Toward a Tobacco-free Generation — A Birth Date–Based Phaseout Approach
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2024
ISSN
1533-4406
Publisher
Massachusetts Medical Society
Language
en-US
Abstract
Despite decades of public health efforts and advances in cessation treatments, smoking is still the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States. Smoking kills more people in this country than HIV, drug overdoses, alcohol use, motor vehicle crashes, and firearm-related injuries combined. Governments worldwide have tried to reduce tobacco use. In a development that could signal a new direction for tobacco regulation, one U.S. town’s policy aimed at creating a tobacco-free generation has successfully withstood legal challenge. The bylaw, passed by Brookline, Massachusetts, gradually phases out commercial tobacco by banning the sale of nicotine products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2000 (one of us cosponsored the bylaw). Eventually, no one will be old enough to purchase nicotine products. Tobacco retailers sued Brookline over the bylaw. A unanimous March 2024 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding the tobacco-free generation (TFG) bylaw may now boost its viability as a model for other local and state governments. In response to the ruling, health boards in three other Massachusetts towns (Melrose, Stoneham, and Wakefield) voted to implement birth date–based phaseouts, and other municipalities have taken initial steps toward adopting this policy.
Recommended Citation
Katharine B. Silbaugh & Christopher Robertson,
Toward a Tobacco-free Generation — A Birth Date–Based Phaseout Approach
,
390
New England Journal of Medicine
1837
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4086
