Signs warning against the sale of tobacco to minors are displayed in the window of a Lawrence store, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016.

The group behind a policy banning tobacco from Lawrence parks is now turning its efforts toward raising the tobacco-purchasing age to 21 in Lawrence and other Douglas County cities.

The Tobacco-Free Living work group, part of the community health coalition LiveWell Lawrence, decided at its Feb. 1 meeting that establishing a city ordinance to raise the tobacco-purchasing age should be its highest priority. Charlie Bryan, a community health planner at the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department, said the goal is to reduce youth tobacco use by “cutting off the social supply chain” and creating an age gap between high school students and those legally able to purchase tobacco.

“The justification for Tobacco 21 as a strategy is access to tobacco products is essentially the peers,” Bryan said. “You think about how they get access to the product when they’re that age, it’s because of their friends.”

Signs warning against the sale of tobacco to minors are displayed in the window of a Lawrence store, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016.

But the director of the Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association of Kansas, which advocates for the state’s petroleum marketing industry, said the effort — and identical ordinances recently passed in other Kansas cities — is an example of government overreach and wouldn’t be effective in preventing young people from getting tobacco.

More than 100 municipalities, plus the state of Hawaii, have adopted laws requiring people to be 21 to purchase tobacco. In November, Kansas City, Kan., became the first city in Kansas to adopt such a law, and Wyandotte County soon followed as the first county. Olathe adopted the ordinance at the beginning of February, and Iola passed the law Tuesday.

The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce helped launch the tobacco 21 initiative in Kansas City in October. The chamber has said that after the ordinance passed in Kansas City, it hoped other local cities would follow suit. Now, the group is in preliminary talks with LiveWell Lawrence about the issue.

Bryan said The Kansas City chamber reached out to LiveWell Lawrence last week to arrange a meeting about proposing the law in Lawrence.

“A lot of things happen in the KC area, and we’re not always in their target, so I was a little surprised,” Bryan said. “But I think a lot of people in Kansas look to Lawrence for leadership. They’re probably kind of wondering what’s going on, why aren’t we already doing this.”

Bryan is unsure when a proposal would be ready to go before the City Commission, but the Tobacco-Free Living group is working on a yearlong plan. The process will likely include seeking written endorsements from local organizations and businesses.

One of the topics of discussion with the Kansas City chamber will be whether to pursue the change at the county level or city-by-city.

When Eudora passed an ordinance banning tobacco from city parks in January, there was brief discussion of raising the tobacco age. LiveWell is planning to reach out to the city to see whether there is interest.

The pace of the process will depend on the community’s response, Bryan said.

“I think it will really depend on how the people in this community respond to the idea,” he said. “If we’re getting a lot of endorsements, then I imagine it would happen sooner.”

Tom Palace, director of Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association, has kept tabs over the past few months on Kansas cities adopting the ordinance. Palace, who works in Topeka and generally advocates at the state level, said he doesn’t agree with the local ordinances but can’t “jump in a car and go from city to city.”

With only three Kansas cities having passed the law and the Legislature already in session, Palace isn’t planning on pushing any measures this year to supersede the local ordinances.

“At this late date here in the Legislature, it would be very difficult,” Palace said. “Having said that, it’s not widespread, so not a lot of people in the state are worried about it. That’s the biggest issue when you get local ordinances like this: if you’re in Salina or somewhere, you say, ‘It’s not impacting me, it’s not a big deal.'”

Palace said the action would cause a cut in sales for convenience stores — tobacco accounts for about 25 percent of Kansas stores’ indoor sales — and the local changes in the tobacco-purchasing age would be difficult for a chain of stores to enforce.

More so than the imposition to convenience stores, Palace said, the ordinances are a government overstep.

“Everyone can make their own assertion whether smoking is the right thing to do or not the right thing to do, and the government doesn’t need to be involved in determining who can make decisions on their own,” Palace said. “Now it’s a 21-year-old and not an 18-year-old. I think the government is stepping too far trying to protect people from themselves.”

Palace also said those under 21 would still get tobacco, likely by going elsewhere to find it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which Bryan said has been monitoring the effectiveness of the increase in tobacco-purchasing age, included the strategy on a recent list of methods shown to reduce and prevent youth tobacco use.

Though cigarette use among youth in the U.S. has declined in recent years, the use of other tobacco products, such as hookahs and electronic cigarettes, has increased, according to the CDC.

A new ordinance would apply to all those tobacco products, Bryan said, as well as smokeless tobacco.