Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

[FallenXxRaven]

First off let's set the scene. I am an "underage" smoker (no flaming me). I know what it does to me and what else it can do. I know as much as any 18+ smoker. So why is it that that I will have to wait until I am 18 to buy cigarettes?
Now, I'm not saying remove the legal smoking age, but lower it to say, 14 or so, the age of most freshmen in high school. By then you know the pros and cons of smoking, so shouldn't you be able to buy your own packs? And it isnt any less harmful to anyone 18+ than it is to any 14 year old.
And the drinking age should be lowered to 18, shouldn't it? I mean at 18 I can go be killed for my country, but God forbid I have a beer. Not only that but by 18 you have learned what alchohol does to your liver, so it is, as with smoking, your choice. And perhaps separate beer from hard liquor? Like 18 for a beer but 21 for any hard stuff. And lets say I'm 18 in a war, after being shot at for a while don't you think it is just fair to let me have a beer?

[devonin]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

You are, of course, talking about the legal ages in the United States here, since the ages vary from country to country, especially as regards drinking.

While I agree that it is ridiculous for the drinking age in the United States to be 21 when voting and military service among other things are keyed to 18, but I can definately see and understand the need to set legal limits on activities that are known to have negative consequences.

If you want to play the "The day before I turn 18 and the day I turn 18 aren't any different" game, you can logic all age restrictions out of existance, and yet I imagine we could all agree that seven year olds should not have unrestricted access to alcohol and tobacco.

The problem is that legislators are forced, in the general interest of the public good, to set an arbitrary age by which "The majority" of people "should" have the necessary education and maturity to make a reasoned decision about these things. While there are obviously exceptions (And everyone under 18 who wants to drink and smoke thinks they are an exception, when really very few of them are) the age of 18 has been viewed as the age of majority, enfranchisement, and adulthood for so long, that it is a benchmark age for most limits.

[Zageron]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

No. Choosing to smoke and drink are the worst choices you could possibly made in your life, other then joining the army. Personally I feel that there should be a world wide ban on cigarettes and any alcoholic beverage over 3% alcohol.

[devonin]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Well, that's an entirely seperate question you're debating, er...blatantly stating with no reasoning, Zageron. We're looking at the question of whether the ages that exist make sense in comparison to the minimum ages for other things.

Since my general stance on legal issues is to support the rights of the individual, I'm leery of a worldwide ban on pretty much anything. There are laws to punish you for drinking to excess, and to interfere with the rights of others while doing so. As such, I think the law goes perfectly far on alcohol: Anyone of the age we consider old enough to make the educated choice to engage in a vice is allowed to do so all they want, however, if in so doing, they engage in actions that interfere with the rights of others, the punishments are stricter.

This seems okay to me. When even walking around drunk harming nobody is an offense, if people want to poison their body with alcohol, that's up to them, and I support their right to wreck their own body all they want.

Especially since as soon as they harm anyone else, the book comes slamming down harder than if they did it sober.

[tsugomaru]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Move to another country like the Netherlands. You can smoke at 16 there.

Age laws for smoking and drinking are not placed to restrict you, but rather, to help you. From your posts, you don't sound very old, so you wouldn't understand the consequences that others know. You probably know about what might happen, but you've never actually experienced it and that's two different things.

~Tsugomaru

[Tokzic]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Kids can get smokes and drinks without much hassle anyway, so taking the ages off of them wouldn't hurt - in fact, it'd probably take away a lot of the thrill.

Legalizing other drugs is an interesting idea though. Businesses would take over them, and surely the number would rise due to it being readily available. I don't know if I'm fond of a world full of crackheads.

[FallenXxRaven]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Thats another thing, Tokzic. If we do legalize it for younger kids, some of them might say "This isn't as fun anymore, screw this" and we have less smokers, which is good. I know I don't want to smoke, and I am quitting, im down from a pack a day to maybe 2 or 3

[Relambrien]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Thats another thing, Tokzic. If we do legalize it for younger kids, some of them might say "This isn't as fun anymore, screw this" and we have less smokers, which is good. I know I don't want to smoke, and I am quitting, im down from a pack a day to maybe 2 or 3

This is what happened during (or rather, following) American Prohibition, and is a principal argument for proponents of marijuana legalization. During the Prohibition period, alcohol consumption skyrocketed (will find a source if necessary), yet curiously "recovered" after Prohibition ended.

Many people believe that the illegality of some things is what encourages people to take part in them. I can empathize with people who experience a thrill from breaking the law, beating the system. When there is no longer a system to beat, the thrill could disappear.

To relate this to smoking and drinking, as the quote states, perhaps the illegality of underage smoking/drinking is, ironically, a cause of underage smoking/drinking. You would think that American teenagers, often seen as "rebels" or "disregarding authority" would revel in the idea of refusing to follow the instructions they've been given since elementary school, and of breaking a very well-known law.

Of course, the only way to test that is to actually see what happens when the restrictions are loosened, but due to the possibility of even worse situations arising, I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Personally, I believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and the smoking age should remain where it is. If I'm not mistaken--and please, someone correct me if I am--someone smoking an "average" amount per day does more damage to their body than someone drinking an "average" amount per day. Why then, should drinking require a higher age than the more-damaging act of smoking? By 18, I believe people can make their own decisions regarding alcohol.

Of course, alcohol could still be forbidden in schools on the grounds of exposure to minors, and coming into school drunk could be an offense. In this way you don't get 90% of the senior class in a high school drunk the entire day...though unfortunately it seems some schools are like that currently.

As for smoking, the reason I believe the age should be left at 18 is that education isn't complete at 16 or 14, at least not in America. It wasn't until just this year that I was first shown pictures of what tobacco could do to a person; it was all verbal previously. And when you don't have a picture or an example to go by, you tend to assume things aren't as bad as they really are (this is at least true for me, and I believe it's true for many others as well).

By age 18, tobacco education is complete and I believe people can make their own decisions.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

And it isnt any less harmful to anyone 18+ than it is to any 14 year old.

Bull****. Eighteen year olds are on the tail end of puberty, whereas most fourteen year olds have just started it. The destruction that smoking wreaks on an adult's body is multiplied several times over on a growing body.

Now, I'm not saying remove the legal smoking age, but lower it to say, 14 or so, the age of most freshmen in high school. By then you know the pros and cons of smoking

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Assuming fourteen year olds know ANYTHING is fallacious at best.

Now, lowering the drinking age to eighteen is fine with me, because the artificial maturity ascribed to eighteen year olds isn't completely unfounded, but to unleash something so destructive to young kids is just idiotic if you want them to be at all healthy.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[25thhour]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Lower the smoking ages? Are you crazy? Enough young people smoke we don't need more people dying everyday.

[THOR-AXE]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Well it could not only be a health concern but what about what you do while intoxicated. I don't know exactly how people act while smoking but while drunk I know you act more recklessly. Like how you hear more about people being in car crashes after a night of drinking beer rather than people being in car crashes after a night of smoking cigarettes.

[ShastaTwist]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Personally, I believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and the smoking age should remain where it is. If I'm not mistaken--and please, someone correct me if I am--someone smoking an "average" amount per day does more damage to their body than someone drinking an "average" amount per day. Why then, should drinking require a higher age than the more-damaging act of smoking? By 18, I believe people can make their own decisions regarding alcohol.

Wrong. Did you know that drinking/being an alcoholic can create a certain form of amnesia? Alcohol also ruins your liver if you drink too much for too long. Cigarettes don't really put you at risk of killing someone like drinking and then driving do. Neither one is more damaging than the other. Cigarettes create all sorts of health risks but so does alcoholism and they both have negative effects on people around you.

I think that the legal ages are set because, at the age of fourteen, you haven't experienced everything about smoking there is to know and those extra four years are set in the hopes that you'll change your mind.

Maybe I'm taking this to an entirely different level by bringing alcoholism into the mix, but it's the only thing I can really relate it to through personal experience.

[Tokzic]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

You know, on the other hand, as a Canadian, I think I might support the idea of making smoking illegal, for one reason: All Canadians pay tax to pay for the consequences of their pointless addiction. I don't know anyone who smokes and still wants to. When healthcare is paid for by everyone, the "right to destroy your body" isn't quite as powerful an argument.

[AustiNNNNNN]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Even though it may not necessarily seem like it, smoking is damaging your body in a way that it probably shouldn't have to go through. A more mature, 18 year old is pretty much fit to make the decision if he wants to kill him/herself for however long they wish to do it. A 14 year old honestly isn't nearly fit enough to make mature decisions about their health and the impact their body will take, as compared to someone who is 18. Would just be an awful mistake. You aren't breaking this topic down enough. Being an ex-smoker, I can easily say that if I started at the age of 14, I would have continued based on the social acceptance of it if it was legal to buy at a younger age, and I would have ****ed my life up. It's easy getting hooked on things as a kid, and cigarettes aren't that great to begin with. K done.

Edit: Oh and I'm not a fan of alcohol, no matter what age, but lowering the age to 18 might start more problems initially, would probably be a lot more common in high school parties. Don't know, don't care. As long as you can manage to get home safely without driving, and without risking anybody's lives just because you decided to have fun one night.

[MagicCarpetRide]

Re: Smoking and Drinking Ages - Pointless?

Let the 14 year olds smoke.
Our population is growing at an exponentially increasing rate.
We need more people to die.
Give little kids drugs.
Problem solved.