Age limit now 21 across US for cigarettes, tobacco products | Hacker News Reader

Age limit now 21 across US for cigarettes, tobacco products

abcnews.go.com

40 pointsswat53557 comments

It is bizarre we have our vice age at 21 but the age of adulthood is 18. You are responsible enough to vote, serve in the military and be charged as an adult in a court law but not responsible enough to drink or smoke.

The age gating is a bit stupid, but in the case of cigarettes, I'd be perfectly happy if no one of any age was able to use them, with exceptions for people who are already addicted.

It’s very stupid. When you are an adult you deserve to be able to make your own decisions. This is a great example of Congress going against the wishes of a huge portion of the voting population and “telling them what’s good for them”. It’s tacit erosion of freedom under the guise of something helpful and makes me ashamed of our Congress.

Nobody is an island, your freedom to make poor life choices is my liability to support as your health deteriorates and my tax dollars have to pay for the externalities of tobacco consumption. It’s not being outlawed, it’s being delayed until you can make better life choices with the wisdom of age and experience.

“_I_ have to pay for _you_” is a particularly empty argument when there are no restrictions on calorie consumption, motorcycle usage, sedentary lifestyle, dangerous hobbies, etc. Also it is a similarly entitled argument to telling police “I pay your salary!”

...yes. We do pay the police and they should be in service of the public.

not sure what you’re arguing for with respect to yelling “I pay your salary!” at govt employees

What world do you live in? The government's primary function is to control the people. That's a descriptive statement.

> calorie consumption

Healthy food subsidies and soda/candy taxes. Restrictions on food stamps.

> motorcycle usage

Licensing, training, and helmet requirements, age minimum.

> dangerous hobbies

Licensing and training requirements, often with age minimums.

It'd be great if the government could reduce sedentary lifestyles, but making people do stuff tends to be harder than making them not do certain things.

None of those things are banned, which was my point. OP was suggesting banning smoking entirely.

Well you're not wrong, we should clearly thrive to enforce healthy life choices. What's the opposite of your argument? Beer is legal so coke should be because muh freedom?

A lot of things would probably be safer if legalized and regulated, seeing as a black market will fill the need otherwise

> it’s being delayed until you can make better life choices with the wisdom of age and experience

and yet you can join the army and kill some people before you have the wisdom of age and experience?

How many US army enlisted have killed a person, I wonder? I'd guess <1% (unless suicides count)

Most people in the military are not in combat positions. Only 1% of their forces are combat and out of those only 10% actually see combat. That being said, the lack of age gate for the military should spark discussion about increasing the age of enlistment rather than justification for lowering the age people can buy cigarettes.

I’d argue making illegal doesn’t prevent use. Does the 21 age limit prevent underage drinking? Education is the key factor in preventing use.

Doesn't prevent use, but definitely reduces use.

Except when you smoke cigarettes the people around you suffer from it too.

Honestly the thing I hate about the rest of the world is the second hand smoke

It hurts my eyes, I know its bad for my lungs, and its aggravating to see the attractive people doing it to blend it, to me its like they are stuck in the 2000s

If your own decision is to smoke my lungs with your passive smoke, then you should at least get a fine.

They should at least outlaw using it anywhere but the smoker's home. I can't breathe when I smell cigarette smoke. I'm all for freedom to make your own stupid decisions, but cigarette smoke impacts people around you.

Yikes, I'd be glad not to pay for other people cigarette or alcohol induced cancers and other health issues. It's not the wild west anymore, your neighbor decisions impact your life directly.

The ACA allows children to stay on their parent's family insurance all the way through 26, and on their parent's tax return through 24.

So you want to talk about the hypocrisy of "18 for military, but 21 for drink/tobacco" let's also talk about why the age cut off for the ACA/IRS isn't 18 too, it is only self-consistent with that argument.

If you're really a full adult at 18, let's consider what that would look like, even when that means cutting the cord in ways that provide benefits to young adults (e.g. like essentially blackmailing families into paying for their "children's" college via their parent's income being used to calculate assistance and loan qualification).

It is unreasonable to consider this "multiple age of responsibility" topic from one vantage and not the other.

This is a ban on sale, ie a ban on commercial entities profiting from selling or producing tobacco products to <21 year olds. Since when do we need to protect the right to buy cigarettes in a convenient fashion? Last time I checked there isn’t anything about access to branded tobacco products in the UN charter of human rights. Nicotine is stupidly addictive. Smoking causes a long list of health problems, and when they happen society bears the cost while the tobacco companies profit. What does this have to do with the age of voting? If you want to smoke at 18, you can grow your own tobacco plant and damn well smoke it.

The United States, from a legal perspective, considers anyone at or over the age of 18 to be an adult. There are only two areas that I can think of off the top of my head where this is not the case: the sale of alcohol, and now the sale of nicotine.

Anyone who has been to college knows that the drinking age being 21 is pointless. It just means that an 18 year old who wants to drink will have someone buy it for them, or they'll go to a party and drink jungle juice, or they'll get a fake ID. Having a drinking age at all, IMO, sets up people to seriously hurt themselves when they turn 21 if their parents shelter them.

Barring that last point (since ODing on nicotine like you can on alcohol is a lot tougher), the same will now be the case for smoking / vaping.

From a safety perspective, I would rather have 18 year olds buying legitimate juul pods (although the safety of these should be regulated more heavily) than buying sketchy fake shit off the internet or second hand from a friend.

I don't buy this analogy with drinking. Alcohol is fundamentally different. It is critical to reduce the number of people who get addicted to nicotine, because it is very difficult to get them off it. Despite flaunting the age limit for drinking, I think it is still the case that there are fewer 18 year olds drinking alcohol with the drinking age at 21 than there would be if the drinking age was 18, and in many ways that is all that matters. Your argument would also justify reducing the drinking age to X, because there are some people younger than X that access alcohol illegally. Importantly, a higher drinking age also stops beverage makers from targeting products to younger demographics.

I disagree with the harm minimisation/safety argument because the primary harm minimisation for tobacco products comes from preventing their use at all.

>> it is very difficult to get them off it

and quitting drinking is easy? AA exists in every corner of the globe, for a reason.

Almost everyone who smokes is addicted, not so for alcohol.

Alcohol is considered one of the most deadly and harmful drugs in world and is linked to the majority of domestic violence, fatal car accident, sexual assault etc.

Of course.

If you don’t understand the difference then read these two articles:

https://ourworldindata.org/smoking https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption

"Smoking deaths typically affect older populations: more than half of deaths occurred in people over 70 years old; 93% were over 50 years."

LOL! Death from age-related natural causes also affect older populations. Most of those who die of natural causes are over fifty.

No thanks. What is the point you are trying to make? That alcohol-related vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among 16-24 year old Americans? (http://www.faddintl.org/nationalstats.html) For whatever it's worth, smokers generally have 25 years in which to quit, before any serious negative consequences arise (and often more like 40+ years). Alcohol causes massive amounts of physical and emotional damage to young people, directly and also indirectly (inflicted by drinkers onto non-drinkers), much of it fatal.

We are losing the thread here. We are talking about substance abuse disorders. You were arguing that many people are addicted to alcohol as a 'whatabout' counter argument to my point about smoking. The articles I referenced show that firstly, smoking is a significantly bigger cause of harm, despite your contention that smokers have 'a long time to quit'. The reason for this of course is that they don't quit, because they are addicted. This is exactly why we need to stop people from smoking in the first place. Secondly, at the end of the alcohol article, you can see that the prevalence of alcohol use disorders does not increase with alcohol consumption. This is because many people drink alcohol in a non-pathological fashion, even in large amounts (which is nevertheless harmful), and would seem to contradict your argument that alcohol use disorders are a big problem. Even the example you give shows a similar pattern. Most vehicular deaths are in 16-24 year olds, whether alcohol was involved or not. Alcohol compounds the problem, but it doesn't drive it completely.

Notice that I am not disagreeing with you that alcohol causes a lot of harm. It does. As I said, alcohol and tobacco are fundamentally different, on neurophysiological, social and cultural levels.

In my opinion, setting the alcohol/nicotine age to 21 isn't so much to prevent 18 year olds from accessing it, its to prevent 14-16 year olds from access. Every high school has some 18 year olds - products legally available to them will trickle down to younger kids much easier than those that require purchasers to be 21.

There's a few comments about the military age being 18 in the USA.

I'm not American, and live in a country where the drinking age is 18 (and believe it should stay that way), but it seems to me like maybe the enlistment age should be raised.

18 isn't old enough to be signing up to fight and die overseas. Do we really want people going straight from the football field to the battlefield?

Some countries let people join at 18 but they cannot fight until 20 or older. Essentially the first years are spent in military school and or in a kind of reserve role. It is an interesting compromise that still let's people join up instead of college around 18/19 but with fewer moral hazards.

I have some close friends who started smoking at 18, and by 21 were pretty hooked, would rather not smoke, but found quitting too difficult. I have a feeling this will do a good job of reducing addiction rates.

At the same time I do feel like adults should be adults full-stop and think it’s ridiculous you can be drafted, vote and serve in military and not drink or smoke (or rent a car!). Maybe the age of adulthood should be moved to 21 altogether.

I wish we'd change what's actually considered an adult. It's pretty arbitrary. Pretty sure I was dumber than a box of rocks when I was 18 (or even 21). At the same time I'm sure many under 18 could be considered adults. Unfortunate that rites of passage aren't a thing.

Isn't it true that the prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop until around age 25?

If so, when will our laws reflect the fact that before that age, a person is not fully capable of considering the consequences of their choices?

Lending institutions, pornographers, and the military are still being allowed to exploit this incapacity of "young adults" in ways that may affect their entire lives.

How many of us are in debt, or injured, or killed because of this predation?

An 18 year old kid can choose to participate in pornography. Should we not consider this child abuse?

Hopefully they increase the age you can vote, enlist in the military, consent to sex, and can be tried as an adult.

Not from United States. However, wouldn't it increase the sales of the black market?

Perhaps, but as long as there is a net drop in usage it's still a win. Who wants to bother buying black market cigarettes in 2020? It's like the worst drug ever - mild-to-no buzz, highly addictive/expensive, gives you cancer

Tobacco isn’t the drug. Nicotine is. There are other ways to consume the drug, and it has a lot of positive effects.

Regardless - it’s a win for you I guess - but does anyone else’s opinion matter?

> Perhaps, but as long as there is a net drop in usage it's still a win.

That's not how that works. At all.

If you get 1 less person to vape, but you get 3 people who were vaping seriously sick / they die from black market goods, that's probably not a net win.

The harmful health effects of tobacco products, which are a cost born by society while tobacco companies enrich themselves, mean that we can tolerate significant downsides of changes in tobacco accessibility, and it’s still very much worth it.

I'd imagine people wanting to bypass this would still consume retail tobacco products via a 21+ proxy agent. I just think the cost of paying off a proxy would be cheaper than the cost of buying via some black market vendor (and low risk, since you're likely getting the real product via someone you likely know and trust).

Or just via common fake IDs that certain vendors will happily take, since it provides the vendor just enough legal protection for reasonable doubt.

Keep in mind that the new market for black market products is quite small (only people between 18-20), and the cost/risk of setting it up quite high. It could happen, but I think there are better alternatives to bypass this block-aid. It isn't really comparable to prohibition or the war on drugs, as those were/are global bans Vs. the entire population.

Why stop there? Why not 35, or 50? Or an outright ban?

We say that 18 year olds can die in a war, and be sentenced to death for a crime. But they can’t vape or buy a beer? 21 is the new 18, enjoy making more children out of adults.

Why stop with cigarettes? They can just tell us how to live in every facet of our daily lives.

I mean, there’s plenty of reasons to stop at cigarettes. The slope really isn’t as slippery as you’re making it out to be.

I bet you have Real Strong Opinions about seatbelts, too.

Yeah let’s raise the driving age to 21

oh christ, can we?

No because it’s anti-productive and anti-freedom which is exactly my point

>Or an outright ban?

Consider for a moment how indescribably weird it is for the FDA to have jurisdiction here and not ban tobacco.

The FDA evaluates on the basis of safety and efficacy: how the hell they’re squaring this circle is kind of beyond me.

I feel like people that make this argument are really playing with fire. It is meant to be hyperbole to show us that this middle-ground position is irrational, but all it is really doing is reminding us that this middle-ground is a middle-ground and that the ideal is a near complete ban of the addictive cancer sticks.

A lot of people have argued for a "age limit" that essentially increases as one generation ages until it is effectively unlawful for future generations (e.g. age 21 in 2020, 22 in 2021, 31 in 2030, 41 in 2040, etc).

So why 21? Why indeed. Tobacco is no less addictive or deadly at 21, I guess the hope is people will be smarter by then and realize the life-long potential impact of STARTING (which the science does support[0]).

[0] http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2015/TobaccoMin...

I think this law will have 0 benefits

Merry Christmas to Big Tobacco and their shareholders.

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