[kearnyirish2]

These laws are good; few people get hooked as adults. Smoking is a scourge, and we all get the bill.

[manc]

more laws, great. Will you call for a ban on homosexuality, smoking dope, drinking alcohol, and gambling as they all can give us the bill too, or is it a case you don't smoke and want laws to fit what you don't like?

[grania]

These laws are good; few people get hooked as adults

I'd love to go back to the idyllic times of the 1950s when children could be children, protected from all kinds of evil. I'd like violence to be make-believe. I'd like it if children learn to cope with grief and making decisions. In that perfect world, cigarettes and maybe sneaking a beer in HS were all it took to be bad. We didn't encounter much that stopped us from becoming mature adults with our minds intact.

But, look around you for heaven's sake! Kids are drugged up because they aren't expected to develop self control or responsible decision making. The legal stuff is often worse than the illegal poisons they ingest. They don't learn to distinguish fantasy from reality, as the media, technology, and over-manipulated lives have blurred that distinction.

Yeah cigarettes are evil. But let's worry about the stuff that's even worse. I find it insane that kids can't buy a pack of cigarettes inside a store but can go in the parking lot and get heroin or to a doctor and get some mind-altering poison.

[tlozo]

” and we all get the bill.”

That can justify an all-encompassing government intrusion into every part of your life, National speed limits, motorcycle helmet laws, banning foods(or levying taxes on them), taxing soda or banning sizes of soda and it justified Obama care(after all we all pay for the uninsured).
Never smoked, it’s a disgusting habit but if you are considered an adult the government should let you make your own choices.