COMMENTARY: Nicotine bans are tired ‘nanny state’ politics

by Peter Brennan, CommonWealth Beacon
July 30, 2025

MASSACHUSETTS LAWMAKERS are again trying to take away your civil liberties – but a growing number of cities and towns are saying “no.”

In an era where transparency, government accountability and personal freedoms are in peril every day, it is rather stunning that state legislators want to impose bans on tobacco and nicotine products that will forever prohibit anyone born after January 1, 2006, from being able to purchase legal adult products.

The more people learn about the deceptively named Nicotine Free Generation law, the less they like it. Most recently, Bellingham town meeting voters rejected NFG, while in Manchester-By-The-Sea, town meeting voters decided to rescind an NFG bylaw quietly implemented by the appointed board of health. Similar NFG bylaws have been rejected in Worcester, Peabody, Milton and Westfield.

The fact is, voters are tired of nanny state policies and lawmakers legislating their version of morality. Supporting programs to curb smoking and youth tobacco use is good public policy, but NFG will accomplish neither. Instead, it will only eliminate adult rights, harm small businesses, strip away millions in tax dollars from Massachusetts, support criminals and push sales to other states and unregulated markets.

It is ironic that some lawmakers want to pass this first-in-the-nation policy that strips away adult rights, when historically the state has been on the forefront of protecting rights and liberties. Massachusetts is the birthplace of democracy and has led the nation in expanding freedoms for the LGBTQ and immigrant communities.

Massachusetts lawmakers have legalized cannabis and sports gambling, expanded the availability of alcohol licenses, funded free hypodermic needle programs and are constantly pursuing other “harm reduction” policies for hard drugs. Yet on tobacco and nicotine, the state is moving in the opposite direction ignoring proven harm reduction strategies to improve public health and imposing bans – despite clear data that prohibition does not work – especially for adults.

The truth is, NFG is about government overreach and control. The federal government has set the age for tobacco purchases at 21, just as it is for alcohol. If passed, Massachusetts adults would be free to purchase all the booze they want, bet on sports, buy cannabis cigarettes and edibles but not a nicotine pouch as an alternative to a cigarette or a cigar for a round of golf or a wedding.

Elected officials are not supposed to pick winners and losers. They are supposed to be the stewards of freedom – not gatekeepers of subjective morality. But this is exactly what they are doing by arbitrarily imposing a generation-based ban on tobacco and nicotine – federally-legal and regulated products.

If the state wants to do something positive for youth, it should double down on tobacco education programs instead of the misguided NFG

What’s next? Caffeine? Sugary treats? Soda? Fried foods? Where does it end? Anyone who does not think the Legislature would use the precedent set by banning tobacco and nicotine to target alcohol, cannabis, sports gambling or other products they deem harmful, is dangerously ignoring an inherent threat to civil liberties in Massachusetts.

It’s been proven time and again, most notably with alcohol and marijuana, that it is best to keep legal adult products in regulated, licensed environments. Tobacco is no different. The ban on menthol and flavored tobacco implemented in 2020 did nothing to reduce smoking habits. It merely pushed sales into New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and online, in the process siphoning away hundreds of millions in tax dollars from Massachusetts that could have been used for anti-smoking efforts.

The flavor ban also created a robust and troubling illicit market run by gangs who are cashing in by selling cartons of menthol cigarettes on the street at exorbitant markups. The same will happen with all nicotine and tobacco products if this ban is passed.

Simply put, bans do not work and more communities are realizing that and will continue to as the facts are revealed. NFG is anti-democratic, government hypocrisy at its worst – and many communities have already weighed in against it, seeing through the rhetoric and choosing instead to protect the rights of adults.

Massachusetts is the birthplace of freedom. Many communities take that seriously and are recognizing that what’s on the line with NFG is our very civil liberties.

Allowing this sort of egregious government overstep into our personal freedoms is a slippery slope that must stop now – before it’s too late.

Peter Brennan is executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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