Back in 2020, Colorado raised the legal age to buy nicotine products statewide 18 to 21. This was in response to the astonishingly high amount of teenage nicotine users in the state of Colorado compared to other states in the U.S. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health, the amount of teenage nicotine users in Colorado 2018 was twice the national average. This raises the question: has this law driven down nicotine use among teens?
It is no secret that vape companies such as Juul and Esco make commercials and products directed at teenagers and younger middle schoolers. It is clear that colorful designs with characters on the packaging and flavors such as “Blue Razz Ice” are not marketed towards adults. Studies show that minors are much more receptive to those types of advertisements, which makes them an easy target audience for vape companies. This is one of the reasons why vaping is so popular among minors compared to other nicotine products.
The decision to raise the age of purchasing nicotine products to 21 in Colorado was made more so to prevent minors from buying vaping products than legal adults aged 18-21. The logic behind this argument is that this would prevent high schoolers from easily being able to obtain vapes from their older friends. However, we can see that statistically this law has not completely killed the problem of underage vaping.
According to the Colorado Healthy Kids survey, the percentage of teenagers that regularly vape in Colorado was 27% before this bill was passed in 2019. At this time, Colorado had the 12th highest high school vaping rate in the country. In 2022, the rate dropped to 17%. Those numbers show a sharp decline, but the raising of the purchasing age is certainly not the only factor in the recent decline of vaping among teens. The most obvious reason for decline from 2019 to 2022 is the Covid pandemic, which transferred many students to online learning and then strict social restrictions when students started going to school again. These strict restrictions may have put a pause on the spread of the vaping epidemic in Colorado, and this is an effect experienced nationwide during the pandemic. However evident the drop is, the reality is that 17% of high school students still use vapes, and under the new law it is still very easy for teenagers to purchase vaping devices.
How are so many teenagers still obtaining vapes with this new law installed? Research from The National Institution of Health shows that 31% of those who own one purchased it online. Online shopping for such products is a major loophole in the legal system with the ability to provide false credentials with no proof of the customer’s identity. 16.3% of teenagers who vape can also obtain vapes through buying them from other people and 15.0% obtain them through giving someone else money to purchase them. The majority of teens, 72.8%, also reported using someone else’s vaping device. None of these methods of purchase are suppressed by the 21 and under purchase law, as teenagers can simply keep purchasing vapes illegally online or through older dealers, or simply keep using other people’s vaping devices.
Nicotine use in Colorado has dropped overall after the introduction of the new law, and whether this is an effect from the pandemic or if the law is truly stopping teenagers from vaping, the recent drop in teenage vape users seems to indicate that the law has produced its intended effect. This can be seen as an improvement for the state due to the benefits to public health and to Colorados overall reputation.
