Smoking Bans

'Find Some Kids': How Health Officials Drummed Up Fake Support for Tobacco Bans in Massachusetts Towns

State health officials scouted towns, scripted hearings, recruited teen witnesses, and celebrated each ban as a "win."

Guy Bentley | 6.11.2026 8:00 AM

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(Illustration: Peshkova/Volodymyr Melnyk/Josefkubes/Dreamstime)

Massachusetts has a long and storied history of prohibition. The Puritans banned dice, cards, and gaming tables. The state was one of the first to ban alcohol and marijuana. Missing from this murderer's row of vices is tobacco—for now.

Local boards of health are banning nicotine in their towns and cities by imposing "Nicotine-Free Generation" (NFG) policies. These forbid anyone born after a specific date from buying any kind of tobacco in their lifetime, ever. In Massachusetts, the specific date is typically either January 1, 2004, or January 1, 2005. The bans usually cover not just cigarettes but all nicotine products, regardless of their level of health risk, including cigars, nicotine pouches, vapes, hookah, and pipe tobacco.

The boards of health responsible for these rules are municipal bodies. They're empowered to adopt and enforce "reasonable health regulations." Their work typically focuses on sanitary code enforcement, restaurant inspections, housing conditions, and communicable disease control.

Board members are elected in some towns and appointed in others. The elections typically have a low profile and a low turnout, and they're often uncontested. Most residents are unaware that a tobacco regulation is being considered until it has already been adopted.

Public records from 13 Massachusetts municipalities reveal that the adoption of NFG policies is not the result of popular demand. It is the result of a coordinated, state-funded campaign of a dedicated network of activists, collaborating with health board members and a melange of tobacco control programs, pursuing predetermined outcomes with little regard for public opinion.

The Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program (MTCP), for example, is a taxpayer-funded public health program whose goal is to prevent young people from using nicotine, help current users quit, protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, and eliminate tobacco-related disparities. Nowhere in its legal mandate is there a duty to lobby localities to ensure adults never have the choice to use nicotine.

But local tobacco control programs, funded through MTCP, use tobacco control program managers and coordinators to scout potential cities to target for a generational ban. MTCP tracks each new effort and includes NFG adoption among its tracked goals.

The dual role of government employee and prohibition activist is evident in an email chain from March 2025. Maureen Buzby, a tobacco inspection coordinator employed by the city of Melrose, wrote to the town of Hopkinton's health director, Shaun McAuliffe, after learning of the town's interest in a generational ban at an MTCP meeting. Using her government email account, Buzby offered to deploy "an amazing group of volunteers" who would "answer questions, attend a meeting, testify at a hearing, whatever."

McAuliffe described the arrangement in an email to........

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