This is surprisingly difficult for me to research. Apparently, the smoking age is, or was, 16 in some parts of the Commonwealth, so that’s dominating a lot of my searches.
I have been speaking with someone from Montana who smoked from age eight until her thirties, and she said she seems to recall that the smoking age in the early 1960s, when she was eight, may have been 16. Or not. Perhaps. See where this is going? Marginal memory coupled with marginal research skills have failed, so I turn to the Dope.
I am only 32 and minimum smoking ages seem to be a pretty recent phenomena even in terms of my lifetime.
I don’t smoke anymore but I did when I was a teenager in Louisiana in the 1980’s/early 1990’s. There wasn’t ANY smoking age when I started at 15 and that was common at least for the region. We could buy cigarettes and smoke our lungs black as soon as we got the money. The debates to enforce an 18 year smoking age were recent and heated and I remember student smoking sections in high schools all over the country. I was a cashier in high school and I freely sold cigarettes to anyone including young kids (who said they were buying them for their parents usually).
I would be suprised if there was a smoking age at all back then.
Here is a link (small PDF) listing smoking ages in 1990 and 1992 for the states. It says there were no limits in Montata (but maybe that was some error of omission).
Dunno about the US, but in Canada there was no minimum smoking age 'til (IIRC) 1989, when legislation to regulate the sale of cigarettes to minors was passed. At that time the minimum age was 18. (I recall this quite clearly because at the time the law passed I was still a couple of months away from my 18th birthday and kept worrying I’d get carded whenever I went to buy a pack)
When everyone is referring to minimum smoking ages, are you referring to the minimum age at which you can legally purchase cigarettes, or the minimum age that you can be in possession of cigarettes?
Are there laws against posession of cigarettes by minors? In Canada it is not unlawful to have them – it’s not even unlawful to buy them, it is only unlawful to sell them to minors.
Wow – so a minor could be charged with (misdemeanor?) posession of tobacco if caught on the street? Is it similar to the laws governing alcohol or considered a controlled substance?
Thanks Gfactor. Apparently there is no legal ramifications for a minor in possession of cigarettes in the state of New Jersey . I always wondered what the rationale behind this type of legislation was.
I don’t recall any minimum age in 1950’s Ohio. The big caution then, was that smoking would affect your performance at sports and the coaches would drop you if you were caught, beyond that there wasn’t much public disapproval. My Dad smoked, my Mother did not, but both tried to stop me. About 1955 my Dad offered me $100.00 to buy a car I wanted, a 36 Ford 2dr., if I would agree to quit. Of course I jumped at it, but within a couple weeks I was back to smoking. I still feel guilty for not keeping my word to him. That was about a week’s pay for him at the time.
You must remember that cigarette machines were ubiquitous until pressure built to remove them. I don’t think that was effective until the 80’s.
In California the minimum age to buy tobacco products is 18, and AFAIK has been for a very long time. At least it was when I was in college, but I never once got asked to show my ID.
At my high school, in about 1974, a Senior Smoking Area was established for those seniors who wanted to indulge during the lunch hour. That’s a remarkable difference from today when nobody is allowed to smoke, neither students nor teachers.
Well, this has been an interesting thread so far. I’ve never given much thought or attention to laws affecting drug users, so all of this is very new to me. Thanks for the responses so far.
