This is interesting.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, says he will introduce legislation to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21, reports @LauraLitvan
— Anna Edney (@annaedney) April 18, 2019
Treating all forms of tobacco like alcohol would be a major public health improvement. The initial reporting says that this will include all products, including vape pens.
Speaking as a former under-age drinker, the barrier to access to booze when I was sixteen was me and my boys getting one of their older brothers to buy for us. He would do it with the understanding that we were drinking at his apartment or in other reasonable(ish) safe places where there was no chance of driving. This was not a frequent request as we could only bug him so much.
As a sixteen year old, if I was a smoker, getting a quasi-competent fake ID or having a slightly older friend go into the Store 24 for a pack was a much less socially expensive ask. The universe of people who would be willing to supply a near peer instead of a younger brother’s friend with an illicit substance was far larger.
This seems to be a good idea.
Paul W.
Yay? Meanwhile Barr has begun what will be the scariest period of the Trump Presidency. By declaring the Mueller investigation over he is now going to be under tremendous pressure (which he will immediately give in to) to start going after the very people involved in that investigation.
Congress needs to begin impeachment today, and demand those records. We need to bring on the Constitutional crisis because it is already happening and Trump is entrenching with every Justice he nominates. I’m beginning to fear that we won’t even be able to have free elections (outside of the given Russian interference) in 2020.
Major Major Major Major
Ah, some good news for once!
Betty Cracker
I agree that raising the age for buying smokes would have positive social effects. But it does bug me that our society sets the age of “adulthood” in so many different places, depending on the situation and who benefits from the threshold. 18-year-olds can join the military so some irresponsible asshole like GWB can get them killed. They can enter into binding legal contracts so some greedhead like Betsy DeVos or Mick Mulvaney can allow loan sharks to blight their futures for decades to come. But they can’t have a beer.
CarolDuhart2
Also when you think about it, depending upon when a kid entered kindergarten or first grade, there are some 18 year olds still in high school. And if a kid has been held back a year, definitely so. Asking a fellow student to buy smokes is very easy compared to asking an older friend to supply booze.
NotMax
My (limited) understanding is both nicotine-infused and non-nicotine liquids are available for and used in vape equipment.
NotMax
Whoops. wWrong paste in blockquote. Fix
My (limited) understanding is both nicotine-infused and non-nicotine liquids are available for and used in vape equipment.
low-tech cyclist
@Betty Cracker: And of course, 12 year old black kids can be charged as adults when they commit crimes. When they’re not being sentenced to death by some cop for possession of a toy gun in an empty park, of course.
lamh36
fyi: Report is here:
twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1118893457391652869
Gravenstone
Speaks volumes of his history that my initial thought was ‘what’s in this for Mitch?’. I’ll believe this is actually intended as an unalloyed good when I see it.
NotMax
It ought to go without saying that we’ve all known 21-year-olds whom we wouldn’t trust to crack an egg and 18-year-olds whom we’d trust to cook a six course repast.
Barbara
Non-twitter source for report: justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
gene108
When I was a kid, in NC, I was told in school you could buy smokes, with a note from your mom, saying you were buying it for her. My mom never smoked, and I wasn’t interested in smoking, so I am wondering, if this was an urban legend or something that happened?
NotMax
@gene108
Strictly anecdotal but I was often sent to the store to buy ciggies for the housekeeper – when I was 8.
CarolDuhart2
I actually did buy smokes for older relatives in grade school. There was no age limit then. I could even buy a carton or two without id of any kind. I mean I remember then some of my friends in high school would buy smokes and smoke outside on break.
Cigarettes were treated like grocery.
Brachiator
I guess this is good, but I would probably be willing to lower the drinking age to 18. If you can vote and join the military at 18, I suppose you should be able to buy smokes and booze if you want.
Also, information about smoking has done a good job. From a HHS report.
The proportion of smoking seniors dropped from 28.8 percent in 1976 to 3.6 percent in 2018.
Kraux Pas
@gene108:
I used to buy cigarettes for my parents all the time. No note required. This was in the early 90s and I was surprised when they shut me off.
Another Scott
@gene108: There was a smoking area outside my (first) high school in Georgia where students (of any age, IIRC) could smoke. And there were vending machines for cigarettes out in the open in various places (don’t know if they were actually in the school) that were very, very lightly regulated (I think even the stickers about being over 18 came much later).
I agree that one should be suspicious of McConnell. TheHill says: “He added that his bill would have exemptions for individuals who serve in the military.” That undercuts the rationale, doesn’t it?
Presumably it will affect pot sales, eventually, also too. Maybe that’s one of the angles they’re going after.
Like BC, I’m torn about this. On the one hand, our brains don’t stop developing until our early-mid 20s (or later). And cigarettes are bad and nicotine is a poison. Some places are reducing the voting age to 16 (for some elections). Driving at 16 is OK, joining the military at 18 is OK. It’s hard to find a convincing way to rationalize all these ages.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
I am definitely opposed to including vape pens in this proposal.
dlwhico
Lower the drinking age to 16 or 18 and raise the driving age to 21. Let everybody get their wild drinking out of their system before they can drive.
Nicole
@Another Scott:
Maybe that IS the rationale, since the military has been having trouble meeting enrollment targets. Join the Army! Be all you can be! Including a smoker!
(I know, I know, but I wouldn’t put anything past the Republicans these days)
ant
why not rip off the band aid and prohibit sales to everyone?
thus, the utopia could commence.
start a new drug war.
Ohio Mom
I am getting the cataract that grew back zapped today. The waiting room had CBS news on.
I looked forward to going to the back for my eye drops and getting away from the TV but this room has CBS on too. Fortunately the sound is low.
I guess this is better than Fox but wow is it stupid. This is what I get for not owning a TV, I have no basis of comparison.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Commie!
:)
oatler.
Mitch want our youth to stay strong and healthy so they can age into shriveled republican- voting turds.
David Anderson
@dlwhico: Hell no —
PenAndKey
@Nicole:
Well, that’s one way to get around the “if they’re old enough to be drafted they’re old enough to smoke” argument. It’s a disingenuous carve-out to be sure, but this is Mitch so who’s surprised?
Kraux Pas
@David Anderson: Isn’t that what they do in most European countries?
PenAndKey
As far as I’m concerned if you’re old enough to vote, be drafted, or serve in a jury pool you’re old enough to do whatever you want to your own body. And yes, that includes consuming whatever your poison of choice is. Patchwork prohibitions never work.
LivinginExile
@NotMax: Pegisu, my fiance of 35 years quit smoking 5 years ago using a vape pen. A couple of years later she went to the e-liquid with no nicotine. I quit smoking cigarettes a couple of weeks ago, but am vaping with the lowest level of nicotine I can get. Plan on tapering to no nicotine then no vaping. I have been rolling my own cigarettes for 40 years or more. Quitting has been much easier than I expected – so far.
Anonymous At Work
I need help. I have taken a blood oath to never ever trust or praise McConnell. However, a KENTUCKY Senator is now trying to limit access to his state’s one cash crop for the good of children. I am caught.
Kent
HS teacher here. Kids smoke a whole lot less today than they did in the late 70s and early 80s when I was in HS. We had a pizza parlor next to our HS that had a cigarette machine and kids would just walk over and buy them. No one cared. There was a student smoking section in the breezeway outside the HS where kids would go smoke before school and at lunch.
Vaping is prevalent, but I can’t actually remember the last time I saw a HS student with a cigarette. I’m sure they do smoke when they are out partying. But it isn’t nearly as prevalent.
Vaping however, lots of kids do that all over school all the time. Nearly impossible to actually track because the little Juul vape pipes look just like flash drives. The real way to control that is to make it prescription rather than over the counter. So actual smokers looking to stop smoking could still get them but not kids, at least not so easily
Kelly
Back in the 1970’s when I was 16 my dad would ask me to pick him up some smokes when he gave me some pocket money and let me borrow the car to go to town. He smoked Camel straights or Borkum Riff hand rolls. I always bought Borkum Riff and papers because the hand rolls took him more time to make and smoke. They didn’t keep burning in the ashtray either. He could roll a smoke with one hand while driving a manual shift pickup on a gravel logging road.
TenguPhule
Fuck McConnell with a Rusty Chainsaw.
LivinginExile
@Kelly: I rolled mine with half and half tobacco. They would go out if you put them down. Some smartass would always ask if I could roll one while riding a galloping horse. I’d say no, but I can roll one while standing up in a hammock having sex. That usually ended the conversation.
NotMax
@LivininExile
Learn something new every day at B-J. Totally unaware that hammocks even had sex.
Briefly looked into vaping (see-gar smoker here). There’s so much paraphernalia to deal with. I can barely keep track of one measly lighter.
:)
LivinginExile
@NotMax: Some hammocks have sex some don’t. Just depends on which way they swing.
Don K
Growing up in NJ in the 60s, I believe the smoking age was 16, but nobody ever carded. And in any event cigarette machines were everywhere. I was surprised when I moved to MI in the late 70s to find the high schools in my district had smoking lounges for the students, some of whom were as young as 14.
NotMax
@LivinginExile
Well played.
Sean
@Kraux Pas: not quite. 18 to drive in most. I live in Germany. 16 for beer and wine and 18 for hard alcohol. Idea is harm reduction and sensible introduction to lower ac drinks. 21 is too high an age unless we want to re-engineer the transition to adulthood. You shouldn’t be independent in military or at university and unable to buy a beer. I don’t miss Anerican histrionics about this shit – much happier for my kids to grow up not treating alcohol (and now tobacco) as illicit substances. Time to stop infantilising young adults.
au6890
Illinois just passed this law recently and goes into affect some time in July. May be the first step to legalizing weed. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing.