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The United States Congress raised the minimum age to buy tobacco and electronic cigarettes in the country on Thursday from 18 to 21 , after registering a sharp increase in vaping among young people.

The decision, adopted by the Senate as an amendment to a budget law , will take effect next year. Its application will assimilate tobacco and electronic cigarettes to alcohol, a substance whose purchase is banned to those under 21. Nineteen of the 50 states in the country had already imposed that same minimum age to buy tobacco and electronic cigarettes.

The new federal law extends that measure to the entire country, and the change will be effective in about nine months , the time it takes to publish enforcement decrees that require sanctions against stores that violate the rule.

That decision was taken to fight the great popularity of electronic cigarettes among high school students, at a time when less and less young people consume alcohol and traditional cigarettes.

According to the annual survey conducted by the government in 2019, 27.5% of students in the last year of high school say they have vaped in the last month, compared to 11.3% who claimed to have done so in the 2016 survey.

But, compared to traditional cigarettes, the proportion of those students who smoked in the last month fell to 5.7%, almost half that of 2016.

Another reference survey published on Wednesday, Monitoring the Future , shows that 52% of the students in the same course said they had drunk in the last year, compared to 73% in 2000.

One step back

The measure passed Thursday is far from what the US administration considered in September: a total ban on flavored electronic cigarettes, much appreciated by young people.

That proposal came after the consumption of electronic cigarettes caused a health crisis last summer, when young consumers, often in their twenties, began to have pulmonary complications.

Extensive research revealed that the cause was an ingredient that is often added to marijuana refills sold on the black market: vitamin E acetate . So far, 2,409 people got sick, of which 52 died.

President Donald Trump, who had shown himself in favor of banning flavored electronic cigarettes, backed down after his advisors apparently convinced him that this measure would take votes from him in the November 2020 elections.

Meanwhile, the leader of electronic cigarettes, the American Juul , associated with the tobacco giant Altria , stopped selling its fruit-flavored products in the United States and retained only those that taste like tobacco and menthol. Trump and the companies in the sector finally accepted the rise of the minimum age to 21 years. The measure raised, however, outrage among the anti-smoking and anti-smoking militants .

"Juul and Altria embraced the 21-year-old issue for their own infamous reasons, to disguise their battle against the ban on flavored electronic cigarettes," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids organization, opposed to tobacco companies .

The imposition of a legal minimum age has not prevented generations of teenagers from acquiring alcohol or cigarettes, recalls Rob Crane , president of the Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation, because, according to him, controls and sanctions against businesses were always insufficient.

"Concern" in Canada

In Canada, meanwhile, the government announced on Thursday measures to ban advertising on vaping products "in all places where it can be seen or heard by young people." "The rapid progression of vaping among young people is worrisome," the Ministry of Health explained in a statement.

The proposed rules tend to prohibit the advertising of vaping products primarily in public places or online .

The promotion of these articles would only be "allowed in specialized shops, businesses and websites to which only adults have access."

Patty Hajdu , Canadian Health Minister, also announced "the mandatory printing of warnings on the packaging of vaping products."

As in the United States, in Canada vaping products have been on sale since 2006.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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