Oregon and Maine have recently passed laws that will come into force next year.

Movies are one of the main legal avenues remaining for the industry to (indirectly) market to children. Numerous studies have shown that smoking in movies makes teens more likely to try smoking. In fact, a review study suggested that as much as 37 per cent of youth smoking initiation is due to smoking in movies. The U.S. Surgeon General has concluded that this is causal, and that simple ratings changes could reduce the number of teen smokers by nearly one in five (18 per cen