Should Australia lift the legal smoking age to 21?
Introduction to the media issue
Video clip at right: On January 12, 2021, ABC News televised a segment detailing Tasmanian plans to raise the smoking age to 21 and giving background information on a recent United States decision to lift the smoking and vaping age to 21 across the country.What they said...
'I know for a fact that everybody under the age of 18 gets [tobacco] from family and friends and that is not going to change'
Robert Mallett, CEO of the Tasmanian Small Business Council
'Over a period of two or three years, smoking rates went down dramatically'
The United States Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation, commenting on what happened after the first town in America raised the smoking age to 21
The issue at a glance
On January 11, 2021, it was announced that in March 2021, Independent Tasmanian MLC, Ivan Dean, would bring on the second reading of the Public Health Amendment (Prevention of Sale of Smoking Products to Underage Persons) Bill. If the bill becomes law, Tasmania will become the first Australian state to lift the smoking age to 21.
On January 1, 2021, the legal age in Singapore for the purchase, use, possession, sale, and supply of tobacco products was raised from the previous 20 years to 21 years.
This was the third and last change to the minimum age requirement under the amendments to the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) Act, which were passed in the Singaporean Parliament in November 2017. The minimum legal age was first raised from 18 to 19 years old on January 1, 2019, and from 19 to 20 years old on January 1, 2020.
These developments follow an increasingly successful Tobacco21 campaign across the United States. The first American town to lift the smoking age was Needham, a Boston suburb, which claimed a large drop in smoking among young people as a result. After Needham, cities and states across the United States such as New York, California and Hawaii began to raise the age before in December 2019 it was raised across the entire country.
Pressure is now being placed on Australian governments from lobby groups similar to the United States Tobacco 21. Lifting the smoking age has met with the approval of most health authorities; however, some civil libertarians, and others, see it as an unnecessary infringement of citizens' rights and unlikely to be effective.