Overview:
The Montague Board of Health held off on voting on the adoption of a nicotine-free generation policy, which aims to prevent nicotine addiction among young people by prohibiting the sale of nicotine products to people born after a certain date. Montague has already implemented some provisions to limit nicotine access to young people, but the Board of Health wants more public participation in the decision-making process before taking a vote.
MONTAGUE — The Board of Health learned about the nicotine-free generation initiative at its Wednesday meeting, but opted to hold off on taking a stance on whether to support a policy, citing the desire for more public participation in the decision-making process.
The nicotine-free generation initiative aims to mitigate nicotine addiction among young people. To be part of the effort, a municipality adopts a policy that sets a date, and anyone born after that date can never be legally old enough to purchase tobacco or nicotine products. The boards of health in Northampton and Deerfield also recently had discussions about the initiative, and Conway became the first town in Franklin County to adopt it last summer, banning the sale of nicotine to anyone born after May 12, 2004.
The regulation is designed to phase out the sale of nicotine products over time, ensuring that individuals who are currently under the legal age to purchase such products will never be legally permitted to do so in municipalities that adopt the policies.
Montague has already implemented some provisions to limit nicotine access to young people, including a restriction on the sale of tobacco pouches, such as the popular ZYN pouches, to adult-only retailers that was adopted in 2024.
Kenneth Elstein, a member of the Belchertown Board of Health who spearheaded adopting a policy in his town, came to the Montague board to explain what the nicotine-free generation initiative is and to advocate for its adoption.
“The point of this is to try to prevent that from happening for the tens of thousands of people,” he said about people becoming addicted to nicotine and dying young as a result.
Elstein explained that the nicotine-free generation initiative originated in Brookline in 2020, when the city adopted its policy through Town Meeting to ban anyone born after 2000 from buying nicotine products. The city was sued by tobacco retailers, but won in court in 2024, and more towns and cities across the state have since adopted the policy.
Some data on the effectiveness of the policy in Brookline has been released, with “only 3% of Brookline high school students reporting past 30-day tobacco use in 2023, down from 5% in 2015 and 10% in 2013,” according to a report by the Truth Initiative, a public health nonprofit dedicated to preventing youth and young adult nicotine addiction.
Although nicotine-free generation policies are in place in a handful of municipalities, the American Lung Association recently gave a mixed grade for how effective Massachusetts is at tobacco control. State House News Service reported that recommendations for improvement include increasing funding for the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, increasing the tobacco tax by at least $1, and having medications and three types of counseling services for smoking cessation covered by state employee health plans and Medicaid.
While Elstein clarified how setting the date works and how other municipalities like Belchertown went about holding public information sessions or public hearings to get feedback from various stakeholders, the Montague Board of Health was hesitant to take any vote on whether to support a policy without more public input.
“I personally think that that would be very necessary, just to make sure everything is good with the process, because it’s potentially going to be contentious,” Public Health Director Ashley Gough said after Board of Health Chair Melanie Ames Zamojski asked if the board should consider gathering public opinion.
Board Vice Chair Michael Nelson took a stance against the nicotine-free generation proposal. He said he’s happy to follow whatever process of public outreach the board wants to pursue, but that he would vote “no” on adopting a nicotine-free generation policy “right now” if there was a motion to adopt it that night.
Nelson explained he appreciated the sentiment of the policy, and that the town has already adopted policies to curb youth nicotine use. However, he said, “I feel like this has a lot more of an adult target, and I’m a lot less comfortable with the adult target than I am the youth target.” Ames Zamojski agreed with Nelson on this point.
At Ames Zamojski’s suggestion, the board plans to have another discussion of the nicotine-free generation policy at its next meeting. Elstein asked that the board maintain an open mind about the policy, saying it is “really about saving lives, and you will save lives.”
According to the Board of Health website, the next meeting will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 25, at 5 p.m. at Montague Town Hall and via Zoom.
