© Mark Lennihan, file/Associated PressIn this March 18, 2013 file photo cigarette packs are displayed for sale at a convenience store in New York. No one under 21 would be able to buy cigarettes in New York City under a proposal unveiled Monday, April 22, 2013 to make the city the most populous place in America to set the minimum age that high.
Extending a decade of moves to crack down on smoking in the nation's largest city, the measure aims to stop young people from developing a habit that remains the leading preventable cause of death, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said as she announced the plan. Eighty percent of the city's smokers started lighting up before they were 21, officials say.
"The point here is to really address where smoking begins," she said, flanked by colleagues and the city's health commissioner. With support in the council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's backing, the proposal has the political ingredients to pass.
But it may face questions about its effectiveness and fairness. A retailers' representative suggested the measure would simply drive younger smokers to neighboring communities or corner-store cigarette sellers instead of city stores, while a smokers' rights advocate called it "government paternalism at its worst."
Under federal law, no one under 18 can buy tobacco anywhere in the country. Four states and some localities have raised the age to 19, and at least two communities have agreed to raise it to 21.
A similar proposal has been floated in the Texas Legislature, but it's on hold after a budget board estimated it would cost the state more than $42 million in cigarette tax revenue over two years.
To public health and anti-smoking advocates, the cost to government is far outstripped by smoking's toll on human lives.
They say a higher minimum age for buying tobacco discourages, or at least delays, young people from starting smoking and thereby limits their health risks.
"Curtailing smoking among these age groups is critical to winning the fight against tobacco and reducing the deaths, disease and health care costs it causes," said Susan M. Liss, executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Smoking has become less prevalent overall in New York City over the last decade but has plateaued at 8.5 percent among the city's public high school students since 2007. An estimated 20,000 of them smoke today.
It's already illegal for many of them to buy cigarettes, but raising the minimum age would also bar slightly older friends from buying smokes for them.
City officials cited statistical modeling, published in the journal Health Policy, that estimated that raising the tobacco purchase age to 21 nationally could cut the smoking rate by two-thirds among 14-to-17-year-olds and by half among 18-to-20-year-olds over 50 years. Texas budget officials projected a one-third reduction in tobacco product use by 18-to-20-year-olds.
A higher minimum tobacco purchase age could cut into sales that make up 40 percent of gross revenues for the average convenience store, said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores. But he suggested younger smokers might just go outside the city - the minimum age is 19 in nearby Long Island and New Jersey, for instance - or to black-market merchants.
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