| 10.28.2026

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2025 Wyoming Adult Commercial Tobacco and Nicotine Survey

Wyoming Adults' Use of and Attitudes About Commercial Tobacco and Nicotine Products

By , , and

Preventing New Commercial Tobacco Use

The SUTPP has the goal of reducing the health burdens of commercial tobacco use by preventing new commercial tobacco use. A success related to this goal was raising the legal age of purchase from 18 (or 19 in some areas) to 21 (see https://tobacco21.org/). Federal law implemented this change in 2019 (FDA, 2025), and Wyoming law followed in 2020 (Wyo. Stat. § 14-3-305). Broad surveys, such as the Wyoming Adult Commercial Tobacco and Nicotine Survey, with few young adults in the sample. are not strong methods for showing short-term effects of Tobacco 21, though patterns in the data may change over time.

A key limitation of this section’s findings is that many survey questions ask about events (such as when someone first smoked a whole cigarette) that happened years before data collection. Responses to such questions are especially vulnerable to memory errors. However, precise recall is not critical to the conclusions in this report.

Age of Smoking a Whole Cigarette for the First Time

The age of first smoking a whole cigarette is related to long-term smoking habits. Those who start smoking at an early age are more likely to smoke as adults (CDC, 2014b).

In 2025, among adults who had ever smoked an entire cigarette, almost all (91%) smoked their first one before the age of 21 (Figure 12). Moreover, the vast majority of them smoked their first cigarette before they were 18, with an average age of 16. This pattern has remained consistent since similar questions were first asked in 2010.

Figure 12: Almost All Smoking Begins Before the Age of 21. Bar chart showing age of smoking the first whole cigarette among adults who had smoked a whole cigarette: younger than 18, 67%; ages 18 to 20, 24%; ages 21 to 25, 5%; and age 26 or older, 3%. Percentages do not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Conclusion

Callout box: The vast majority of adults who smoke started when they were younger than 21.The vast majority of adults who have ever smoked an entire cigarette first smoked when they were under the legal minimum age of 21, with the largest group starting before the age of 18. Wyoming Adult Commercial Tobacco and Nicotine Survey data are consistent with other research findings that the earlier someone starts smoking, the more likely they are to continue smoking (Dierker et al., 2012; Sharapova et al., 2020). Wyoming may benefit from continued commercial tobacco prevention efforts focusing on youth, though the survey may not show results until years after success with youth happens.