Come April, 18-year-olds will have to wait three more years to legally buy cigarettes in town.

Joining 90 other Massachusetts cities and towns, the Board of Health voted unanimously on Jan. 20 to raise the age at which individuals are allowed to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21.

It also banned flavored tobacco products, e-cigarette fluid, and vaping fluid. And it set a $300-per-tobacco-violation fine for all tobacco violations.

The regulations are set to go into effect April 1.

The regulations will apply to any business that sells tobacco products, Health Agent Robert Ethier said. He said the board had been talking for some time with the state about the possibility of enacting these regulations, and decided to “make the move” on Jan. 20.

The new tobacco regulation joins a smoking ban that prohibits smoking on public beaches and recreational areas in Wareham, which went into effect in January.

Ethier said the new regulations are the town’s attempt to lessen the tobacco industry’s influence on teens and young adults. He said the flavored tobacco product ban is particularly aimed at the town’s youth, because “flavored tobacco is appealing to young people.”

Ethier believes the town would not ban mint and spearmint flavored products, “probably because those aren’t attractive to children.”

He also said the price of cigars will rise to $2.50, regardless of how cheap they are to buy.

“This is to prohibit kids from getting a little change together, and getting a cigar,” Ethier said.

Associate board member Thomas Gleason said the decision is one other Massachusetts cities and towns, including Boston, have been making over the course of the last 10 years. It began with increasing the tobacco-buying age in Needham that, a study found, resulted in a 50 percent drop in teen smoking in that town between 2006 and 2010.

“That is, at least, anecdotal evidence that it works,” Gleason said.

The movement to raise the age at which a person may purchase tobacco does not look as though it will stop in Wareham, either. Massachusetts House Representative Cynthia Creem (D-Newton) has introduced a petition to raise the age statewide at which a person may buy tobacco products. Fellow Massachusetts House member Paul McMurty (D-Dedham) also introduced a similar petition, accompanied by a bill. The bill differs from Wareham’s impending legislation by setting a fine schedule of $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second offense, and $300 for subsequent offenses.

Geoffrey Yalenezian, owner of Brennan’s Smoke Shop on Main Street, is less than pleased with board’s decision, which he sees as taking away the “freedoms of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds.”

Yalenezian said the board should not base its legislation around the Needham study. The study also said tobacco use can affect frontal lobe development, which doesn’t fully develop until age 25.

“That study suggests adults are not cognitive enough to make good decisions until they are 25,” Yalenezian said. “Okay, Board of Health – but you still let the Marine Corps go into the high school job fair, and recruit adolescents to go over and die?”

More importantly, Yalenezian said, the board’s decision to ban flavored e-cigarette fluid and vaping fluid hurts the “full-blown” adults of Wareham, who use the flavored substitutes for cigarettes to help wean themselves off smoking cigarettes.

“If they gave [the public] the opportunity to talk about it in a public forum, you would get all these people using vapor to quit traditional cigarettes like, ‘Hey, stop! This is making me healthier. I am not coughing anymore, I am not smoking cigarettes, I am just vaping – taking away the tar and carbon dioxide. There is no carcinogens in it. It’s just water vapor,’” Yalenezian said.

Though he said the shop will be fine in terms of sales, Yalenezian said the shop will have to stop selling certain cigars, because they are flavored.

He also said he didn’t understand why the board would limit the legislation to just making it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase tobacco and tobacco products, rather than also extending the ban to possession, like with alcohol. He also said that he sees a more immediate danger from alcohol than from tobacco.

“I don’t know the last time tobacco killed a [teenager]. Although, I hear all the time, kids smashing into telephone pole drunk driving,” he said.

Jug Shop owner Adelaide De Ponte said she is pleased with the decision, because smoking is unhealthy.

Neither she nor her son, David De Ponte, see the regulation affecting the local liquor shop, because tobacco products aren’t their main source of income.

They said it would be slightly easier to conduct their business, because they will always have to check identification, no matter what, rather than dividing up how they sell their products: 18 years old for tobacco, and 21 years old for alcohol. The only thing David De Ponte sees could be a potential issue is when tourists come from other towns with a lower smoking age.

“But it won’t really change things that much, other than prevent kids from smoking, starting earlier,” De Ponte said.