BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES: Increasing the minimum sales age for tobacco, including to age 21, is an important strategy to reduce tobacco use and nicotine addiction among youth. Research supports this as an effective measure. Given the significant proportion of tobacco consumers who begin underage, reducing youth tobacco use will have long-term benefits for public health. Age 21 places tobacco beyond secondary school, and sends a social message that tobacco is different. Age 21 also impedes tobacco industry promotion, given that adults 18-20 cannot be sold tobacco.

There is an encouraging global trend of increasing the minimum tobacco age. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control creates an obligation on Parties “to prohibit the sales of tobacco products to persons under the age set by domestic law, national law or eighteen”.
INTERVENTION OR RESPONSE: The intervention is to adopt laws with a minimum sales age of 21 for tobacco products, and which can also be applied to e-cigarettes. Increasing the minimum age to 21 has little or no incremental enforcement or other cost to government.
RESULTS AND IMPACT: There are at least 16 countries with a tobacco sales age of 21: Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mongolia, Palau, Samoa, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United States and Uzbekistan. Botswana has a law awaiting implementation. Some subnational jurisdictions have age 21: Karnataka (state, India), Prince Edward Island (province, Canada), about 30 US states, D.C., and about 540 US municipalities. Japan, Taiwan and Thailand have minimum age 20.
Most tobacco age 21 laws also apply to e-cigarettes.
Regrettably, there are about 20 countries with no minimum age at all for tobacco sales.
CONCLUSIONS: A minimum tobacco sales age of 21 is showing positive global momentum. The measure is feasible, generally popular, effective, and with little or no incremental cost.
More countries can and should be expected to adopt age 21 laws.