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The federal government is proposing to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes to 21 and ban smoking on college campuses or inside condo and apartment buildings as part of a new drive to dramatically curb smoking rates.

The ideas are floated for discussion in a Health Canada paper that says the government wants to see smoking reduced to less than five per cent of the population by 2035 — a reduction of about two million people.

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The current rate, based on a 2015 survey, is pegged at 13 per cent.

The consultation document also gives a cautious nod to the potential of vaping and new “heat-not-burn” cigarettes to reduce the harm of smoking, despite many public-health groups opposing the technologies.

The paper is being quietly distributed by the department as it develops a new national tobacco-control strategy.

“The government … is committed to charting a new course in tobacco control that seeks to radically reduce the unacceptable burden inflicted on our society by tobacco use,” says the document.