What's Worse Than Raising The Federal Smoking Age To 21? Forcing States To Do The Same As Well

There are a number of federal Tobacco 21 bills competing in Congress right now.  But the one that Big Tobacco and their shill Mitch McConnell both want, the Tobacco-Free Youth Act, would not only raise the federal tobacco and vape sale age from 18 to 21 (thus amending the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009), but also force states to raise their own legal sale age limit for tobacco and vaping products to 21 by changing "18" to "21" in the 1992 Synar Amendment as well.  Such coercion in the latter would revoke a portion of federal substance abuse prevention grants from states that choose to keep their age limits below 21, something that has been academic since 1993 (when all states raised their age limits to at least 18 to satisfy the Synar Amendment as written).  Sound familiar?  In 2000 the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional since back then the FDA did not have legal authority over tobacco, the FDA now does, so any new challenge would have to be one that would also attack the federal drinking age coercion in the 1980s, whether on Tenth Amendment grounds or substantive due process / equal protection under the 14th Amendment.  (Such a challenge may be the only silver lining, assuming both get overturned as a result.)

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  And the odd thing is, if the federal age limit is raised to 21, coercing the states to do so is redundant at best, and counterproductive (for the feds, that is) since it opens the federal government up to legal challenges, and also makes it easy for Big Tobacco to extract special favors from states by giving them an unnecessary bargaining chip to play with.  And this flaw seems very likely to be deliberate.  So in their zeal to raise the smoking age to 21, the anti-tobacco movement becomes strange bedfellows with Big Tobacco.

Seriously.   Let that sink in.  And by the way, threatening to withhold substance abuse prevention grants from states as a cudgel during the opioid crisis is every bit as base and cowardly (if not even more so) as withholding federal highway funding while our infrastructure is rapidly decaying and crumbling.

All of these Tobacco 21 bills need to be vigorously fought against, period.  If any of these happen to pass, another little piece of America as we know it will die, and 21 will become the new 18 in so many other ways as well.  And then it would be only a matter of time before it becomes 25, and so on.

UPDATE:  Looks like as of June 26th, the bill advanced out of committee, and they apparently scrapped the part about forcing states to raise their own age limits for tobacco/vaping products.  But the bill still stinks to high heaven regardless, albeit slightly less.