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Minimum Tobacco Buying Age Now 21 Nationwide

Tobacco from Nash County about to be delivered to market in October. PAUL GARBER/WFDD

A new law sets the nationwide minimum age to buy tobacco products at 21. 

The law applies to cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes, and vaping devices that heat a liquid containing nicotine. Selling them to people under 21 is now illegal across the country.

The change took effect immediately after President Donald Trump signed a recent spending bill that included the age increase. 

About a third of states already had restricted tobacco sales to those 21 and older. North Carolina's minimum age had been 18. The state is the nation's largest tobacco producer.

The move caught some retailers off guard. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it will provide additional details as they become available.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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