|
The bill also comes a day after California's top health
official said electronic cigarettes are threatening to unravel
the state's decades-long effort to reduce tobacco use.
Democratic State Senator Ed Hernandez of West Covina, who chairs
the chamber's health committee, brought the bill in hopes of
keeping more teens from starting smoking.
"We can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines while big
tobacco markets to our kids and gets another generation of young
people hooked on a product that will ultimately kill them,"
Hernandez said in a statement.
Some 21,300 children begin smoking in the state every year,
Kimberly Amazeen of the American Lung Association in California
said in the statement, adding that about 40,000 Californians die
every year from the effects of smoking.
Last Wednesday, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson
proposed legislation that would put purchasing and possessing
tobacco and nicotine-vapor products on equal footing with the
state's minimum age for drinking and using recreational
marijuana.
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in
the United States, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths
annually, or one in every five deaths overall, according to the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most U.S. states set the legal smoking age at 18, while a
handful have set it higher at 19. Some cities and counties,
including New York City and Hawaii County, have already raised
the smoking age to 21.
Altria Group Inc, which owns Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds
Tobacco Company, could not be immediately reached for comment.
On Wednesday, California Department of Public Health Director
Ron Chapman blasted electronic cigarettes as addictive in a
report, as the state legislature debates whether to regulate the
devices under the state's tobacco regulations.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Additional
reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Editing
by Stephen Coates)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
