NJ lawmakers propose raising the age to buy tobacco to 21

[SteveG1988]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/01/new-jersey-smoking-age-could-be-raised-to-21/

[hotdogPi]

People would go into New York or Pennsylvania (even though they're probably paying tolls) to buy tobacco.

[SteveG1988]

People would go into New York or Pennsylvania (even though they're probably paying tolls) to buy tobacco.

Yeah, right now people are going to PA via the toll free bridges in trenton to get their fix. look at the calhoun st bridge in trenton on GSV, first intersection in PA has a tobacco store, same with the lower trenton bridge

[bandit957]

Repeat after me. The age of majority is 18. That's the way it is. Cope.

[nexus73]

The age of majority isn't really 18.  Want to buy a drink?  Then it's 21.  Getting charged for an adult crime?  It could be in the low teens.  The USA is all over the map in regards to what the age of majority is.  I'm all for putting it at 16 and making it rock solid in all categories.  Might as well do your screwups as early as possible and get them out of your system!

Rick

[Duke87]

New York City (but not the rest of New York State) already passed such a measure.

As for going to adjacent states, why bother? People in the 18 to 20 range will do for tobacco what they already do for alcohol - use their fake IDs, get someone older to buy it for them, or find the places that won't card them (plenty exist).

[Roadgeek Adam]

My college is loaded in freshmen and I swear, at least 50% of the campus smokes. People are walking up to random people and asking for lighters or cigarettes. I personally have been asked myself. I said I didn't smoke, but mentally I'm thinking: "has it gotten that bad?". The entrances to dorm buildings reek of cigarettes. There are butts everywhere. Hell, groups of kids sit around tables and do those water fountain/lava lamp type bong-things that I guess produces the nicotine.

Changing the age from 19-21 isn't going to change the epidemic of who smokes if 18 to 19 did nothing. There's no end all solution to stopping it period.

[cpzilliacus]

The legal age for alcohol and tobacco should be 18.

[getemngo]

I'd be okay with 19, like what most Canadian provinces do for alcohol, because it's still a lot more reasonable than 21, and 18 gives the unintended consequence of letting high school seniors smoke and drink. A number of states had a drinking age of 19 in the late '70s/early '80s.

On the other hand, I want to see just one state dare to defy the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 - create enough of a budget surplus that it can afford to lose the federal highway funding, and then lower its drinking age (and hopefully make up for a little of the deficit in alcohol taxes). South Dakota and Wyoming waited until 1988 to raise the drinking age to 21, and Louisiana kept stalling with loopholes until 1996.

And hey, you can still drink at 18 in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands! 

[english si]

18 gives the unintended consequence of letting high school seniors smoke and drink.

That's a good thing! High School Seniors are in the home, able to have some form of parental input into their drinking, rather than it being taboo and something to hide from authority figures who can provide support and knowledge. In many ways its too late - they go off to college and often still haven't built up an adult attitude to alcohol (speaking from the UK experience, where 18 is the limit for purchasing alcohol*), but it's far better than going off to college and only college seniors being able to legally drink, so the drinking is kept 'underground' with no real input from the generation before.

When I was 16, I was legally allowed to smoke (and not before - it's not just buy, unlike alcohol). Those of my peers who did so had already started by then, so the raising the age up to 18 four years later did next-to-nothing: for those who will smoke, or drink to excess, the law isn't a deterrent and lowering it is therefore about bringing such behaviour into the open. We've just had a proposal to up the age to infinity, basically saying that if you are under 18 on a set date, you will never be able to buy cigarettes - that will work as well as Prohibition and the War on Drugs - ie not at all well!

*I find that the adults with the least adult approaches to alcohol are the ones who had parents that treated 18 as the drinking age, rather than the reality that (with very strict guidelines) it is 5 in private homes, and parental supervision and 16 in public, with a meal. By their parents making alcohol taboo, rather than a tasty treat (as my parents treated it - it was about flavour rather than mind alteration, and treated as special that I could have some of at certain occasions that got more frequent (and quantities got bigger) as I got older), they see alcoholic beverages as a drug, rather than a drink. As they weren't allowed it due to its intoxication, rather than being allowed it for its taste (but in limited quantities due to the intoxication), they don't drink for the taste, but the toxins.

[jeffandnicole]

To show how meaningless this age thing is to most people, only Roadgeek Adam got it right.

The legal age in NJ is already 19 years old, not 18.  So for everyone else complaining the age should be (or should remain at) 18, you're about 5 years too late for that argument in NJ.

[roadman65]

Do not be alarmed at this one as a hoax is out there to raise the drinking age nationally to 25.  Back to the original topic at hand, it could fly if certain parties (I mean it generally speaking not a specific one) get behind the move.  Remember we had 18, 19, and even some 20 states for minimum drinking age and back in the 80's some people in Washington lobbied congress to threaten each individual state with cutting highway funding if they did not raise the drinking age to 21 and of course it is.

Like I said the 25 thing is a proven hoax, but the 21 thing in NJ can according to the 10th Amendment the states have the power to do whatever the feds cannot do which is why driving, drinking, and alcohol and even speed limit maximums are regulated by state legislatures.

[Desert Man]

Lowering the drinking age and keeping the smoking age to 18 is a no-brainer. If they are legally adults, why not? Besides, the US' adult age is still 21 according to the constitution, but adult age is something really left up to the states to decide. America's puritanical roots shown an unfavorable reaction to alcohol and in over the past century the societal idea of "adult age" creeping up a few years upward (despite the traditional age of majority is 21), therefore you have drinking age in our state laws.

[english si]

America's puritanical roots shown an unfavorable reaction to alcohol

The first permanent building the Puritans built was a brewery.

Sure, some of the Puritans were prigs, but many of them, especially among those who crossed the ocean, were the opposite: Cromwell's chaplain and arch-puritan was accused by the Cavaliers of being too frivolous and showy "enough powder in his wig to prime seven cannons". Of course, Charles II rewrote history and as well as making puritanism pretty much illegal, he also turned puritans into bogeymen who were to blame for everything dour.

It's much more mainline liberals and cultish factions rather than the Calvin-loving (Calvin was paid in wine in Geneva where the Puritan movement begun) Puritan movement that gave America its dislike of alcohol.

[bandit957]

Lowering the drinking age and keeping the smoking age to 18 is a no-brainer. If they are legally adults, why not? Besides, the US' adult age is still 21 according to the constitution, but adult age is something really left up to the states to decide.

But under common law, the age of majority can't be any higher than 18.

That's the dictionary definition of adulthood.