NYC Tobacco Law: Mayor Bloomberg Signs Legislation Raising Minimum Sale Age to 21

A new NYC tobacco law has been signed.New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed legislation on Tuesday that raises the tobacco-purchasing law to 21, up from 18. The new law will officially go into effect in six months.

The "Tobacco 21" bill also applies to electronic cigarettes. The law will go into effect in mid-May, five months after Bloomberg is out of office. In addition to this, Bloomberg signed a second tobacco bill called Sensible Tobacco Enforcement, which stops discounts on tobacco products and gets tougher on vendors who try to evade taxes. According to the New York State Department of Health, the state lost $500 million in 2009 due to cigarette tax evasion.

"By increasing the smoking age to 21, we will help prevent another generation from the ill health and shorter life expectancy that comes with smoking," Bloomberg said about the legislation when it was introduced in October, CNN reports.

"People always try to put things like selling cigarettes in the context of jobs and whether or not it helps or hurts stores," Bloomberg said on Tuesday according to the Wall Street Journal . "I think that is just so outrageously misplaced. This is an issue of whether we're going to kill people. This century a billion people will die from smoking around the world. And we don't want any of the people to die to be New Yorkers."

With this legislation, New York City is officially the largest city to have the smoking age limit as high as 21. However it isn't the only one. The sale age was raised to 21 in Needham, Massachusetts as well in 2005.

Some other states, including New Jersey, have raised the tobacco sale age to 19. According to Health Commissioner Thomas A. Farley, raising the minimum sale age "will protect teens and may prevent many people from ever starting to smoke."

Bloomberg opposed raising the minimum age is 2006 because he thought it wouldn't be effective in curbing smoking. Instead, he thought raising the taxes on cigarettes would be the way to go.

The NYC tobacco law is just the latest act in Mayor Bloomberg's mission to make New York City healthier. In September, he got the Board of Health to vote on banning sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from restaurants and other places. The ban was later thrown out by a New York State Supreme Court judge.