This seems like it happened pretty swiftly. Hadn’t heard a peep about it.
That day has come and gone. California is dominant in the adult industry. The smoking age has been 21 there for a couple years.
they can follow the alcohol idea and pass another law cutting health funding to states that don’t raise their age to 21.
Whats the real reason they’re doing this? I thought it was to protect the tobacco companies from lawsuits somehow.
Smoking age in Indiana was 18 until recently. Also you can buy guns here.
So people from IL could come here and buy cigarettes (which have lower taxes and a younger purchase age) as well as guns, then we’d buy our weed from Illinois. The miracle of economics.
Here in NC for a long time smoke taxes were very low and a lot of NC places along I-95 and I-85 made a killing on sales. The NC taxes are no longer very low but still a little lower than many other states so those stores along the interstates are mostly gone now.
IIRC, in recent years tobacco companies have been focusing their efforts outside the U.S. - 80% of all cigarettes are consumed in third-world countries, with China alone smoking 10 times as many cigarettes as the U.S. [Cite]. Maybe they simply don’t care about the U.S. market that much any more.
Since the 1968 GCA, it’s been illegal to buy handguns from a gun store in a different state, and all long gun sales have to confirm to the laws of both the state the store is in and the state the purchaser resides in. So this doesn’t actually work legally, and is something that both the ATF and IL have arrested people for before.
Also US tobacco farmers are no longer guaranteed a price for their crop. It’s a free market now so there are less tobacco farmers.
FDA just banned fruit and mint flavored vaping cartridges
Congress forced states to set minimum sale age at 18 with section 1926 of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration Reorganization Act of 1991 (106 Stat 394, p. 72 of PDF; codified under 42 U.S.C. 300x-26).
This section of law is amended by division N section 604 of H.R.1865, by striking “18” and inserting “21”, among other things.
~Max
My area has just raised the legal cannabis age to 21. I think the smoking and drinking ages are still at 18.
Interesting. So it looks like they did both. They outlawed it federally which takes effect immediately and have also blackmailed the states ala the drinking age method by giving a three year window in which states must change their legal purchase ages to 21.
Instead of highway funding they have tied it to substance abuse grants. That seems forced. Yes, nicotine addiction is certainly an addiction but not one that has the societal effects of heroin or even alcohol.
Let’s hope that Thomas, Gorsuch, et al find a renewed commitment to states rights after the feds just don’t get the message. I’m ashamed of the Republicans in the Senate who voted for this as I thought we were the party of federalism. I guess not.
How do the Cigarette Vending Machines card customers? :):dubious:
Is this just for tobacco products? Can 18-to-20-year-olds buy nicotine patches? Quit kits?
A federal made them illegal except in businesses like bars that already restricted access to people under 18. They’ll have to update that law to enforce the new one, which they won’t be doing anyway unless state level laws are enacted. At least I hope they’re not spending my tax dollars on the FBI investigating a mini-mart for selling cigarettes to a 20 year old.
It does have some visible effects if you tune in: around here a typical gas-station robbery was "all the money you have in the cash register and a carton of Marlboro Reds’. Committed by someone in nicotine withdrawal and not enough money to buy cigarettes.
That’s funny 
and sad 
~Max
Well if they REALLY wanted to ban all smoking, why not make it totally illegal? It worked really well for alcohol in the 1920’s!