Skip to main content

New story in Health from Time: Federal Legal Age to Buy Tobacco Products Officially Raised to 21



On Friday, President Donald Trump signed a $1.4 trillion spending package that, on top of many things, raises the federal legal age for purchasing tobacco from 18 to 21.

Beginning in the summer of 2020, it will be a violation of federal law to sell tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. Since the 1990s, federal law mandated the legal age to purchase tobacco be at least 18.

The law also encompasses e-cigarettes and vaping cartridge, not just traditional tobacco products like cigarettes and cigars, adding regulation to an industry that, as TIME’s Jamie Ducharme writes, “has proliferated largely unchecked.”

E-cigarette use has spiked among U.S. teenagers. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 27.5% of U.S. high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the past month. Raising the age one can purchase the products is intended to combat what many are calling a health epidemic amongst America’s youth.

A recent outbreak of vaping-related lung disease has raised even more concern about vaping products, although the disease is largely due to THC.

In a statement to TIME, the American Lung Association called raising the age an “easy way to protect children’s health and prevent future generations from getting hooked on nicotine.”

Vaping advocate also have said they support raising the legal age, arguing vaping products were never intended for young people. Some anti-vaping activists have expressed skepticism of this opinion.

Twenty states have already raised the legal age to buy tobacco products to 21.

The signing of the package pushes off the potential of a government shutdown to the end of September 2020; many worried one might happen on Friday if an agreement between the two parties couldn’t be reached. A year ago, the U.S. government was in what become the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The bipartisan spending bill also allocated $25 million for gun violence research as well as $1.4 billion funding for Trump’s border wall. Trump originally requested $8.6 billion earlier this year.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New story in Health from Time: COVID-19 Has Been ‘Apocalyptic’ for Public Transit. Will Congress Offer More Help?

While trying to get to work over the past few months, Brittany Williams, a Seattle home care worker, has often been passed by two or three buses before one stops to let her board. Buses in her area that once carried anywhere from about 50 to 100 passengers have been limited to between 12 and 18 to prevent overcrowding in response to coronavirus, and Williams’ commute, typically a half-hour ride, now takes more than double that time. Other Seattle transit riders have described budgeting as much as an extra hour per trip to account for the reduced capacity, eating into their time at work, school or with family. Even with the ridership limits in place, Williams, 34, doesn’t feel safe on public transit. Some passengers don’t wear face coverings, and bus drivers sometimes ignore capacity limits, she says. On one ride with her seven-year-old son, she decided to get off at a stop far from her home after a driver allowed a crowd of people to board. “It’s very trying. I’ll put...
Read more

New story in Health from Time: A Montana Care Home Refused Free COVID-19 Tests. Now, Nearly Every Resident Has Coronavirus

(BILLINGS, Mont.) — It was meant to be a last line of defense to protect the most vulnerable as the coronavirus spread across the United States : Montana officials offered free testing in May for staff and residents at assisted living and long-term care facilities. But not all of them followed through, according to state data, including a facility in Billings, Montana’s largest city, that cares for people with dementia and other memory problems. The virus has infected almost every resident and killed eight, accounting for almost a quarter of Montana’s 34 confirmed deaths. Thirty-six employees also have tested positive at the facility where 59 people lived before the deaths began. Read more: ‘It’s Getting Worse.’ Nursing Home Workers Confront Risks in Facilities Devastated by Coronavirus While Montana’s rates of confirmed infections and deaths are much lower than other parts of the country, the outbreak at Canyon Creek Memory Care illustrates that even the most simple an...
Read more

New story in Health from Time: An At-Home Coronavirus Test May Be On the Way in the U.S.

As cases of COVID-19 continue to climb in the U.S. , there’s a new urgency to make sure there are as many tests as possible to diagnose people who have symptoms that might indicate an infection. Knowing if people are positive is important for guiding their next steps: self-isolation, avoiding contact with others, and, if their symptoms get worse, seeking medical care. To date, access to tests has been spotty at best across the country, and while more kits are now available than even a week ago , most are gene-based assays that take several days for commercial labs to process and produce results. That may change in about two months if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gives Emergency Use Authorization to the first blood-based COVID-19 test in the U.S. Scanwell Health, an at-home test company based in California, licensed the rights to a test developed by Chinese company Innovita, which was used extensively at the height of country’s epidemic earlier this year. “The ...
Read more