New Haven, Conn. — In 2020, the federal minimum age for buying tobacco products was officially raised from 18 to 21 as an increasing number of states and localities across the country sought to raise the age for tobacco purchases to protect the health of young adults.

One of the driving factors behind the change was a 2015 report from the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) that found that a federal Tobacco 21 (T21) law could prevent as many as 249,000 deaths through the year 2100.

A new study led by Yale researchers with the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) Lung Working Group has now determined that the NAM report grossly underestimated the number of averted deaths. The findings significantly amplify the potential impact of the T21 law and provide important new information for future state and local policy discussions surrounding tobacco regulation and public health.

Conversational AI agents may become attuned to covertly influence your intentions, creating a new commercial frontier that researchers call the “intention economy”. They say that, left unchecked, this emerging marketplace raises concern about social manipulation on a massive scale.