PEABODY, MA — Peabody City Councilors Anne Manning-Martin and David Gamache spoke out against a proposed “generational” smoking ban in the city during Thursday’s Board of Health meeting.
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The proposal would have Peabody follow Brookline’s first-in-the-nation smoking restriction that bans those born after a certain date from ever being able to legally purchase nicotine products in the city. Under the Peabody proposal, those born on or after Jan. 1, 2004 would be subject to the lifetime ban.
The idea of the ordinance is that, as the population ages, fewer and fewer residents would be able to legally purchase the products until eventually they become obsolete.
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Brookline’s ban was upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with several other Massachusetts cities and towns then passing or considering similar ordinances.
But Manning-Martin and Gamache spoke at Thursday’s Board of Health meeting against the measure — arguing that it could harm small businesses, create an unnecessary regulation and restrict rights for some residents based solely on their age.
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“What really concerns me is that taking an action like this seems to create another class of citizens based on the time they were born,” Manning-Martin said. “They won’t have the same opportunities to make individual decisions about their health even as unhealthy as this decision may be.”
Manning-Martin also questioned the timing of the ban considering that, according to data she provided, smoking rates for adolescents have dropped from 9.8 percent of the age group in 1991 to less than 1 percent in 2021.
She also expressed concerns that banning the purchase would create a “black market” of tobacco sales in the city.
Gamache’s issues were more business-related in that they had the potential to harm small businesses — including convenience stores and gas station stores — during a difficult economic time while making Peabody an outlier community restricting the sales by age when they might still be allowed in most other cities and towns across the North Shore.
“I can’t understand why we would enter into this and allow for the city to become more or less an island in not selling to those people who were born after 2004,” he said. “My understanding is that, yeah, it’s something that is necessary but I don’t think that this is the time or the place to do it.
“Small businesses are hurting. This is part of their income and their livelihood. As you and I both know, you go into a store and most of the sales are cigarettes and lottery.”
Gamache added that while the harmful health effects of alcohol use are also well-established, that is not a substance that the city is proposing to ban for those born after a certain date.
Health Director Sharon Cameron said the language of the ordinance was modeled after the Brookline law that passed SJC review. While she said she did not have information on how other bans have affected small business revenue, she did say that those in Winchester told her they found it beneficial to have one date to determine whether a customer could purchase tobacco products rather than the ever-changing date 21 years prior to the current one.
Board of Health member Julia Fleet noted that the proposed ordinance would prohibit the sale of tobacco to those born after 2003, but not deny the use of those products within city limits.
“We’re not outlawing it,” she said. “This isn’t a prohibition of the use of tobacco. It’s just a statement that Peabody and the Board of Public Health recognize that smoking continues to be detrimental to health and a leading cause of cancer and death from cancer.”
While the Board of Health appeared split on the issue, with member Anthony Carli also expressing concerns about the ordinance, it did vote in favor of holding a public hearing to listen to more public input.
Chair Thomas Durkin advised that the hearing be held in a much bigger room given the interest that the proposal has generated in emails and news coverage leading up to Thursday’s meeting.
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at [email protected]. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)
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