FRIDAY, Aug. 30, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Retailers will now be required to check the IDs of anyone buying cigarettes who is younger than 30 years of age, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday. The final rule, which will go into effect Sept. 30, also restricts tobacco vending machine sales to spaces that are limited to people aged 21 years and older.
"Today's rule is another key step towards protecting our nation's youth from the health risks of tobacco products," Brian King, M.D., head of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, said in an agency news release on the rule. "Decades of science has shown that keeping tobacco products away from youth is critical to reducing the number of people who ultimately become addicted to these products and suffer from tobacco-related disease and death."
Importantly, the new restrictions also apply to electronic cigarettes, which are popular among young smokers. Although the number of children using e-cigarettes has started to decline over the past five years, one out of 10 high schoolers still say they vaped in the previous 30 days. For middle schoolers, that number was one in 22, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The federal age limit for tobacco purchases was 18 years until 2019, when it was raised to 21 years. Prior to the new rule, tobacco retailers were required to ask all buyers younger than 27 years for ID.
The FDA will continue to check that retailers are not selling tobacco products to underage users. So far, the agency has performed 1.5 million checks, and these have prompted 130,000 warning letters, at least 33,000 financial penalties and more than 200 "no tobacco sale" orders for stores that have violated age restrictions.
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