If you’re under 21 and live in Canada, you soon may not be able to buy cigarettes.
Our neighbors to the north want to aggressively cut down on the smoking rate
If you’re under 21 and live in Canada, you soon may not be able to buy cigarettes, the National Post reports.
Currently, the legal age to buy cigarettes is 18 or 19 (it varies from province to province), but in a policy paper “quietly” making the rounds at the federal level, the Canadian federal government is reportedly considering raising it to 21 in an attempt to dramatically decrease the smoking rates.
Right now, according to the Post, around 13 percent of Canadians smoke, but the government would like to see that number go down to less than 5 percent by 2035.
To that end, the government is also considering outlawing smoking in condos or apartment buildings and on college campuses as well as banning it in public parks.
While some health experts applaud the Canadian government’s attempt to aggressively combat smoking, one’s not convinced that this is the way to do it.
“I would have liked to see that five-per-cent goal backed up with some indication that the government actually had a plan to achieve it, and was willing to be held accountable for achieving milestones along the way,” Neil Collishaw, research director of nonprofit organization Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, told the National Post.
Collishaw said that he’d rather see more substantive regulations and he questioned the efficiency of banning people from smoking in their own homes.
The paper also tentatively considers whether to encourage smokers to switch to vaping or e-cigarettes.
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