Posted on 01/19/2014 8:20:38 AM PST by rktman
Just as a more permissive attitude to cannabis gains momentum in the United States, so does a more restrictive attitude to tobacco. It is as if there were a law of the conservation of prohibition: if one substance is permitted after having been prohibited, another will be prohibited after having been permitted.
While Colorado permits the use of marijuana by those over 21 for any purpose, New York City prepares to prevent sales of tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. An article in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine comes out strongly in favor of this more restrictive approach to the sale of tobacco. The arguments it uses and those it refutes are instructive.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
18
That is how I think it should be. Either somebody is an adult or they are not.
Seen them too. We used to buy a case of cigs off shore/underway for $12.50 a case. But we couldn’t have beer on board. Not sayin’ somebody might not have had a bottle of Jim Beam someplace.
18 is even — and seems to be the standard/traditional age of majority in America.
But I wouldn't be opposed to 16 &mdsah; people may say "they're still kids" but let's face it, biologically they're capable of reproduction and capable of making moral, informed decisions. (Yes, they'd still be dealing with hormonal-changes; but like life you don't get to control the sort of day you have.)
The traditional age for Bar/Bat Mitzvah is 13/12, respectively — do there's an easily identifiable social/cultural delimiter between child and adult set at a young age. (After this age, the boys and girls bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics, and are able to participate in all areas of Jewish community life.
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The thing I am leery of though, is an attempt to standardize at a higher age; let's say that 26 for insurance — if we were to consider that the delineation of adult/child, combined with a simplification of pedophilia as "sex with a 'child' (one less than 26)" then we could end up having many, many young couples (even married) being "pedophiles"... which would utterly ruin the word/concept. (As well as allowing for large portions of the population to be "technically guilty" — which the government could use as leverage — say making them "prohibited persons" WRT firearms.)
I agree; the sliding scale can be [and is] abused as is.
Sure. And in that vein, it should expire on the 22nd birthday. No more after that. We've been looking at this the wrong way.
You can get abortions at any age. I don’t see why they have an age limit to buy cigarettes and alcohol.
Me too. I don’t think there should be age limits on anything, except banging little kids. There should be strictly enforced limits there.
Listerene bottles worked great whenever we pulled into Rosie Roads after torpedo and missile tests. Until the doc on the blue crew caught wind of it and told our doc to check mouthwash for traces of cheap rum....
Similar coloring. LOL! Torpedo and missles, not to mention gunnery drills on Vieques. Spent a week one night in the hospital in SJ after an illness at sea. The worst part was, they wouldn’t pull in to port and transferred me to a tug strapped in to a stokes once the tug came along side.
P.S. I was once an American in England. ‘61-’63 as a Navy dependent.
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