The legal age for buying tobacco, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos will rise to 21, from 18, under a bill adopted by the City Council and which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said he would sign. The new minimum age will take effect six months after signing.

The proposal provoked some protest among people who pointed out that New Yorkers under 21 can drive, vote and fight in wars, and should be considered mature enough to decide whether to buy cigarettes. But the Bloomberg administration s argument that raising the age to buy cigarettes would discourage people from becoming addicted in the first place won the day.

This is literally legislation that will save lives, Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, said shortly before the bill passed 35 to 10.

In pushing the bill, city officials said that the earlier people began smoking, the more likely they were to become addicted. And they pointed out that while the youth smoking rate in the city has declined by more than half since the beginning of the mayor s administration, to 8.5 percent in 2007 from 17.6 percent in 2001, it has recently stalled.

Besides raising the age to buy cigarettes, the Council also approved various other antismoking measures, such as increased penalties for retailers who evade tobacco taxes, a prohibition on discounts for tobacco products, and a minimum price of $10.50 a pack for cigarettes and little cigars.

The new law is a capstone to more than a decade of efforts by Mr. Bloomberg, like banning smoking in most public places, that have given the city some of the toughest antismoking policies in the world.

In one concession to the cigarette industry, the administration dropped a proposal that would force retailers to keep cigarettes out of sight. City officials said they were doing it because they had not resolved how to deal with the new phenomenon of electronic cigarettes, but others worried that if the tobacco industry lodged a First Amendment challenge to the so called display ban, it could have derailed the entire package.

The smoking age is 18 in most of the country, but some states have made it 19. Some counties have also adopted 19, including Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island. Needham, Mass., a suburb of Boston, raised the smoking age to 21 in 2005.

James Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, warned on Wednesday that thousands of retail jobs could be lost because the law would reduce traffic not just for tobacco, but also on incidental purchases like coffee or lottery tickets. He predicted that the law would do little to curb smoking, as it does not outlaw the possession of cigarettes by under age smokers, only their purchase.

Just before the vote, Nicole Spencer, 16, was in Union Square in Manhattan with a cigarette wedged between her fingers.

I don t think that s going to work, Nicole said when she heard about the plan to raise the age.

She said she began smoking when she was about 13, and had no trouble getting cigarettes. I buy them off people or I bum them off people, she said.

She said that probably half of her friends at her high school smoked.

Nicole said she thought 18 was a reasonable legal age, echoing Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, who said he voted no because it was not right for the city to ask young people to make life or death decisions as police officers and firefighters yet to have no ability to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Bbc news – e-cigarettes ‘as effective’ as nicotine patches

Buy cigarettes online parliament 100s

After six months, however, the 57% of e cigarette users had halved the number of cigarettes smoked each day compared with 41% in those using patches.

‘Increasing popularity’

Prof Chris Bullen, from the University of Auckland, said “While our results don’t show any clear cut differences between e cigarettes and patches in terms of ‘quit success’ after six months, it certainly seems that e cigarettes were more effective in helping smokers who didn’t quit to cut down.

“It’s also interesting that the people who took part in our study seemed to be much more enthusiastic about e cigarettes than patches.

“Given the increasing popularity of these devices in many countries, and the accompanying regulatory uncertainty and inconsistency, larger, longer term trials are urgently needed to establish whether these devices might be able to fulfil their potential as effective and popular smoking cessation aids.”

Regulations around the world are catching up with the surge in the popularity of e cigarettes. The EU and the UK are both working towards regulating e cigarettes in the same way as medicines.

The products also divide opinion with some arguing they normalise smoking and others saying they may help people to give up.

Prof Peter Hajek, the director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, described the study as “pioneering”.

“The key message is that in the context of minimum support, e cigarettes are at least as effective as nicotine patches.

“E cigarettes are also more attractive than patches to many smokers, and can be accessed in most countries without the restrictions around medicines that apply to nicotine replacement therapy or the costly involvement of health professionals.

“These advantages suggest that e cigarettes have the potential to increase rates of smoking cessation and reduce costs to quitters and to health services.”

However, he did call for longer term studies into the consequences of using the devices.

You can hear more from Prof Chris Bullen on Discovery on the BBC World Service.