Story highlights More than half of current smokers report having started smoking before they were 18

Raising the legal age to buy tobacco could dramatically reduce future smoking

E-cigarettes should be regulated like tobacco and there should also be more child-resistant packaging

(CNN) Most people who smoke started in their teens. While the number of kids trying tobacco for the first time has declined since the 1970s, there are still new smokers every year and kids' doctors want to do something about it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) came out with a strong new policy statement that urges policymakers to raise the minimum age people could buy nicotine products, be they cigarettes or e-cigarettes, to 21.

The public health benefits of barring people under age 21 from buying these products could be tremendous, including "4.2 million fewer years of life lost" among the next generation of American adults, according to a report released in March by the Institute of Medicine.

Setting a new minimum age nationwide, that study estimated, would result in nearly a quarter-million fewer premature deaths and 50,000 fewer deaths from lung cancer among people born between 2000 and 2019. Teenagers, especially those between ages 15 and 17, are most vulnerable to becoming addicted at a time when their brains are still developing.

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