Posted on 11/29/2015 3:22:48 AM PST by SMGFan
Massachusetts is considering raising its smoking age to 21, citing public health concerns as well as the desire to keep tobacco products out of the hands of teenagers, CBS News is reporting.
Boston is already considering raising the smoking age to 21 inside the city limits, but another plan, backed by academics and public health advocates, would make the smoking age uniform throughout the Bay State. Several Massachusetts communities have already raised their smoking age to 21, including the Boston suburb of Needham, which was the first municipality in Massachusetts to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at inquisitr.com ...
From my attempts to find an answer on line, It appears even pre teens, elementary school age children are not prohibited from smoking. They cannot purchase them, "But smoke 'em if you got 'em" . But why? Why illegal for under age to purchase but not smoke in public. Except for recent laws against smoking in buildings, parks, open air stadiums etc.
This is insanity. People don’t smoke a few cigarettes and go out and commit mass murders. If instead of a few cigarettes, a youngster resorts to mind-altering meds (legal and illegal), some will.
Libs are hysteric that those kids’ second hand smoke will kill!
[This is insanity.]
State legislatures are discovering government regulated medical marijuana produces jobs and is more lucrative than the cigarette tax. They are pushing for legalization to balance their budgets.
That is insanity.
I remember when smoking, and voting age was 21
I remember when there was no in between 'teenage' years ... you were a kid or a man
No more social experimenters in our politics
If y'got the money, pay for it
If you can, do
If you know, speak up
If you wanted to really screw up teen smoking...then raise the tax on each pack to $10, and affix some sticker to each pack....where a tax-payer could submit his yearly tax return with a sheet showing he bought 300 packs of smokes and he’d get all of his $10 tax payments back. The kid who was under twenty-one would get nothing back. Smoking by teens would drop like a rock.
These laws are good; few people get hooked as adults. Smoking is a scourge, and we all get the bill.
Ban homosexuality. It causes HIV and a host of other STDs. Why isn’t homosexuality treated as a public health issue?
OK to smoke dope from the lunatics and nuts who run that state though.
I will state what I always have...if an 18 year old can sign his / her life over to the federal government for military service AND vote in elections they can smoke and drink as much as they want. Explain to me how (in any way) I’m wrong. These morons allowed us to have a smoking area while I went to school in the socialist state known as Massachusetts...
Let’s raise the drinking age to 21 to stop teenage drinking. Wait...........
I smoke, and certainly wouldn’t have started at 20. To me banning cigarettes is like banning turpentine in kids’ soft drinks. I have no problem with the alcohol & gambling age at 21; smoking can be the same. Pot should be treated in the same manner as cocaine, heroin, etc..
How can people afford to smoke?
This is why we have a tenth amendment. Also why I didn’t have a Constitutional problem with the much maligned “Romneycare”.
The policy itself may be a disaster, but that would be for the people of the STATE to determine, not a stinking bureaucracy in D.C.
Federalism, as founded by our forefathers, works.
High New York cigarette taxes lead to selling "loosies" (individual cigarettes sold by entrepreneurs on the street).
Cigarette taxes were bad enough 25 years ago to help me quit smoking. (The King may well have the last laugh, because I may be around longer, and paying even more taxes.)
Just another stupid feel-good liberal law, IMO. If you are old enough to enlist in the military without a parent's consent, you should be old enough to vote, buy cigarettes ... and buy a pistol or a bottle of alcohol, too!
My brother smoked in high school. I strung horse hair through a pack of his cigarettes It got him to stop until he figured out was me.
Best anti-Smoking song
https://youtu.be/0uC465mktCk
I don’t know how other states handle it, but in NJ one fairly effective way to combat teen drinking is to simply postpone the offender’s eligibility to drive. Their drinking doesn’t even need to involve a car; they simply don’t want to issue a drivers license at the standard age to someone who drinks alcohol at 15. Driving isn’t a “right”, and drunk driving isn’t even a criminal offense in NJ - it is a motor vehicle violation (there is no pre-trial intervention, no right to a jury trial, etc. as would be allowed with criminal charges).
While teen drinking will always be an issue, it seems to have been replaced by many younger people with pill use; they know the effects of alcohol, and instead risk the unknown problems with pills.
So the cultural heirs to the Puritans are on the march. Forward Progressives!
It’s about control. Constantly letting the unwashed masses know that they do not control their lives. The gummit does.
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