Congress Raises The Smoking Age To 21, This Is Nonsense

Remember when we lived in a society that valued adults as mature and capable of making choices for themselves? Neither do I, but I remember when we at least pretended to. However, it seems more and more that Congress is trying to get rid of this image, instead making it so the only adults in the room are them.

In the latest budget bill, Congress officially raised the age to buy tobacco to 21. The fact this is even in a budget bill is nonsense, budgets are for how the executive branch enforces laws, not for what laws are passed.

However, let’s talk about what this means exactly. We’ll start with what eighteen year olds are still allowed to do.

Here are just five things you’re allowed to do before you’re legally able to smoke:

1. Vote for people who control the lives of everyone.
2. Get a loan that you could be paying the rest of your life.
3. Serve on a jury where you control if someone goes to prison or if they go free.
4. Be killed by the state — don’t really feel like I need to go into any detail with that one.
5. Drive a car, also more people die in car crashes than they do from second hand smoke.

People are comparing this to the age for consuming alcohol, here’s my question: Does anyone believe that was a good idea? I’ve heard jokes all my life about how the drinking age is different from the normal adult age, which many of us consider nonsense.

Here’s another fact: It’s quite easy to get alcohol on the black market. It was also really easy to get cigarettes on the black market, even if you were buying them from a store.

I’m sure some of my older readers remember how loosely the rule of eighteen to smoke used to be applied. I had family members who bought it from the stores as early as 13, some schools even use to have areas students could enter where you were allowed to smoke.

Here’s a question: If tobacco is so bad, why don’t you ban it? The answer seems to be that adults should be able to make any choice they want with there own bodies as long as they’re only hurting themselves.

Yet, what we are being told is now there is some 2nd level to adulthood — magically gotten three years later, that determines when you can have extra special rights you don’t get when you turn 18.

May I remind you, just a little while ago we were debating if you should be able to vote at 16. That would create three levels of adulthood, level one adults can drive and vote, level two allows you to do almost everything, and level three allows you to drink and smoke.

And that’s not even getting into the fact that this movement to raise the smoking age only started after teen smoking went down — in large part thanks to the free market. While they have ticked back up due to vaping in recent years (and we won’t even factor in how much safer vaping is), it’s still nothing compared to a time when fifty percent of all Americans smoked — as it was in the 1950s.

If you believe it’s necessary today, you simply are denying history.