Lawmakers in Massachusetts are considering a statewide ban on all nicotine products for residents born after a certain date in an effort to prevent future generations from getting hooked on tobacco products. Currently, residents of Massachusetts have to be 21 to buy nicotine and tobacco products.

The new legislation, the “Nicotine-Free Generation” bill, would dictate that anyone born after January 1, 2006, would be unable to buy such products. Anyone born before that year would still be able to do so.

The executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, Laurent Huber, said the bill “is a landmark moment in Massachusetts’ impressive history of being deeply committed to public health.” Mr. Huber added that the bill is not a “ban on smoking” but rather “targets the perpetrator of the tobacco epidemic — the tobacco industry — not their victims.”

A group opposed to the bill, Citizens for Adult Choice, says on its website that the idea is “the next step in an authoritarian movement that seeks to dictate many life choices of adults.”

“If NFG zealots are successful, there is nothing stopping them from justifying a public health ban on alcohol, marijuana, sugary beverages, fast food, placing a wager, or any other product or behavior that doesn’t meet their standards for healthy and righteous living,” the group warns. 

In 2019, Massachusetts banned the sale of all flavored tobacco products. The state’s multi-agency illegal tobacco task force reported in March 2025 that smuggling of flavored tobacco products into the state has surged since then. The task force found that in 2022, there were 71,746 illegal vape seizures, and in 2024, the number jumped to 308,100. However, it found that during the same time period, the number of illegal cigarette packs fell to 5,029 from 18,483.

Since the ban on flavored tobacco products was implemented, more than a dozen towns in Massachusetts have passed so-called generational bans on tobacco products. In January, the Newton city council voted to ban the sale of tobacco to people born after March 1, 2004.

Brookline was the first community in the state to attempt such a ban, in 2020. In March 2024, the state’s highest court, the Massachusetts supreme judicial court, upheld the ban, paving the way for more towns to implement their own versions.

The court found that cities and towns have “a lengthy history of regulating tobacco products to curb the well-known, adverse health effects of tobacco use.”

In 2023, lawmakers in California introduced a bill that would have banned the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products to anyone born after January 1, 2007, but the measure failed to gain ground and died. 

Such bans have been proposed internationally. In April 2024, Britain’s House of Commons passed a bill that would ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born in 2009 or later.