Right: The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan bans smoking in all public places, regardless of the smoker's age and, while the sale of tobacco products is not completely banned, tobacco products must be purchased from state-owned shops and other outlets, with each sale attracting a 100 per cent sales tax.
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Background information
(Most of the information below has been taken from a background piece published in The Straits Times and titled '21, 18 or 14: A look at the legal age for smoking around the world'
The full text can be accessed at
)Legal smoking age
The smoking age is the minimum legal age required to purchase or use conventional tobacco products (excluding vaping materials). Most countries have laws that forbid the sale of tobacco products to persons younger than certain ages, usually the age of majority, which in Australia is 18.
Countries where the legal smoking age is 21
Singapore is not the first country to set the age limit at 21. Others include: Honduras (Central America), Kuwait (Middle East), Samoa (Oceania), Sri Lanka (South Asia) and Uganda (East Africa). All these countries are the only ones in their respective region to set the minimum legal age at 21.
Until 2019, the situation was less clear within the United States, where individual states and even cities had raised the minimum purchase age to 21 years of age, while others have maintained it at 18 or 19 years old.
Some of the places where the legal age was set at 21 in the US include New York City (but not the entirety of the state of New York), Boston (but not the entirety of the state of Massachusetts) and Hawaii. In recent years, under the influence of Tobacco21 campaign, increasingly more states had lifted the smoking age to 21.
In California, where Los Angeles and San Francisco are located, an 18-year-old were allowed to smoke but will need to get someone aged above 21 to buy his or her cigarettes.
However, in 2019, federal legislation lifted the smoking age to 21 across the whole country.
Countries where the legal smoking age is 18
Many countries in the world have the minimum purchase age set at 18. However, the age limit for most does not cover the use and possession of tobacco products. Among the many such countries are Australia, China, India, Russia, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Some notable exceptions include Germany, where the limit applies across the board (as in Singapore), and the United Kingdom, where the minimum smoking age is 16. In Ukraine, it is legal for people to smoke at age 14, although they must be 18 and above to purchase tobacco products.
Outliers
Iraq, Palestine and Egypt are among the countries with the lowest stipulated age limit - 14.
In three countries - Antigua and Babuda, Belize (both in the Americas) and Gambia (Africa) - there is no age limit at all.
All alone at the other end of the spectrum is Bhutan, where smoking is illegal regardless of how old you are.