In November 2020, Brookline, MA passed the nation’s first “Tobacco-Free Generation” policy, prohibiting all tobacco and e-cigarette sales to anyone born after January 1, 2000, and the policy has now been approved by the Massachusetts Attorney General.

A similar concept was also proposed in Hawaii in 2019, gradually raising the minimum legal sales age from 21 to 100. New Zealand, which has an endgame goal of a smokefree nation by 2025, recently proposed gradually increasing the legal age of sale for tobacco so that no sales would be allowed to anyone born after 2004.

Along with tobacco sales bans like those passed in Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, CA, and calls to ends the sale of all combustible tobacco, tobacco-free generation policies are another “endgame” strategy. Instead of prohibiting all sales outright, it exempts adults who currently smoke or use tobacco.

As described in a tobacco endgame qualitative review and synthesis, beyond tobacco control strategies that are based on the continued presence and widespread availability of tobacco products in the consumer market, “endgame” strategies move towards a tobacco-free future wherein the availability of commercial tobacco products is heavily restricted and their use is phased out. ^[1] Learn more in our podcast episode on the commercial tobacco endgame.