Those Pushing A Higher Vaping Age In Kansas Worry Big Tobacco Will Water Down Rules

Cigarettes are so yesterday.

Or yesteryear.

That’s why that old-fashioned, combustible path to a nicotine buzz wasn’t the top concern for a small group of high schoolers in Sabetha — a 2,500-person town about an hour north of Topeka near the Nebraska border — when they got city council to hike the minimum age for buying tobacco products to 21.

“I don’t really know anyone that smokes cigarettes around here because they’re really gross,” Sabetha High senior Kinsey Menold said. “Then, like, Juuls came in.”

The slender, chic vaping devices took off among teens in recent years. Notoriously easy to hide from parents and teachers, Menold says her classmates took hits of nicotine in the hallways, in the bathrooms — sometimes even in class.

“It was like our new thing instead of cigarettes,” she said. “Our new challenge, for our generation.”

Statewide, more than two dozen cities and counties have raised the age for buying tobacco and vaping products by three years, part of a national “Tobacco 21” movement that includes more than 500 city and county ordinances.