Raising the Smoking Age to 21 is a Good Idea
Why 21? Voting age is 18. Is there something magic about 21?
How about 30? Or 50?
We should have a consistent age of adulthood for various purposes. It is really ridiculous that 18-year-olds have all of the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood, but not all of the privileges.
Not that I want ANYONE to smoke, but changing the age really won't help. Most smokers start when they are under 18.
I imagine there are also studies that show reductions in numbers of smokers if the sale of cigarettes is prohibited.Why not ban the sale town wide? Is there some legal case for the town to raise a minimum age but not institute a prohabition?
For the record, I don't support raising the age or prohibiting the sale.
sac said:
We should have a consistent age of adulthood for various purposes. It is really ridiculous that 18-year-olds have all of the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood, but not all of the privileges.
Not that I want ANYONE to smoke, but changing the age really won't help. Most smokers start when they are under 18.
Do teens still smoke? I don't know anyone under the age of 60 who smokes. Thankfully, it is a dying habit (no pun intended).
LOST said:
Why 21? Voting age is 18. Is there something magic about 21?
How about 30? Or 50?
^^^ this
Scroll down to the section on 18 and Magic. I think it addresses your question:
http://tobacco21.org/critical-issues/
HarleyQuinn said:
LOST said:
Why 21? Voting age is 18. Is there something magic about 21?
How about 30? Or 50?
^^^ this
It has been increasing:
http://tobacco21.org/e-cigarettes-teens/
Woot said:
sac said:
We should have a consistent age of adulthood for various purposes. It is really ridiculous that 18-year-olds have all of the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood, but not all of the privileges.
Not that I want ANYONE to smoke, but changing the age really won't help. Most smokers start when they are under 18.
Do teens still smoke? I don't know anyone under the age of 60 who smokes. Thankfully, it is a dying habit (no pun intended).
Here is what CVS said when it decided to quit selling smokes:
"CVS/pharmacy will stop selling cigarettes and all tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores nationwide by October 1, 2014
Ending the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products at CVS/pharmacy is simply the right thing to do for the good of our customers and our company. The sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose – helping people on their path to better health.
As the delivery of health care evolves with an emphasis on better health outcomes, reducing chronic disease and controlling costs, CVS Caremark is playing an expanded role through our 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners. By removing tobacco products from our retail shelves, we will better serve our patients, clients and health care providers while positioning CVS Caremark for future growth as a health care company. Cigarettes and tobacco products have no place in a setting where health care is delivered. This is the right thing to do."
http://www.cvshealth.com/newsroom/message-larry-merlo
That seems like a really small subset of inconclusive data they're basing this on.
RobinM2 said:
Scroll down to the section on 18 and Magic. I think it addresses your question:
http://tobacco21.org/critical-issues/
HarleyQuinn said:
LOST said:
Why 21? Voting age is 18. Is there something magic about 21?
How about 30? Or 50?
^^^ this
Here is what CVS said when it decided to quit selling smokes:
"CVS/pharmacy will stop selling cigarettes and all tobacco products at its more than 7,600 stores nationwide by October 1, 2014
Ending the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products at CVS/pharmacy is simply the right thing to do for the good of our customers and our company. The sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose – helping people on their path to better health.
As the delivery of health care evolves with an emphasis on better health outcomes, reducing chronic disease and controlling costs, CVS Caremark is playing an expanded role through our 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners. By removing tobacco products from our retail shelves, we will better serve our patients, clients and health care providers while positioning CVS Caremark for future growth as a health care company. Cigarettes and tobacco products have no place in a setting where health care is delivered. This is the right thing to do."
http://www.cvshealth.com/newsroom/message-larry-merlo
alias said:
I imagine there are also studies that show reductions in numbers of smokers if the sale of cigarettes is prohibited.Why not ban the sale town wide? Is there some legal case for the town to raise a minimum age but not institute a prohabition?
For the record, I don't support raising the age or prohibiting the sale.
There is a move to ban the sales in all pharmacies and a number of cities have passed such ordinances. Here is a model ordinance:
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/modelordinance_nicotinedeliveryproducts.pdf
For the record, I don't think we need to go that far. We would just invite litigation from Walgreens. Political pressure would be better, I think. But I thought the text of the ordinance was useful to look at.
TigerLilly said:
That seems like a really small subset of inconclusive data they're basing this on.
That organization has an obvious agenda. Probably that's why its exists.
You then selectively extract study results to meet the agenda needs.
Studies show that smoking tobacco products can and often will kill you. Most of us know quite a few persons who smoked heavily and then developed a terminal cancer of the lung, throat, bladder, etc. I would love to see tobacco products outlawed completely; but, as pointed out above, prohibition was found not to work with disastrous results.
Changing the age at which one can purchase tobacco products really won't be effective since smokers then found to be underage will just find some other way of obtaining their smokes. What is needed is health education in the schools where children can learn first hand what smoking can really do to their life expectancy and their overall health.
Here is a recent CDC report on the problem of youth smoking. It concludes that raising the age to 21 is a very promising solution.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/
Here is an interesting PubMed Abstact on a study looking at the cost-effectiveness of raising the smoking age to 21 in California:
"The policy would generate no net costs, in fact saving the state and its inhabitants a total of $24 billion over the next 50 years with a gain of 1.47 million QALYs [quality adjusted years] compared to status quo. This research should prove useful to California's policy makers as they contemplate legislation to raise the state's legal smoking age."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15951460/#fft
Woot said:
sac said:
We should have a consistent age of adulthood for various purposes. It is really ridiculous that 18-year-olds have all of the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood, but not all of the privileges.
Not that I want ANYONE to smoke, but changing the age really won't help. Most smokers start when they are under 18.
Do teens still smoke? I don't know anyone under the age of 60 who smokes. Thankfully, it is a dying habit (no pun intended).
Yes, some do, although (thankfully) not as many as in the past.
joan_crystal said:
Studies show that smoking tobacco products can and often will kill you. Most of us know quite a few persons who smoked heavily and then developed a terminal cancer of the lung, throat, bladder, etc. I would love to see tobacco products outlawed completely; but, as pointed out above, prohibition was found not to work with disastrous results.
Changing the age at which one can purchase tobacco products really won't be effective since smokers then found to be underage will just find some other way of obtaining their smokes. What is needed is health education in the schools where children can learn first hand what smoking can really do to their life expectancy and their overall health.
They have that education already, but it doesn't always work.
RobinM2 said:
Here is a recent CDC report on the problem of youth smoking. It concludes that raising the age to 21 is a very promising solution.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/
That report echoes what I said above. Most teens who become smokers start before age 18 (and, anecdotally, I think well before 18 generally), so I don't see how raising the age from 19 to 21 really helps anything and it continues to perpetuate unequal treatment of young adults. If they can't have all of the privileges of adulthood (whether or not those are healthy privileges) then why should they be expected to take on the legal obligations? It just doesn't seem right to me.
If we really think that raising the legal age will help, then why not just ban it? (But, as has already been mentioned, we know how well Prohibition worked for alcohol.)
I think cigarettes should be treated the same way as alcohol...age 21. But my conflict is that we think people are adult enough to drive and to vote at age 18 and be in the armed services at 18 (actually 17), so how do we handle that conflict?
So if a kid is old enuf to decide how make decisions about ordinance/guns/ tanks in the army then are we creating a "nanny state" regarding alcohol and cigarettes?
And following all of this, when marijuana gets legalized, what age is proper for that too? (so far we can't definitively state that it causes cancer, so why not?)
Obviously I am conflicted.
If we can draft people or accept them into the armed forces at 18, we have zero right to expect they not drink or smoke at that age. I'd be smoking my brains out if I served time in the Middle East.
I started smoking when I was 11, and most of my friends started in high school. Not sure what raising the age would have done for any of us. PS, I quit in my 20s, thankfully.
I say lower the drinking age to 18 and raise the driving age to the same. Leave cigs where they are. If you are old enough to die for your country, you are old enough to drive, vote, smoke and drink (but not all at the same time).
RobinM2 said:
It has been increasing:
http://tobacco21.org/e-cigarettes-teens/
Woot said:
sac said:
We should have a consistent age of adulthood for various purposes. It is really ridiculous that 18-year-olds have all of the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood, but not all of the privileges.
Not that I want ANYONE to smoke, but changing the age really won't help. Most smokers start when they are under 18.
Do teens still smoke? I don't know anyone under the age of 60 who smokes. Thankfully, it is a dying habit (no pun intended).
https://www.thetruth.com/the-facts
This source suggests that we have 1/3 the smokers we had in 2000 and that teen smoking is now down to 7% (from 23%). That sounds more accurate. And, as Maplewood is fairly affluent and well educated, I would assume the data is even lower. My teens look at smokers as "dumb" and "losers". I tend to agree.
Klinker said:
I say lower the drinking age to 18 and raise the driving age to the same. Leave cigs where they are. If you are old enough to die for your country, you are old enough to drive, vote, smoke and drink (but not all at the same time).
I would agree. I am also increasing taxing gas, cigarettes and alcohol (and reducing other taxation), to reduce the availability and affordability of smoking and drinking in teens. It has helped with the lower teen smoking rates. Smoking is really expensive.
Woot said:
Klinker said:
I say lower the drinking age to 18 and raise the driving age to the same. Leave cigs where they are. If you are old enough to die for your country, you are old enough to drive, vote, smoke and drink (but not all at the same time).
I would agree. I am also increasing taxing gas, cigarettes and alcohol (and reducing other taxation), to reduce the availability and affordability of smoking and drinking in teens. It has helped with the lower teen smoking rates. Smoking is really expensive.
Agree with both of you assuming that Woot means he's also FOR increasing taxing gas, cigarettes, etc. (you left out the for). The increase to 21 year old drinking across all state was because of the pressure put on by the Feds (no highway funds, etc.). MADD was wrong in that area I believe. We should go back to 18 for drinking for sure and it should match up with all other things.
A larger problem with the 18-21 crowd is their failure to vote.
Red_Barchetta said:
A larger problem with the 18-21 crowd is their failure to vote.
It would seem that many people at every age fail to vote in most elections.
Perhaps you should have to register to drive, drink, smoke and vote.... all one form.
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Last night Mayor DeLuca introduced an ordinance to raise the age for buying cigerattes in town to 21. The NJ Legislature passed coomonsense legislation to do that, but Governor Christy apparently found time now that he isn't campaigning to veto it. I think it is a smart move to treat smoking the same as other addictive things like gambling and drinking. The medical research has demonstrated that teen brains are more vulnerable to addictions then adult brains. The mayor also pointed out the statistics that show how when 18 year olds can buy smokes, it increases the number of sub-18 year olds who smoke. Raising it to 21, cuts that dramatically. Here is a website with more information (including a link to a John Oliver video). If you agree, let our Town Committee know you support our stepping in for the Governor's lack of leadership on this issue. (And you might also ask Walgreens why they still sell smokes, while CVS stopped doing so because of the hypocrisy of selling death sticks along with medicine to make you healthy. Just saying).
http://tobacco21.org/