SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s agency-request bill to raise the state’s legal smoking age to 21 passed a key legislative hurdle today. The House Health Care & Wellness Committee approved the bill in a bipartisan 12 to 3 vote.

OLYMPIA — Washington has long been at the forefront of the fight to protect youth from the dangers of smoking. Continuing that leadership role, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced a bill that would make the state the first to raise the legal age for purchasing and possessing tobacco and vapor products to 21. The harmful consequences of tobacco are clear. Smoking kills 8,300 Washingtonians every year, and $2.8 billion in health care costs are directly attributed to tobacco use in the state. Washington state taxpayers pay nearly $400 million in taxes to cover state government expenditures caused by smoking. According to a recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General, over 100,000 of today’s Washington youth are projected to die prematurely due to the effects of smoking.

SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson yesterday asked the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Wash. for permission to file an amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief in the J.E.F.M. v. Holder lawsuit. Ferguson believes that unaccompanied immigrant children — children under the age of 18 who are not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian when they are apprehended in the United States — should not be forced to represent themselves in complex deportation hearings in which the child’s future is at stake.

A group of young women from Wenatchee shared their efforts to prevent bullying in their schools and community and won the Grand Prize at the 2013 Spring Youth Forum-- a $3,000 partial scholarship to an upcoming prevention leadership conference in Washington, DC.