Soon enough, California teens may have to wait a bit longer to legally purchase their first drag. According to Reuters, the California Senate today approved a bill to raise the smoking age in the state from 18 to 21.

In a rather lopsided tally, the Senate voted 26 to 8 to pass the measure. "We will not sit on the sidelines while big tobacco markets to our kids and gets another generation of young people hooked on a product that will ultimately kill them," bill co-author and Democrat Senator Ed Hernandez said in a statement. "Tobacco companies know that people are more likely to become addicted to smoking if they start at a young age." The bill still awaits approval by the state Assembly and the governor before it can become law.

But should the bill pass through the ringer, it, along with a similar pending measure in Hawaii, may prove to be a compelling natural experiment on the usefulness of raising the smoking age. As reported by Medical Daily, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report this March concluding that an increase in the age limit for smoking would only benefit society.

Among their findings, the IOM report found that a nationwide increase in the minimum age of legal access (MLA) to 21 would result in 50,000 less early deaths from lung cancer, and 223,000 less deaths overall, for those born between 2000 to 2019. Observing states like Alabama and Utah, which have already raised the smoking age to 19, the authors found only a 3 percent decreased risk of adolescents becoming future adult smokers. By increasing it to 21, they estimated this risk would be cut by 12 percent. Though they also looked at an age restriction of 25, the researchers concluded that 21 was the sweet spot in terms of potential benefits.

"The public health impact of raising the MLA for tobacco products depends on the degree to which local and state governments change their policies," the researchers wrote. "Overall, in the absence of transformative changes in the tobacco market, social norms and attitudes, or in the knowledge of patterns and causes of tobacco use, the committee is reasonably confident that raising the MLA will reduce tobacco use initiation, particularly among adolescents 15 to 17 years of age; improve the health of Americans across the lifespan; and save lives."