Easthampton just became the 25th Massachusetts municipality to adopt a "nicotine-free generation" policy. Anyone born after January 1, 2006, will never be old enough to legally buy nicotine products there. The ban doesn't just apply to cigarettes. It also applies to noncombustible nicotine products that can help smokers reduce their risk.
Decades of anti-smoking campaigns have dramatically reduced cigarette use, especially among young people. That's great news. But somehow along the way nicotine itself became associated with the worst harms of smoking, even though the chemical is not responsible for the cancers, the lung disease, or most of the cardiovascular disease caused by combustible tobacco. Worse, the pendulum has swung so far in the maximalist anti-nicotine direction that we risk criminalizing some of the most effective smoking-cessation alternatives.
