South Hadley, Massachusetts Board of Health Adopts Restrictive Tobacco Policy

On October 15th, the South Hadley Board of Health became the latest Massachusetts municipality to adopt a Nicotine Free Generation (NFG) policy.

In a unanimous vote following a contentious public hearing — where some members of the board of health characterized local retailers as “drug dealers”— the board approved the measure.

Under the new policy, anyone born on or after January 1, 2005, will be permanently prohibited from purchasing tobacco products, even after reaching the legal age to buy tobacco in Massachusetts and in neighboring towns that have not enacted NFG.

NFG is one of the more aggressive regulatory models being advanced in recent years. It sets an arbitrary cutoff birth date and bars entire age cohorts of legal adults from ever purchasing tobacco, despite their ability to do so elsewhere. The policy originated in Brookline, Massachusetts in 2020, and has since spread to other municipalities across the state. It has also appeared in international debates in the United Kingdom, the Maldives, and New Zealand—where it was adopted and later repealed—and has been introduced, though not enacted, as a legislative proposal in Tennessee, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Hawaii over the past year.

Cigar Rights of America continues to actively engage on this issue nationwide and participates in a working group dedicated to opposing NFG proposals.

Click here to read more about the South Hadley vote.