The Manitou Springs City Council voted unanimously this week to raise the minimum age for buying tobacco and e-cigarette products from 18 to 21 in a bid to keep nicotine out of local teens’ hands.

If the ordinance wins final approval from the council on Jan. 7, the municipality will become the first in El Paso County to increase the age requirement.

The rule has been adopted by 19 states and more than 500 localities, including Denver and upwards of a dozen other cities and towns in Colorado.

“It’s just a tool to help the community deal with what is an ever-increasing problem,” Manitou Springs Mayor Ken Jaray said in a recent interview.

The council began considering the change after Ashley Wardell, a Manitou Springs firefighter paramedic, came to the city with concerns about what public health officials have called a nationwide teen vaping epidemic.

“We have teenagers that are doing something they don’t understand. Yeah, they know it’s vaping. Yeah, they know it’s nicotine. But they don’t understand why it’s so bad for them,” she said. “This is a really positive move to keep them from from injuring, damaging, permanently damaging themselves.”

The county Board of Health declared teens’ use of e-cigarettes a public health crisis in January.

On Thursday, health officials linked two more deaths from a respiratory illness to vaping, raising the nationwide death toll to 54. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also reported 97 more hospitalizations through Tuesday, bringing the number hospitalized to 2,506.

E-cigarettes come in small, USB-styled cartridges that are easy to conceal.

A single cartridge from the leading brand JUUL contains as much nicotine as 20 cigarettes, and some teens are vaping multiple cartridges a day, said Dr. Ted Maynard, a proponent of the rule change and vice president of the Colorado chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Those brains under 25 — there’s good evidence that they’re more susceptible to addiction,” said Maynard, who for years practiced pediatrics in downtown Colorado Springs. “Nicotine is a very hard thing to get off once you get hooked. You’re very likely to spend a lifetime vaping or smoking cigarettes.”

In the county, 23% of teens in grades 9 through 12 use e-cigarettes, according to the 2017 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. Forty-four percent of high school students in the county say they have tried e-cigarettes at least once — second only to alcohol, and more than marijuana or cigarettes, the survey found.

Plus, research has shown that the vast majority of people who are daily smokers pick up the habit before they are 21, Maynard said.

“This simply makes the age of purchase for tobacco products the same as alcohol or marijuana,” he said. “Because all of those substances are attracted to youth and create great harm to the health of youth in both the short term and the long term.”

The ordinance is set to take effect no earlier than Feb. 1, according to city officials.

There are nine retailers in Manitou Springs that sell nicotine products, said Leslie Lewis, executive director of the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau.

“In the conversations I have had, no one expressed strong opposition to the change of the legal age to 21 for purchase of nicotine products,” Lewis said in a memo to city staff. Some of the retailers didn’t offer an opinion, and others felt the change would be positive, she said.

“I’m OK with it,” said Yana Ayzikovitch, owner of The Smoking Gift Headquarters at 918 Manitou Avenue.

Clara Robb, owner of the nearby Tubby’s Turnaround market, said she doubts that the increased age requirement will result in fewer teens vaping or smoking cigarettes because they can still get nicotine products in nearby Colorado Springs.

“I don’t know why Manitou wants to get less taxes from the retailers. I don’t understand it,” said Robb, adding that nicotine products account for only a small fraction of her sales.

The city’s code requires retailers of vaporized and other “noncigarette tobacco” products obtain a license.

The new ordinance would replace that licensing requirement with one that also covers retailers who sell tobacco products of any kind, including electronic smoking devices.

Minors who use tobacco products, now subject to a fine of up to $100, would no longer be penalized under the ordinance.

Businesses found selling to patrons under 18 would be subject to a license suspension, ranging from a week — for an initial violation — to a year — for a third violation. A fourth violation would result in a license revocation.