Posted on 12/29/2019 3:24:08 AM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- I started smoking in high school and quit in my early 20s. I wish I never smoked, but I did. I thought it was cool until I knew it was stupid. That's when I quit.
Laws that restricted the sale of cigarettes to those 18 or older didn't stop me. Because 18-year-olds can buy for younger teens, anti-tobacco advocates supported raising the legal age of purchase to 21 to make it harder for 16-year-olds to get their hands on tobacco and e-cigarettes.
That's what Congress and President Donald Trump did as the year ended. With little debate while the country was focused on impeachment, they raised the legal age to buy cigarettes and vaping products to 21 by tucking the provision into the $738 billion Defense Spending Act.
Was there robust debate over Washington treating adults who are old enough to vote and old enough to fight in the U.S. military as children who can't make adult decisions?
(Given support on both sides of the aisles for the federal drinking age of 21, along with the 21-year age for the ownership of firearms in some states, the horse is out of the barn.)
Was there any hesitation about Washington abrogating states' rights by imposing a 21-year-old smoking age preferred by 19 states, including California, on the majority of states that have passed no such laws?
Hardly. "Stakeholders," which included tobacco and vaping interests, supported the old-enough-to-vote-but-not-old-enough-to-smoke provision as a sop to stave off attempts to ban flavored vaping products and menthol cigarettes.
Clearly, industry leaders believe that getting rid of flavors would be worse for their business model than a 21-year-old rule for buyers.
Only cranks such as me, who believe in adult rights for adult voters, even think to protest.
Wisconsin radio talk-show host Vicki McKenna, 51, counts herself among those who have issues with two ages of adulthood -- 18 and 21 -- but, as one of the millions of former smokers who kicked the habit when she started vaping, she is willing to accept the higher smoking age as the lesser of two evils.
Her mother and grandmother died of lung cancer. After smoking a pack a day for 23 years, McKenna quit smoking 10 years ago after starting to vape flavored e-cigarettes. Banning e-cigarettes, or their flavors, she argues, would be hazardous to her health.
When she started using e-cigarettes, vaping was not a big political target. That changed, as McKenna sees it, in 2019 when an outbreak of lung disease put more than 2,400 vapers in hospitals, and horribly killed some 54.
The media took a closer look at the practice of manufacturers using flavors to entice kids to vape.
Later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that most patients with vaping-related lung damage had used products that contained THC, the ingredient that creates the high in marijuana. It became clear that the culprit in these premature deaths was not bubble-gum flavors marketed by big corporations but the black market.
But flavors were on the media's radar, and the nation's politicians felt they had to do something.
Flavored vape products may well have been banned; Trump was heading in that direction.
Then an October survey by McLaughlin Associates showed that vapers in battleground states ardently oppose "banning flavors in all nicotine vapor products" and 83% of them were likely to vote based solely on a candidate's stand on vaping products.
. But is it right?
The message from Capitol Hill: 18-year-olds are old enough to choose their government and old enough to die for it, but they are not old enough to make adult decisions on smoking or drinking. There are two ages of adulthood, depending on the situation.
At the same time, many progressives are pushing to lower the voting age to 16, which would be five years sooner than these teens would be able to purchase a glass of wine legally.
Don't they realize where their argument is heading? The subliminal message is that voting is a no-brainer. And if being under 21 makes you too young to make personal decisions, maybe it's too young to vote.
The same lack of ‘maturity’ would make one ask if they should be asking the government to funnel $75,000 to them for a college education that grants them a degree on gender studies.
Same with some idiot credit card company giving them $10,000 in credit based on a part-time $10-an-hour pizza delivery service job.
So raise the voting age to 21.
If you’re going to tell them they have to be 21 to drink or smoke then raise the enlistment age for the armed forces to 21. The U.S. shouldn’t be able to send someone into a war zone with rifle to kill people and risk being killed then tell him he’s too young to buy cigarettes or drink when he gets back. Same thing for voting, if they’re too immature to smoke then they’re too immature to vote. Be consistent, you’re either an adult or you’re not.
I’m fine with letting ‘em smoke anything at 18—just as long as they don’t go voting on us until they are 35.
Not a soul on their parents’ health insurance should ever have been allowed to vote either.
Or until they own property.
You’ve got parents buying them condos while they’re in college now, so not a safe metric. But we’re going for the same thing.
You folks don’t get it: A whole new division in the Black Market Inc. has been created..”Cig sales to 18 year olds”./s
So, you know, it's good that the country just made a large number of 18-20 year olds ripe for more illegal sales.
Communist Democrats support lowering the voting age to 16 while saying those same people are not mature enough to buy alcohol, cigarettes, firearms, etc.
Insane.
What do you expect of them?
The voting age used to be 21. It definitely needs to be changed back
In 2015, the National Academy of Medicine projected that raising the legal age for tobacco sales would lead to a 12% reduction in tobacco use by the time current teens became adults.
I’m good with a 12% reduction or for that matter, any reduction.
Make the “age of majority” 21 across the board...voting, contracting debt, marriage without parental consent.
stop....stop.....your logic......it burns
Do you mean like in real estate? Isn't a vehicle, or a motorcycle for example a property??
Also wouldn't that leave young troops that serve their country out because they can't afford real estate?
It’s up to adults to determine legal smoking age for themselves and their minor children.
Screw the nanny state
Ps I haven’t Smoked in 40+ years.
Logic or Liberty?
Yep - or 25....it was a bad move to lower it to 18...
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