United States US Raising Smoking Age to 21

[Zachowon]

Because Christmas gifts of stupid shit are a grand holiday tradition!

US raises legal age to buy cigarettes, vapes to 21

President Donald Trump on Friday signed a sweeping spending bill into law, including a provision that prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21.

www.cnn.com

Included as part of a massive government spending bill largely concerned with defense spending, this comes largely in response to a manufactured crisis of nefarious vape-pens corrupting the youth of today and making them into deviants who loiter in parking lots and play their music too loud among other evil deeds of similar horrific consequences.

Personally I'm of the mind that the age of majority should actually mean something and the ages for any of these 'adult' activities as denoted (smoking, drinking, signing contracts, enlisting in the military, etc.) should--and even further in any just system must--be the same, and because of a US Amendment putting the voting age at 18, that's where these affairs should be set--at the very least on the federal level.

What say other folks? Am I all kooky? Does someone want to justify this? Other folks out there in different countries that handle things differently for better or worse?

If they are old enough to die fighting, or old enough to decide in what way they want to fuck each other over by voting, they should be old enough to drink, and smoke. If a state wants to set this as a rule fine, but for the feds this is stupid. By the way denying funding unless the states comply like they did for drinking is also wrong.

Going to second the motion if your old enough to die for your country your old enough to vape.

From what I was told by a Drill Sergeant before I left for HBL. They were only going to make the law affect the civilian world but changed it to also affect the military

Back in my day the Senior Enlisted and Officers use to just ignore the quote unquote you must be 21 to drink. Everything was kept in house. And as long as you didn't drink and drive or cause any other sort of trouble. They didn't give two shits if you drank alcohol. But those were the Old Nam Guys who were in charge back then. And most if not all of my peers are retired. So I don't know how it is right now.

That for one was so rare that it almost never happened. But in the one in a million times it did. No body knows nothing.

I hope my 2ID NCOs will be like that. Though I will be in Korea where the drinking age is lower

 

[Lanmandragon]

After the age of majority the state has 0 legitimate grounds to tell you what you can and cannot consume. Further this won't work anymore than banning cocaine worked. It would take me all of 20 mins in school to find a buyer for booze. While it'd be maybe an hour for drugs/guns. I guranteed it will be simarily easy to getvapes. On the plus side this will make young entrepreneurs all kinds of cash. Hustling Vapes and catridges to rich kids will be the new selling weed bet.

 

[Comrade Clod]

Hey for once the US is doing something sensible

 

[Erwin_Pommel]

Hustling Vapes and catridges to rich kids will be the new selling weed bet.

And here I thought my job of dealing with the underaged trying to buy nicotine products was bad enough :V

 

[Flintsteel]

There are actual medical reasons you know? 21 is the point where most people have finished developing the parts of the brain most vulnerable to developmental issues caused by alcohol and other such drugs.

It's actually more like 25, which is why automotive insurance rates massively drop for males once you turn 26. The auto insurance industry doesn't have any pesky "equal opportunity" regulations preventing it from setting rates based off risk by gender and age, and their rates reflect that.

I think 21 is a little too old to be enlisted in the military.

There is apparently a notable difference between the survival rates of those who enlist at 18 and those in their mid-twenties - with the younger being more prone to die.



Honestly, I think if anything we should be pushing the age of full majority up, to that 25-year mark, as that is what the scientific data actually supports.


On topic, this regulation is stupid, and caused because there was no regulation on vapes for a while, and thus no quality control of the vape liquid. And then the media got a hold of the story of illness/death (likely caused by bad liquid) and ran with it - because for some reason the media decided they didn't like the vape companies. Not sure what the story on that one is, I suspect you'd have to dig into money and politics to figure out why the entire media complex turned on companies like Juul so quickly and completely.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

This seems stupid and petty to me, but kind of unavoidable if no one is willing to back a Constitutional amendment implementing a line item veto, so stuff like this can get excised while authorizing one of these omnibus bills.

Also, I'm pretty sure that smoking as a cultural habit/institution is on the decline/in the minority, so there's no real political loss for Trump to back this. I can imagine how the Democrats would try to spin a veto on a standalone version of this - it's going to be a lot of "think of the children/Donald Trump doesn't care about your kids".

The better Constitutional Amendment is one declaring the age of adulthood in the US is 18 and that any age based restrictions on the conduct of adults are presumptively unlawful unless the government can meet strict scrutiny on them.

Although one Amendment that I really want to see passed is one that says members of Congress and their staffs get paid nothing in any year that Congress fails to pass a budget and specifically bars continuing resolutions of all kinds.