The smoking age has officially been raised to 21 in the US.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/health/us-tobacco-age-21-trnd/index.html

I didn't see this one coming. If you had told me a month ago that this was going to happen I wouldn't have believed you. At any rate, I tend to agree with this decision as smoking is a health hazard that kills a ton of people every year. How about you guys?

Edit. If you want something to debate though, I will say this hardly falls under the realm of small government. Just a thought.

Age to legally be an adult, if the Federal government is going to interfere, should be the same for everything across the board.

A kid can sign up for the Army and die for you but he can't get a smoke? **** that.

Better to make tobacco illegal.

Well, as always, this probably doesn't apply to kids on military bases, but I personally feel that the age to join the army should be raised to 21 as well, or at least raised for combat roles.

Same! Eighteen is still to damn young.

And like I said, it goes in line with the drinking age in this country.

The war on drugs disaster has tainted me in this realm. If a legal adult wants to slowly kill himself through tobacco, go for it.

As always federal law applies to military installations.

Also removing the military as an option for kids out of high school creates more unemployment. Yay.

I'm just talking about the idea of removing combat roles from the equation. Last I checked, the military isn't supposed to be about creating employment, or at least that's the argument I have heard in the past.

But how do you feel about the smoking thing?

Because this will really stop people from buying it.

But isn't one of the big problems with the war on drugs, if not the main problem, that it was designed to hurt minorities so that they would be more likely to get thrown in jail?

Unless I'm mistaken, the intent behind this ruling doesn't seem do anything like that. It's just a recognition that lung cancer has been a serious problem for people who smoke cigarettes.

I think government interferes in too many personal issues.

Correct.

Oh, I'm not arguing that the effects will be the same in the war on drugs in either quantity or kind, I'm attempting to convey that the debate over illegal drugs over the years has changed my position as I've engaged in it - such provisions are generally costly and ineffective, but even more importantly the banned actions are generally victimless so I see little reason for intervention. We're not talking about a product that people don't know is harmful (anymore), and if a legal adult chooses to take on those risks in order to use the substance then I'm OK with that.

But yes, at least we're not throwing people in jail for using it.

While combat isn't the only purpose of the military, it is still one of the biggest roles. Three to four years is a long time to make somebody nondeployable due to a new law making it illegal for them to go to combat until they're 21 (the current law is 18) but still allowing them to enlist at 17.

In the case of 17-year olds, it's usually not an issue anyway since most of them turn 18 before they get to their first units. But raise that to 21 and a unit could lose a large portion of their junior enlisted population. Plus, it may make people argue to make enlistments for people under 21 longer to make up for the lost potential time they are available for combat duty.

Honestly this is just silly. Government has no business telling people the correct age for things of this nature.

I wonder if they'll lower taxes as a result. Fat chance.

Wish they'd focus more on improving the quality of life and making the wage gap less severe so people wouldn't have a reason to smoke in the first place. Sorry, but if you smoke, it's usually because you have something wrong, a major stress or problem, in your life. I've never met a smoker* that had their shit together.

*moderate to heavy smoker. You folks that "smoke when you drink" don't count.

It's really good news to hear about smoking age raise from 21 by the government of US.

This will have better effect I believe than an outright ban. And it prevents a black marked from being created.

The government want less people to smoke. The health effects of smoking costs way more than the taxes the sales of cigarettes might bring in.

Well, that's dumb. They'll be coming for menthols next, claim they're saving the lives of African-Americans.

Never understood casual smoking. You're doing your body pretty much the same amount of damage, so why even do it at all.

I thought that was called party smokers/smoking.

Really surprising the effect of one or a couple of smokes a week compared to nothing or 20 a day.

It is weird though that the government haven't gone after flavouring in cigarettes already.

@ad1x2: "But raise that to 21 and a unit could lose a large portion of their junior enlisted population."

Much like raising the age of tobacco consumption, that's kind of the point. Less troops to work with might mean less war which means less death, and less overall cost to the country's tax payers. Spending a few less trillion on war would hopefully mean that more money could be allocated to positive things like health care.

How does it have a better effect than an outright ban? How does it prevents a black marked from being created?

They should just ban smoking altogether.

I think I agree with you. If the legal age to buy booze, guns, and smokes is 21, then so should the voting age be raised to 21.

FFS, if you can't be trusted with the decision to drink and smoke, why would we give you a say in our government?

An outright ban creates an entirely black marked. Now it is just for teenagers and young adults until 21. Who will most likely buy regular cigarettes either through older people, by using fake ID, or going to places which doesn't ask for ID.

At least this is my experience when it comes to both smoking and alcohol.

@comeonman: "I think I agree with you. If the legal age to buy booze, guns, and smokes is 21, then so should the voting age be raised to 21.

FFS, if you can't be trusted with the decision to drink and smoke, why would we give you a say in our government?"

If you are going to take away the right to vote then I think you would need to similarly raise the age of legal adult to 21 as well.

Hey that's cool.

I support anything that hurts big corps with excessive lobbying power.

I don't smoke anymore so I don't really care. It's def a stupid thing to do and it smells like shit - we know that.

Anyone here get stuck in that age range where you smoke, but now technically cannot? I remember my Mom telling me how that happened to her when they raised the drinking age to 21.

Should just ban them entirely tbh.

@pyro1245: "Anyone here get stuck in that age range where you smoke, but now technically cannot?"

No, but that probably sucks for them though. I assume that it probably doesn't have a lot of political ramifications for the politicians who decided on this.

Except that's not how war works. I don't agree with them raising the tobacco age to 21, but tobacco is something we can do without. War would be nice to do away with, but unlike legal tobacco use for people under 21, we can't legislate war out of existence. We're just making it harder for the people that will still have to go in situations where we don't have a choice but to send folks over, such as if some dictator or terrorist did something no president regardless of political party could reasonably ignore.

The military will not want to waste billions of dollars training a unit for war when over a third of their E-4 and below population have to stay home when the time for war actually comes, putting more burden on the 21 and over members of the unit. Training a unit is just like training a sports team, they train to work together and if you cut half of their team most of their previous training is not going to work as well among the remaining players.

The military may not be a jobs program, but that doesn't mean it doesn't help people that needed something to look forward to after graduating high school and couldn't afford to wait three years to do it. That and the people that wanted to serve 20 years and looked forward to retiring at 38 would now have to wait until 41 if they can't join prior to 21 at all.

Raising the age limit does make more sense in a longer perspective, if the long term goal is to ban cigarettes altogether. Which I believe is the goal in EU or several of the countries in EU.

Healthcare costs(granted link has nothing to do with healthcare costs) and loss of productivity thanks to illness costs way more than extra taxes collected from sales of cigarette smokes.

Yeah.. this is a good step, but won't work. Unfortunately it can't really be enforced reliably, so it's hard to monitor/stop people hurting themselves. It's an addiction, so it can't really be done in moderation either.

That's why I won't ever start.

Well it's only an addiction if you start. The goal seems to be to limit those who start at a young age.

Does vaping count?

The goal sounds great in theory, but I have met people that claimed they have been smoking since they were 12 when the minimum age was 18.

I agree that it's a good idea to delay smoking as much as possible, yet I'm just saying it won't stop the majority of those who will do it early (as ad1x2 said). It's a nice step, but doesn't do much. Thankfully those who don't want that are able to choose never to start!

Why I said limit.

I assume this also means that any commercials for them are targeted towards adults. If there was no age limit, they could target 12 year old children with those ads. And smoking would most likely be a much bigger problem.

@Serraph105: While I understand your sentiment, everyone's job in the military is to kill, no matter what career field you have. My tech school instructor saw combat and he was a technical specialist for fighter aircraft.

Either you make 18-20 year olds non-deployable or you raise the minimum age requirement.

It bothers me how much people have harped on the tobacco thing for years. Yeah it's bad for you, yeah you need to keep it away from others. But it's just another right that we let them take from us.

Whoever really hates Big Tobacco must really be happy with how much they've accomplished.

This is cute but it isn't going to stop anyone that is curious I had my first smoke when I was 13 I smoked off and on and got pretty hooked in High School but quit almost 10 years ago. I do miss it sometimes but it ain't worth the risk. The thing is teens will always rebel so a age limit wouldn't do shit it's not like the government gives a damn anyways.

@plageus900: My argument was that 18-20 year olds should not be allowed in combat roles.

They are adults at that point. And you seem to be siding with government nanny states.

@Serraph105: But what I'm saying is that, even in non-combat roles, you may see combat.

Tobacco should be categorically banned tbh

Along with alcohol, et al

Sigh... I don't know. Does this help anybody? Cigarettes and tobacco products are generally terrible and no one should be using them at all.