health

Hawaii becomes first U.S. state to raise smoking age to 21

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Nicotine in tobacco products is a highly addictive drug and adolescents and young adults are more susceptible to its effects because their brains are developing. So delaying the age when young people first experiment with or begin using tobacco can reduce the risk they will become addicted smokers. This will also reduce the death, disease, and health care cost caused by tobacco use creating a positive impact on public health and save lives

2 ( +2 / -0 )

"Opponents of the bill have argued that it limits choice for people considered adults in other situations, like joining the military."

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, lol.

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This will also reduce the death, disease, and health care cost caused by tobacco use creating a positive impact on public health and save lives

Right, so long as under-21s do what they're told.

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Opponents of the bill have argued that it limits choice for people considered adults in other situations, like joining the military.

The biggest choice limiter is nicotine itself. Once you get hooked, it limits your choice not to smoke, forever. It limits your choice to spend a big chunk of your income on things you really want. And for thousands and thousands of first-hand and second-hand smokers, it also limits their choice to stay alive and healthy.

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C'mon, those laws won't stop kids and young adults from smoking. Growing up, we all had that friend, older, who can buy the pruduct for us. Many use their older brother/sister's ID to purchase alcohol as well.

What are the police going to do? Issue a citation for each violator? What if the underage smoker is smoking from his balcony?- not much you can do.

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@Wc626: What are the police going to do?

There's not much they can do about possession by under-age people. The target for enforcement will be retailers. If the law says you can't sell cigarettes to someone under a certain age, the retailer has a responsibility to ask for ID, as with liquor. The police will probably do a few stings to catch retailers selling to youngsters.

This law won't eliminate availability, but it will reduce it significantly.

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It's a disgusting and inherently damaging practice. It should be banned outright in my opinion. Failing that, I applaud legislation that makes it harder and harder for smokers to engage in their addiction in public space.

Raising the age limit will accomplish absolutely nothing though. A silly and pointless piece of legislation.

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@ Kagemusha: Failing that, I applaud legislation that makes it harder and harder for smokers to engage in their addiction in public space.

I agree with what you say, Kagemusha. But smoking in public spaces isn't the worst of the problem. The worst is when you're exposed to smoke at home from nicotine-addicted neighbors. These selfish morons seem to think they have the right to pollute other people's living spaces and bodies as well as their own. In a public space, you can walk away from them. At home it's not so easy to get away. I'd like to see some anti-smoking legislation that tackles that problem. Or maybe an outbreak of morality and commonsense among smokers.

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Ridiculous. Let people smoke if they want to. amazes me that just as we are moving to make dope almost legal and one can get prescription drugs almost at will, the smoking nazis continue with their attack on personal freedoms.

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I'd like the driving age increased to 18! Smoking to 21 and military at 18 is a bit hard to understand. If only cigarettes disappeared altogether I would like that. They serve no purpose then your hooked.

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@Kaerimashita Smoking is the very opposite of freedom. Through nicotine, smokers enslave themselves to tobacco companies and the taxman. They are so tightly chained by their addiction that they can't even consider the freedoms of others who don't want to share their poison. Smokers also give more power to Nanny State because they insist on behaving like self-centered, thoughtless babies as they suck their little nico-nipples.

smoking nazis I think you just broke Godwin's law. LOL.

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Smoking is the very opposite of freedom. Through nicotine, smokers enslave themselves to tobacco companies and the taxman. They are so tightly chained by their addiction that they can't even consider the freedoms of others who don't want to share their poison. Smokers also give more power to Nanny State because they insist on behaving like self-centered, thoughtless babies as they suck their little nico-nipples.

Ha ha! Funny thing is that I am a smoker yet totally agree with this.

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Just ban it already. Damn smokers with their stinky addiction and lack of consideration for others.

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I find it offensive that kids can sign up to defend our country at a young age, but cannot buy a beer or cigs. Strange.

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This is just typical nanny-state stuff. 18 is the age of adulthood, and if an adult wants to smoke that should be their decision. The argument I sometimes see that government should be able to outlaw it under the pretense of health care costs affecting society as a whole is total and utter hogwash. Someone dying of lung disease at 55 incurs far, far less medical cost than any of a litany of obesity related diseases. Heck, what about the super healthy individuals who live to age 90? Do people actually believe they don't incur major healthcare costs at the end of their lives? A healthy person still has to die eventually, and whether due to cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers or what have you, they still incur major medical costs. Compare years of Alzheimer care at a nursing home versus the relatively quick death of someone with lung cancer. Even if this wasn't the case, however, limiting someone's freedom based on medical cost seems like an untenable political position.

It's one of the major reasons that I'm so ambivalent towards socialized medical care. It's not the taxes or the efficiency of the system that get's to me - it's the fact that suddenly every nanny-state liberal will start wanting to take away my freedom under the pretense of healthcare cost.

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This is just typical nanny-state stuff. 18 is the age of adulthood, and if an adult wants to smoke that should be their decision.

I agree with much of what you say, Illyas. The healthcare cost argument is spurious. I'm happy for smokers to raise the collective IQ of humanity by sucking themselves into an early grave. My only concern is that they keep the by-products of their addiction to themselves and out of the airways of sane people. I want to die of my own vices, not some other idiot's.

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@Alan

Agreed, to be clear I don't have a problem with banning smoking in public spaces.

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