At the center of all bills targeting vapor products with strict regulations (in some cases prohibition) is a strong desire to protect young people (no matter what we might believe about states’ financial motivations). At the same time, lawmakers have extra motivation to raise their state’s minimum legal sales age to 21 due to federal funds for substance use and mental health services being withheld if they fail to do so. That being the case, it makes more sense for Missouri to update their code with a “clean” tobacco-21 bill, which has more support than legislation sandbagged with extreme new laws like a flavor ban or extra taxes. Moreover, there is little to no evidence that banning flavored smoke-free products will discourage young people from vaping, let alone support continuing declines in youth smoking. In fact, recent research is showing the opposite.

Please note that CASAA does not support raising the minimum legal sales age for smoke-free tobacco products any higher than 18. Disenfranchising young-adults who smoke is a brute-force approach that will likely leave many people underserved and more likely to continue smoking. States would do better by embracing a harm reduction strategy for reducing the early death and disease attributed to smoking by allowing safer, smoke-free products to compete with incumbent combustibles. Please read CASAA’s updated position statement on Tobacco 21 for more details.