California’s Tobacco 21 Minimum Sales Age Law and Adolescents’ Tobacco and Nicotine Use: Differentia
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Grube
JW, Lipperman-Kreda S, García-Ramírez G, et al.
California’s Tobacco 21
Minimum Sales Age Law and Adolescents’ Tobacco and Nicotine Use: Differential
Associations among Racial and Ethnic Groups.
Tobacco Control Published Online First: 30 June 2021. doi:
10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2020-056219
Objective.
A California, USA, law raised the minimum tobacco sales age to 21 (T21) on 9
June 2016. We investigated whether T21 was associated with reductions
adolescents’ use of tobacco cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and electronic
cigarettes and whether these associations differed across racial and ethnic
groups.
Methods. Secondary
analyses of data from 2 956 054 7th, 9th and 11th grade students who
participated in the California Healthy Kids Survey from 2010–11 to 2017–2018.
Results.
Multilevel mixed effects logistic regression analyses showed that T21 was
associated with reduced prevalence of lifetime smokeless tobacco and
e-cigarette use and past month smokeless tobacco use in the overall student population.
T21 was associated with increases in prevalence of past month e-cigarette use.
Moderation analyses indicated differences by racial and ethnic groups. Notably,
T21 was associated with reductions in lifetime and past 30-day use of all
tobacco and nicotine products among Latinx youth. The findings were more mixed
for other racial and ethnic groups. Slopes analyses indicated that T21 was
associated with accelerated downward trends for 30-day cigarette and smokeless
use; moderated trends for lifetime cigarette smoking such that downward slopes
became less steep; and reversed downward trends for e-cigarette use. Changes in
slopes varied across racial and ethnic groups.
Conclusions.
Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the complex associations
that T21 and other tobacco control policies have with the use of different
tobacco and nicotine products among racial and ethnic groups. Future research
should investigate mechanisms underlying these differences to inform tobacco
control efforts.
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