# Smoking Age **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 5, 2023, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140 "2023-10-05T11:57:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/61 "2023-10-09T09:30:37Z")
The smoking and drinking ages are already the same here and there is already a campaign to raise the current drinking age from 18 to xx. 21? The whole process is a radical departure from the premise that once a person passes their eighteenth birthday they magically become an adult with all that implies. I would like to add some controls on the sale of vapes to reduce the number of children taking them up. They were marketed as a way of helping smokers give up, so why not raise the age for buying them in line with cigarettes? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/62 "2023-10-09T10:13:33Z")
> [@WalterBishop](#): > > […] raising it every year to the point where eighteen year olds will be telling 60 year olds they’re too young to buy a pack of Marlboros is quite another. I can’t imagine anyone complying with the latter. If nothing else, they’d just be too embarrassed. I don’t see what’s embarrassing about it. As a teenager working retail, I often had to tell entitled old geezers, er, elderly customers, that they weren’t allowed to do something they were trying to do. I’m sure every teenage retail worker has had the same experience. “Excuse me ma’am, this is the express checkout, I can’t ring up your cartfull of groceries here.” “I’m sorry sir, but this coupon has expired, I can’t give you the discount you’re requesting on this item.” It’s not really a big step from there to “I’m sorry sir/ma’am, but according to the date on your ID, I’m not allowed to sell these cigarettes to you.” Honestly, I think teenage retail workers would probably have a field day snickering at the pathetic old geezers unsuccessfully trying to fake them out on an underage cigarette purchase. Not expecting a lot of embarrassment there. Now, if what you’re saying is that the geezers themselves would be too embarrassed to try conning a teenage clerk into an under-age tobacco product sale, you might be right. But from the point of view of the anti-smoking policy aims, that’s a win, right? ---
**Author:** ![WalterBishop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/aeb1de/32.png) [@WalterBishop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WalterBishop)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2023, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/63 "2023-10-09T17:38:27Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Honestly, I think teenage retail workers would probably have a field day snickering at the pathetic old geezers unsuccessfully trying to fake them out on an underage cigarette purchase. Not expecting a lot of embarrassment there. Heh, you could well be right. All I have to go on is my time as a bartender when I was in my early 20s. I hated carding people with a passion, and the people I was carding were almost always obviously under 21 and probably couldn’t be trusted to drink responsibly. If I had to card folks my dad’s age for _cigarettes_ I think I’d just hide under the counter until they’d gone away 😄 ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/64 "2023-10-10T00:34:36Z")
The ban on smoking in public has been remarkably effective in generally reducing smoking. In my school, first came a ban on smoking in class. Then in corridors, but smoking in offices was allowed. Then it was pointed out that the air circulation system sent the smoke everywhere and there was a ban on smoking inside and also less than 9 meters from any entrance. (Why 9, I still don’t know.) They erected ashtrays 9 meters from each building entrance and you would see a bunch of people smoking at break time around that ashtray. Even when it was -30 C. Then they finally banned it everywhere on campus and removed the ashtrays. I assume a few people continued to smoke but I believe many of them took the attitude that if they were going to suffer all day every day for want of a nicotine fix it might be worth to concentrate all the suffering into a few months and also save a boatload of money. As I mentioned above, my condo bans smoking, even on balconies. I do see a few smokers on the street, but very few and it always astonishes me. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/65 "2023-10-10T00:58:48Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > (Why 9, I still don’t know.) I suspect, although cannot prove, that it ties into conversion from Imperial (ie FAIL) units. 9 meters is very close to 30 feet (29.53ft to be more precise) which is the distance used in most USA based smoking requirements. I’m a bit too worn out today to go searching, but I bet some of the original research was done in papers using feet as guidelines, and that distance was just the direct conversion from fail-units. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/66 "2023-10-10T02:22:24Z")
> [@WalterBishop](#): > > All I have to go on is my time as a bartender when I was in my early 20s. I hated carding people with a passion, and the people I was carding were almost always obviously under 21 and probably couldn’t be trusted to drink responsibly. If I had to card folks my dad’s age for _cigarettes_ I think I’d just hide under the counter until they’d gone away 😄 Not to worry, we old geezers notoriously [kinda like being carded](https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1973/08/24) due to the implication that other people think (or are pretending to think, at least) that we’re younger than we are! 😜 ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/67 "2023-10-10T07:57:31Z")
Much the same happened in the hospital where I worked. First - no smoking in wards (and that was forty years ago). Then it was extended to all public areas apart from the restaurant. In 07, when the general ban came in, you had to get through a small crowd of smokers at the main entrance to get into the building. Some were staff, but many were patients, some with IVs connected. Finally, smoking was banned throughout the whole site. The non-smokers in offices resented the fact that smokers would frequently leave their desks to go for a smoke. In some places, they were required to clock off or sign out and had pay deducted during their absence. I read of a situation where people started ostentatiously spraying air freshener around when a smoker came into the office. ---
**Author:** ![WhyKickAMooCow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9fc29f/32.png) [@WhyKickAMooCow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyKickAMooCow)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/68 "2023-10-10T09:54:00Z")
1. thin end of the wedge, what other stuff will they outlaw in the future 2. banning things does not cure or educate, it just causes resentment ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/69 "2023-10-10T10:07:46Z")
> [@WhyKickAMooCow](#): > > banning things does not cure or educate, it just causes resentment Nah, it also raises the effort threshold for people to keep engaging in the banned activity. As many posters in this thread have described, banning smoking in public places (and charging extra for smoking-permitted rooms in hotels, etc.) has had a significant impact in decreasing the number of smokers. Maybe it hasn’t directly cured people of smoking in and of itself, and it certainly has generated some resentment among smokers. But it has also resulted in more people quitting smoking and fewer people developing the smoking habit in the first place. Bans can be very beneficial like that. As for your slippery-slope argument of “what other stuff will they outlaw in the future”, it doesn’t have much merit. Smoking bans were a predictable outcome because non-smokers, a sizeable majority, didn’t like being forced to breathe other people’s smoke in public places. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/70 "2023-10-10T20:54:36Z")
When I was working door, it was bar policy to card everyone, even greybeards who turned twenty one in the early seventies. I thought it was ridiculous, but what could I do. My manager said inspectors would bust you if you didn’t check. I didn’t and don’t believe him, but I did the job. People were pissed. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/71 "2023-10-10T20:58:32Z")
> [@WhyKickAMooCow](#): > > thin end of the wedge, what other stuff will they outlaw in the future Slippery slope fallacy. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/72 "2023-10-10T21:10:30Z")
Maybe we can outlaw fallacious thinking? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2023, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/73 "2023-10-10T21:56:15Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Slippery slope fallacy. It’s not what will they ban in the future, rather what have they banned in the past and how well did that work? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/74 "2023-10-11T00:03:52Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > It’s not what will they ban in the future, rather what have they banned in the past and how well did that work? Sure, but as i said in an earlier post, you cant compare this to Prohibition. Nor the war on drugs. ---
**Author:** ![WhyKickAMooCow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9fc29f/32.png) [@WhyKickAMooCow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyKickAMooCow)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/75 "2023-10-11T10:43:09Z")
Well I’m glad you all trust your governments implicitly to look out for your best interests. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/76 "2023-10-11T11:05:28Z")
:rolleyes: Excluded middle much? It’s not like there are no other choices besides a) reflexively rejecting any ban on anything based on mindless paranoiac fears of a slippery slope, and b) blindly relying on implicit trust in government always to do everything right. The reason I support public smoking bans isn’t because I trust my government “implicitly” always to make the right choice, which would indeed be a stupidly naive attitude. It’s because I’ve seen the data on the positive impacts that this particular type of ban of this particular substance has, and I agree that the positive impacts outweigh the negative ones. (Also, I like not being forced to breathe other people’s tobacco smoke in public places, which ISTM is a very reasonable demand on the part of non-smokers.) If you can’t rebut an opposing argument without first replacing it by a total strawman, that’s a sign that your argument isn’t very good. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/77 "2023-10-11T16:18:29Z")
If my government consistently fails to look after my “best interest”, I have an opportunity, every four years or so, to join with all my countrymen and swap them for an alternative. Of course, over here, the losers swiftly pack their belongings and bugger off. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/78 "2023-10-11T16:20:48Z")
> [@FluffyBob](#): > > I don’t think tobacco crosses that line. In the US alone, smoking related illnesses costs society more than $300 billion annually, mostly in the form of medical care. And in the US more than 480,000 deaths annually are attributed to smoking related illnesses. This is compared to about 48,000 annual deaths from guns, which includes suicides. Smoking is a much bigger problem than guns. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/79 "2023-10-11T16:43:22Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > in the US more than 480,000 deaths annually are attributed to smoking related illnesses. How many of those 480,000 people would have never died had they not smoked? ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140/80 "2023-10-11T17:30:22Z")
By that logic there’s no point to any medical treatment. We’re all going to die anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smoking-age/991140.md?page=5)