POLITICS

Seacoast teens push to raise tobacco age to 21

Students make their case in testimony to House committee

Paul Steinhauser news@seacoastonline.com
State Sen. David Watters of Dover testifies Thursday in favor of a bill to raise the age in New Hampshire to buy tobacco products to 21, at a state Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing at the Statehouse in Concord. Behind him are Seacoast teens, from left. Elsa Rogers, Caitlan Temple and Hannah Martuscello, who also testified in support of the bill. [Paul Steinhauser/Seacoastonline]

CONCORD – Hannah Martuscello, Caitlan Temple and Elsa Rogers say it’s far too easy for minors to get access to cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The three Seacoast teenagers took that message to the Statehouse on Thursday, as they testified at a hearing in favor of a bill that would raise the legal age to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products to 21 in New Hampshire.

“The majority of younger teens in high school who do get cigarettes from older kids get them from the 18-year-olds that are seniors that can buy tobacco products for them,” Martuscello explained in an interview with Seacoastonline minutes before she testified.

“By eliminating that age group of kids in high school that can actually legally purchase them, you really eliminate a lot of the younger kids who can’t purchase them,” added Martuscello, who last year was honored in Washington, D.C. as she was named the East Region Youth Advocate of the Year by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Temple said she sees “it all the time. Even people posting on social media ‘hey, somebody get me cigarettes. I’ll give you money.’ And it’s as easy as that.”

And Rogers, who’s in eighth grade, said even in middle school cigarettes are “accessible if you are trying.”

The three students are members of Dover Youth to Youth, a youth empowerment program dedicated to substance abuse prevention. The group has been working with Democratic state Sen. David Watters of Dover to draw up the legislation.

On Monday they joined Watters for an event at the McConnell Center in Dover to highlight the bill.

And on Thursday Watters and the three students testified in front of the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, the first stop for the new legislation, officially known as SB 545.

Watters said it comes down to public health and saving the lives of young people.

“We’re talking about saving thousands of lives over a lifetime. If people don’t start smoking by the age of 21, it’s very unlikely they will ever start,” Watters said.

He added that tobacco remains the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disease in New Hampshire, which he said “has some of the highest under-21 smoking rates in the nation.”

And he agreed with Martuscello, Temple and Rogers that raising the age from 18 to 21 would “help students in middle school and high school have less access to people who might give them or sell them tobacco products.”

Watters testified that “the time has really come” for New Hampshire to act, citing the state’s neighbors.

Last summer lawmakers in Maine overrode Gov. Paul LePage’s veto to raise the tobacco purchase age to 21. Maine will join California, Oregon, Hawaii and New Jersey in raising the age to 21.

And Watters highlighted that 120 communities in Massachusetts, including Boston, have raised the tobacco purchase age to 21. A bill that would raise the age across the state is currently advancing through the Massachusetts Legislature.

The New Hampshire bill, which takes the existing state statute and raises the age from 18 to 21, also covers electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes or e-vaporizers.

“E-cigarettes too are a really big thing,” Martuscello said. “Those are easily accessible now because some teachers don’t even know that kids are using them because they don’t produce any major smoke like a regular cigarette would. And a lot of times they’ll just look like flash drives.”

The bill is co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, who also chairs the Health and Human Services Committee.

“I always thought that the smoking age for 18-year-olds should be raised to 21,” the Republican lawmaker from Wolfeboro said.

While the measure enjoys bipartisan support, Bradley predicted that there will be opposition to the bill.

Some of that opposition may come from state Sen. Andy Sanborn, the conservative lawmaker from Bedford who’s running for the open congressional seat in New Hampshire’s 1st District.

Sanborn said that the legislation “doesn’t seem like the New Hampshire ‘Live Free or Die’ philosophy.”

“I don’t smoke. I have never smoked. I don’t think anyone should smoke,” Sanborn stressed.

But he added that “as much as I personally don’t like smoking, it’s a freedom issue. If people personally feel that they want to smoke, they have that God-given right to do so.”

In response, Watters argued that “we regulate those things which are proven harmful. We regulate alcohol. We regulate certain ages for driving. We already regulate smoking because we realize its intended use will cause addiction and cancer death.”

Sanborn also pointed out that “there’s still noting to preclude anyone from going online and buying them and having them then shipped to their house, so why ban the ability to buy them at retail in a store in New Hampshire but still allow people to go online and buy them online and have them shipped in.”

Online sales of tobacco and other products are regulated at the federal level.

Sanborn also argued that “just the loss of cigarette tax revenue I think would be about $8 million a year. Then you add on to the loss of revenue from all those convenient stores that sell cigarettes and all the ancillary things that they would sell when selling cigarettes and there’s a huge financial pit to the New Hampshire economy.”

But Watters testified in front of the committee that the revenue lost would pale in comparison “to the 1,900 annual deaths, and the $729 million dollars being spent in New Hampshire annually to health costs due to tobacco.”

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