As I recall, when the drinking age went up, it was done one year at a time. Don’t know about this law
Smoking is such a disgusting, unhealthy thing to do that it should be made illegal in this country.
Nope. Won’t work. Just stigmatize the use of tobacco to death.
Why don’t the nannies just raise the age to 100? Makes as much sense as this.
I hate smoking, I think no one should smoke. But I hate assholes like this even more. Either outlaw the product or leave it alone.
That policy worked so well for alcohol and marijuana, didn’t it?
I hate smoking as much as anyone here, I think. I have lost far too many family members to its effects, and I refuse to date a smoker.
However, the world is larger than my personal preferences. Merely banning addictions, with no other change, does not seen to work. At the least, restrictions against smoking (or any drug, really) should be accompanied by health measures to ease the addicts off the drug. And if there’s a technical fix to mitigate the side-effects of the drug, we should by all means encourage it. I’m speaking of vaporizers: if people can get their dose of nicotine without all that nasty smoke and fire, so much the better. The addiction is still not good, but it’s much better than addiction plus byproducts.
What really needs to happen is for smoking to become unfashionable. That’s a cultural change that will take time: generations possibly, for old addicted smokers to die off.
I guess Christine Quinn thought there might be one or two people left within the city limits who didn’t think she’s an asshole. #thereifixedit
Technically, it’s not a law until Bloomberg signs it, but Bloomberg hates smoking worse than thirty billion 64 oz cups of soda deepfried in thirty billion pounds of partially hydrogenated margarine… so, yeah.
ETA: the law doesn’t go into effect until 6 months after it is signed.
Not a bad start. Now maybe we can spurt the drinking age up to 30.
Hey Loach, know of any PD’s that permit an officer to carry a gun below 21?
I do not know how NY Home Rule is laid out, but in Ohio, it may not fly??
Not sure how that would work, but undercutting 18 in Ohio would definitely be in conflict, over dubbing, not sure? Upgrading an age is one thing, a penalty is another.
The conflict doctrine is not always easy to decipher under Home rule.
For instance Ohio has DEcriminalized up to 100 grams of POT, but a city can still have it an arrestable offense.
There is no law against it. Many PDs (like mine) have a college requirement so it’s more rare. But I have worked with some that got hired very young before our requirements changed. But here is the ridiculous part. In NJ you have to be 21 to purchase hand gun ammo. So these guys were cops, could carry off duty 24 hours a day, but someone else had to purchase their practice ammo for them.
You can usually find a pack of cigarettes for (slightly) less than $12.50. Marlboros (my brand, when I smoked) always seem to be a bit less. And there are discount brands that cost slightly less than Marlboros. But basically you’re not getting a pack of cigarettes for less than $11.00.
There’s a thriving bootleg business in the city. Back when I smoked, I knew a bootlegger. He had a regular route. What he did was to get to know a bunch of receptionists who smoked in large office buildings. They would take orders from the smokers in that office, relay them to the bootlegger, and he’d deliver the smokes in a few days. The receptionists would get their cigarettes for free. It was a very efficient scheme, really. I think he charged $6.00 a pack. People would get a week’s worth at a time, but he was happy to sell you just one pack if that’s all you wanted, or had the cash for at the time.
A lot of small delis and bodegas sell loosies, too - you can buy one cigarette from them. I think the going rate is (or was) $0.75. This is illegal. And it never worked for me – I remember that they only seemed to sell Newports, and I hate menthol cigarettes.
I have no problem with setting the age at which people are allowed to buy cigarettes at 21. Cigarettes kill people, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and even if they don’t kill you, they have about a 99% probability of causing significant health problems.
That said, I do believe that some of the restrictions on smoking are getting ridiculous and heavy-handed.
And I’m getting tired of people pronouncing that smoking is disgusting. You know what? A lot of people *don’t * think it’s disgusting. Twenty or thirty years ago, certainly forty years ago, hardly anybody thought that smoking was disgusting. You may not like the smell of smoke, but there is another point of view on that. Many, many people find it to be very pleasurable.
Some of the anti-smoking crowd would ban smoking in places where it really doesn’t hurt anyone else. New York City’s recent ban on smoking in public parks comes to mind. It’s ridiculous.
That said, I wish people wouldn’t smoke. I’m very much in favor of laws that help people not to start smoking. That said, if someone wants to light up in my neighborhood bar (which doesn’t serve food and is not exactly a hangout for health nuts), it’s OK with me. If I don’t like it, I can always go to another bar.
Also, I think the tax on cigaretts in New York has gotten out of hand. It’s regressive, and punishes addicts. There are better ways to encourage them to quit, and to help them do so.
New Jersey will draw them over for the tax revenue.
You may be a brave exception, but most of the smokers I know readily acknowledge their habit is utterly disgusting, but that they are powerless in the face of their addiction. I don’t know any (current) adult smokers who are pro smoking.
Re the 21 limit in 2013 there is no reason on earth to take up smoking as a desirable behavior. When I see 20 somethings smoking these days I have to wonder that they are either mildly retarded or very subject to peer pressure to the point of stupidity.
Kids make a lot of stupid decisions. If the 21 law keeps their paws off of tobacco until they wise up so much the better.
Still can bother me outside. Depends how close the person is. It’s not nearly as bad as being indoors though, of course.
Before it was illegal to smoke in bars here, I didn’t know of any that didn’t allow it. Of course, one could make the argument that there must not be too many people who were bothered by it then…but anyway, just for myself I’m super glad it’s illegal. It’s bad enough to have to walk through a huge cloud of smoke just to get in the door some places when the law says it’s supposed to be at least 25 feet away, but quite a few places don’t really enforce that.
Now that I’m old, I think 18-year-olds are so young and it seems reckless that we let them do some of the things they’re allowed to do…but as long as we’re going to let them do these other things (no need for examples, we all know), and smoking is legal for other adults, it’s just really inconsistent to ban it for them only.
The point is that a 20 is 18-20 are only children one it comes to alcohol & tobacco, for everything else they’re adults. Including stuff like voting, sex, pornography (on both sides of the camera), juries, the military, and marriage. How can it possibly make any sense for an 18 yr old to be allowed to make life altering decisions like getting married or joining the army but not allowed to buy a cigarette or drink a glass of wine? Setting the drinking age at 21 hasn’t kept minors from getting there hands on alcohol, but it was driven a lot of drinking by otherwise legal adults underground and really tied a lot of colleges’ hands re alcohol policy. Hell not only can 18 yr olds be executed they can also serve on juries and decide if other people are to be sentenced to death.
IMO alcohol and tobacco are not the same. Drug addicts excluded I cannot think of any human being I know under age 40 who took up smoking tobacco after the age of 21 as a volitional decision. I’m sure a few exist but I’d would wager it’s a very small cohort of people. The vast majority of tobacco starting decisions were made in a person’s teens almost exclusively.
Next up: Nobody under 21 eating at McDonald’s.
He refused the blindfold and faced the firing squad at dawn; we would’ve offered him a last cigarette, but, well, a man of twenty can’t make that kind of choice.