NEW YORK -- A move to raise the smoking age from 18 to 21 could have the support of the Bloomberg administration, the city's health commissioner said Thursday.
The chair of the City Council's health committee, Joel Rivera, recently introduced a bill that would make it illegal for anyone younger than 21 to buy cigarettes.
Commissioner Thomas Frieden, who helped push for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's citywide smoking ban in bars and restaurants, said he was open to anything that helps curb the habit.
"It's certainly something that should be looked at,'' Frieden said. "We need to think about ways that we can further reduce smoking.''
New York state lawmakers tried to raise the statewide smoking age to 19 last year, but the legislation didn't go anywhere. Some studies show there has been little effect on youth smoking in states that have raised the age to 19, including Alabama and Alaska.
New York City already boasts dramatically lower rates of teen smokers than the national average. Eleven percent of city high school students smoke, compared with 23 percent nationwide, according to the city health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bloomberg, a former smoker who is notoriously tough on tobacco, partly credits the higher cigarette taxes here, which have raised the cost of a pack to as much as $8.
He and Frieden spoke to reporters at an event where they announced the results of a citywide sting to crack down on stores selling cigarettes to minors. More than 80 percent of the 15,000 businesses inspected complied with the law and refused sales to underage buyers.
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