The First State Tobacco Flavor Ban: High School Tobacco Control Needs in a Changing Landscape.

Background: Despite recent tobacco control efforts, adolescent vaping remains an epidemic in the United States. The purpose of our study was to understand high school student vaping behaviors using the perceptions of Massachusetts school personnel during the critical window from when the Massachusetts statewide flavor ban legislation was passed in November 2019 through the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: High school personnel throughout Massachusetts were invited to complete a cross-sectional survey.

Youth tobacco use before and after flavoured tobacco sales restrictions in Oakland, California and San Francisco, California.

The tobacco industry has used recent findings from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System Survey (YRBSS) to claim that a sales restriction on flavoured tobacco products might increase youth combustible cigarette use. In this special communication, we examined YRBSS data and reached the opposite conclusion. We observed the patterns in youth cigarette smoking in Oakland, California following its 2017 convenience store flavoured tobacco sales restriction.

Retail impact of raising tobacco sales age to 21 years.

The majority of tobacco use emerges in individuals before they reach 21 years of age, and many adult distributors of tobacco to youths are young adults aged between 18 and 20 years. Raising the tobacco sales minimum age to 21 years across the United States would decrease tobacco retailer and industry sales by approximately 2% but could contribute to a substantial reduction in the prevalence of youths' tobacco use and dependency by limiting access.