JUNEAU — Four months after Anchorage raised the age limit for tobacco to 21, President Donald Trump has signed a new federal law that will require the rest of the state — and country — to follow suit in 2020.
On Friday, Trump signed a $1.4 billion spending bill that will avert a government shutdown while providing funding for the Mexican border wall. Among the bill’s provisions is one that allows the Food and Drug Administration to set an age-21 limit for tobacco and e-cigarettes.
Alaska law currently allows anyone 19 and older to buy tobacco, and unless the Alaska Legislature sets a tougher standard this year, the new federal limit will take precedent when it becomes effective in late 2020. The exact effective date isn’t certain.
“It’s probably roughly nine months before it goes into place,” said Cheley Grigsby, manager of the Alaska Tobacco Prevention and Control Program in the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.
“They have to go through a process,” said Patricia Patterson, owner of Lucky Raven tobacco in Kenai, who pointed out that there will be a comment period for the public to chime in.
“There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done," she said of the FDA process.
Before the FDA finishes its work, Grigsby said the state will deliver a “public awareness campaign,” including public messages, education for tobacco retailers and a review of state law to see if anything needs to change.
Emily Nenon, government relations director for the American Cancer Society in Alaska, said some changes probably are needed, such as adjusting the rules for operations that test whether stores are following the limit.
“For us, it’s not a big issue,” said Walter Pickett, general manager of the Alaska Commercial Co., rural Alaska’s largest retailer.
“Actually, it’s a bit easier,” he said, since stores now will keep track of one age limit for alcohol and tobacco alike, instead of two separate limits. “That actually is a benefit.”
In the months ahead, his stores will reprogram their registers and get new pull-off reminder calendars to help sales clerks determine who can legally buy tobacco.
In Kenai, Patterson said she personally has no issue with the higher age, but “I think we should be very careful when we start taking legal rights away from adults.”
From a business standpoint, she said, “I think it’s going to a hurt a bit."
A Costco spokeswoman said the company had no comment on the change at this time. The corporate offices of Fred Meyer were closed on Tuesday, Christmas Eve, according to a phone message.
Alaska has the 11th-highest smoking rate in the nation (tied with North Dakota), according to survey results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with 19.1% of adults saying they smoke. Smoking rates among Alaska Natives are double Alaska’s average, figures show. Alaska has a high number of youth smokers: 10.9% of high school students here say they smoke cigarettes, above the national average.
Nenon said those figures are down significantly since the state intensified its anti-smoking campaign in the late 1990s.
Raising the age limit to 21 has long been supported by anti-smoking advocates, and 20 other states have imposed such a limit. Sitka and Anchorage have already done so, and there was no public testimony against Anchorage’s move, which was approved 11-0.
At a state level, Nenon remembers when former Anchorage state Rep. Harry Crawford proposed legislation that would have raised the age limit to 21. As she recalled, he was told that there was no evidence to support such a move.
"I remember him saying, ‘Well, how are we going to get the evidence unless we try it?’” she said.