A new bill introduced in Hawaii's State House proposes banning cigarette sales to anyone under 100 years old by 2024.
A new bill introduced in Hawaii's State House proposes banning cigarette sales to anyone under 100 years old by 2024.
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It calls for a progressive ban on the sale of cigarettes by raising the minimum age for buying them by 10 every year, starting with 30 years of age in 2020.
The restrictions would not apply to cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, snuff, snus, or e-cigarettes.
"The legislature finds that the cigarette is considered the deadliest artefact in human history," the bill said.
"The cigarette is an unreasonably dangerous and defective product, killing half of its long-term users."
The bill also highlight's the state's "addiction to cigarettes in the form of the large sums of money that the State receives from state cigarette sales taxes."
It claimed that tax revenues recently reached more than $100,000,000 (€88,218,500) per year.
This is why the legislature suggests a more gradual ban "focused initially on younger age groups most likely to benefit from a ban on cigarette sales", to give the state time to find alternative sources of revenue.
Although, it admits: "It would be ideal and would save more lives to ban the sale of cigarettes to all ages immediately."
Hawaii has some of the most restrictive laws on cigarettes in the USA — it was the first state to raise the age for buying them cigarettes to 21.