A “Nicotine Free Generation” Gap

The Boston Globe published its own article that also cited Manchester’s ignored referendum and examined the future of the NFG movement itself.  According to the article, momentum for the measure appears to be slowing.”

Again, this week, we’re focusing the Town Hall Notebook on one story, the adoption of Manchester’s Nicotine Free Generation regulation that, despite the best of goals promises some unintended consequences.  And while this local regulation had been installed in nearly two dozen other communities, it’s Manchester that made its way onto the radar of at least two outlets beyond Cape Ann. 

Let’s get started.

When the Manchester Board of Health voted in October 2024 to adopt the “Nicotine-Free Generation” (NFG) regulation, the measure attracted relatively little public attention.  

That’s no longer the case.

The town has been called out in a national magazine for how the board adopted the regulation.  Separately, the Boston Globe has highlighted challenges with the measure.   Meanwhile, an increasingly visible policy debate on the regulation is unfolding on Beacon Hill as competing proposed bills have been proposed that would either ratify NFG statewide or nullify it.  

Let’s start at the beginning.  The local regulation, in effect since April 1, 2025, prohibits the sale of tobacco and nicotine products to anyone born after 2004.  Unlike the state’s Tobacco 21 law, which sets the legal age to purchase cigarettes, vape products, and chewing tobacco at 21, Manchester’s NFG regulation creates a permanent cutoff.  So, those born before 2004 retain legal access to these products forever.  Those born after are never eligible, even after they turn 21.

Manchester is one of approximately two dozen communities that have adopted the policy, all through local Boards of Health.  

The issue landed in the national spotlight this past month when Reason, a 58-year-old libertarian magazine, published an article examining the spread of NFG policies in Massachusetts.  The piece showed how these local regulations are often presented as grassroots public-health initiatives when, in reality, they are part of a carefully coordinated campaign by outside advocacy groups and state-funded tobacco-control programs.  

Manchester was featured as something of a poster child in the article as the only community where the BOH ignored a subsequent nonbinding resolution passed at 2025 Annual Town Meeting to repeal the regulation.  

“Residents in Manchester-by-the-Sea voted against the regulation, but officials kept it anyway,” said Guy Bentley, who wrote the article.  “It was remarkable.”

What’s also notable is that the referendum, brought by citizen petition, was placed on the Town Meeting Warrant by none other than a sitting Select Board member, Brian Sollosy.  In fact, the first five signatures on Sollosy’s petition were all signed by SB members, and when the warrant article was presented to voters, it was seconded by another sitting SB member, Cathy Bilotta.

“The Board of Health has strayed from their mission of health codes to a much more draconian approach of creating bans that impinge on personal choice,” said Sollosy.

For their part, Manchester BOH Chair Peter Colorusso and Manchester Health Agent Wendy Hansbury said the vote came in 2025, six months after the NFG measure was formalized and it was considered late in the Town Meeting agenda, when 161 people present.  (The measure passed 81-76-4.)

The vote, they said, was not a proper representation of the community.  

Coloruso and Hansbury maintain there was no campaign at play as the board considered the measure.  Instead, it was included as part of a larger, state-required update to the town’s tobacco regulations.  The new rule was considered independently and adopted properly, with a public hearing followed by a vote of the board. 

Records from the hearing show that Sollosy and Bilotta attended as residents (not as official board members) while six advocacy groups were in attendance.  According to the minutes, Bilotta “expressed discomfort with the sheer number of nonresidents speaking at the meeting.” 
Two other attendees, Kevin and Brenda Johnson, appeared as both as longtime residents and as owner-operators of the Richdale/Sea Breeze variety store on Beach Street.  Kevin Johnson said sales of tobacco products at his store had plummeted over two decades.  Why implement such a regulation now, he asked?  Age restrictions were already in place to protect children from tobacco he told the board.

Then, within weeks of the article in Reason, the Boston Globe published its own article that also cited Manchester’s ignored referendum and examined the future of the NFG movement itself.  According to the Globe, despite success in 24 other communities—including Brookline, Needham, Newton, Winchester, Somerville, Northampton, and others—momentum for the measure appears to be slowing.  

Which brings us to the State House.

There are currently dueling pieces of legislation that have been filed on Beacon Hill.  One effort would take the NFG regulation statewide, making it illegal for any Massachusetts resident born on or after Jan. 1, 2006, to purchase tobacco products.  This effort is being led by legislators in Brookline, the first-in-the-nation community to pass the NFG rules.

At the same time, however, legislation has also been proposed to simply ratify a statewide age standard for purchasing “adult products,” including tobacco and nicotine.  This would effectively clip the wings of local Boards of Health seeking to create generational tobacco restrictions that go beyond state law.  Notably, this measure is advancing at the State House, while the Brookline proposal is not.

In the end, NFG advocates say this regulation is about keeping underage youth safe from getting hooked on tobacco, offering a necessary protective space before adulthood.  There’s no doubt this is a laudable goal, and there’s no doubt that’s the goal of the Manchester BOH.  After all, tobacco and nicotine products are addictive, they are linked to deadly diseases and cancer, and have big societal costs.

But detractors say NFG regs isn’t about youth and tobacco, and they instead usher in unintended consequences.  In fact, they say, a law that would create two future “separate but equal” classes of legal, consenting adults smacks of an era long thought to be long gone in American society.