Case Closed: Tobacco 21 Laws Don't Work

The latest study of Tobacco 21 laws shows they were a resounding....DUD in terms or reducing young adult smoking, vaping, or smokeless tobacco use rates in the USA.  Being published in a famously anti-tobacco journal, Tobacco Control, the authors of course wanted to put a positive spin on it though nonetheless, as shown below (emphasis ours):  

Results Although we did not find evidence that state T21 laws were associated with cigarette, smokeless tobacco or ENDS [i.e. vapes] use overall, the federal T21 law was associated with lower use of all three tobacco products by 0.39–0.92 percentage points. State flavour restrictions were associated with lower use of cigarettes by 0.68 (−1.27 to –0.09) and ENDS by 0.56 (−1.11 to –0.00) percentage points, but not with smokeless tobacco. A three-way interaction revealed that state and federal T21 laws together were associated with a lower prevalence of ENDS use among 18–20 years, but there were no differences in cigarette use from both policies combined versus either alone.

Conclusion State and federal T21 laws are broadly effective at reducing adult tobacco use, while state flavour restrictions specifically lower use of cigarettes and ENDS.

Got that? The state level laws were useless, period, but the federal Tobacco 21 law passed in December 2019 was somehow "broadly effective" because it appeared to trivially reduce tobacco/nicotine product use by not even a full percentage point.  Never mind that that latter was not enforced until well into 2020, enforcement still remained spotty for a while, and that its passage coincided with two major confounds:  1) the EVALI (vaping illness) outbreak that, while clearly due to adulterated black market THC vape products, was fearmongered by the mainstream media to include all vape products, and 2) the COVID-19 pandemic that, for better or worse, seemed to discourage smoking and encourage quitting, since many people feared that smoking made them more vulnerable to the virus.  But no, it HAD to be due to the Tobacco 21 law, because reasons.  Or something. 

Even flavor restrictions were more effective than Tobacco 21 laws!

So how many IQ points did YOU lose from the mental gymnastics of reading all for the above quoted article abstract beyond the stuff in bold?  The study was behind a paywall of course, so we couldn't delve further into it, granted.  But even a cursory reading of the abstract shows that the Tobacco 21 laws are a joke, and not a very funny one at that.  And worse, it may have even driven some young vapers (back) to smoking, which would clearly be a net public health loss.  But try convincing the zealots of that!

These unimpressive findings dovetail nicely with other studies as well.  As for whether raising the tobacco/nicotine age limit from 18 to 21 reduces the use of such products among people under 18, the evidence for that is very weak and mixed at best.

As for the few previous studies that did appear to find statistically and practically significant effects from the Tobacco 21 laws, those apparent results are most likely a result of short-term effects as well as an artifact of confounders like cigarette tax hikes.  

(Cigarette tax hikes, which mean higher prices, are in fact one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to reduce smoking at the population level, though they still have their limits of course.  And while they may be classist, at least they are not ageist, and they don't blatantly violate anyone's civil rights.)

Regardless, even if Tobacco 21 laws were ever proven to be effective, Twenty-One Debunked would still oppose them on principle, as we believe that in a free society worthy of the name, civil rights inherently supersedes "public health".  That is true in regards to tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, or anything else.  

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  A few older studies have found modest but significant decreases in retail tobacco sales following the raising of the smoking age to 21 in early adopter states like California and Hawaii.  And another study found no change in overall ever or current smoking among California 18-20 year olds, but did find a modest decrease in daily smoking among that age group relative to 21-23 year olds (whose daily smoking actually increased three years later) in the same state.  This of course echoes Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) as well as Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), Males (1986), and Dee and Evans (2001) in regards to the 21 drinking age.  That is, endogeneity, early-adopter effects, short-term effects, and seesaw/delay effects all appear to be at play here.  The supposed miracle turned out to be a mirage all along, in other words.  Thus, especially in light of the most recent study discussed in this article, there were really no benefits that cannot be alternatively achieved with higher cigarette taxes and/or better enforcement of the previous 18 age limit, and if anything the 21 age limit appears to be counterproductive in the long run.

UPDATE 2:  Even the CDC's very own 2022 study found mixed and ambiguous effects of Tobacco 21 laws, and such effects sometimes even appeared to differ by race as well (in favor of whites, with null or even perverse effects on young people of color).  Oops!

UPDATE 3:  Another recent study found that while self-reported teen smoking and vaping rates declined after Tobacco 21 laws, biomarker exposure showed mixed evidence at best, implying that fewer young smokers are identifying as smokers (and similar findings for vaping).  Thus, the supposed reductions in smoking and vaping in surveys and sales data are at least largely an artifact of underreporting and cross-border shopping rather than real reductions.  Oops!

What To Do About Lockdown-Induced Arrested Or Delayed Development?

Four years after the official start of the pandemic, two years after practically all restrictions were lifted, and roughly one year after it was declared to be over, the consequences of the lockdowns, quarantines, school closures, mask mandates, and other restrictions can still be seen in its aftermath long after these restrictions were lifted.  This is especially true among children and young people, whose development has been delayed, stunted, or arrested as a result.

It is a truly massive elephant in the room!

Now, the temptation would be to knee-jerkedly raise age limits for various things in response to this, up to and including even the age of majority itself.  You know some people want to.  But that would only exacerbate such developmental delays in practice by kicking the can even further down the road.  The specious idea that "kids today are infantilized, so let's infantilize them even further, because reasons" is absolutely insane.  If anything, we should be doing the opposite and lowering or even abolishing various age limits (within reason), and giving young people a megadose of independence.  That is, go "straight from zero to the Fourth of July", like the song by the band The Killers says, in both the real AND virtual worlds, and certainly no later than age 16.  And at the very, very least, seriously, let's NOT add any more restrictions whatsoever on the already most heavily monitored and (in many ways) restricted generation of children and teens in all of recorded history.

Infancy cannot be re-run.  Childhood cannot be re-run.  And, try as so many adults may, adolescence cannot be re-run either.  The best thing to do is to build a time machine and go back to March 2020 and make it so the lockdowns, school closures, etc. never happened, and that we adopted the "flu strategy" per the original pandemic plan from the get-go per the wisdom of the ages.  Failing that, the second best thing is to rectify things as best we can, yesterday.

The latest attempts to abruptly restrict or revoke teens' access to the virtual world will leave a "social media-shaped hole" in the lives of millions that will most likely NOT be filled with anything good. And after decades of gradually restricting and reducing their access to the real world, it would be a bait-and-switch to disingenuously claim that children and teens will now all of sudden be given more access to the real world in order to fill the void.  Most likely, they will lose access to both the real AND virtual worlds, and increased access to the real world will NOT be forthcoming for a while.

True, the virtual world is no substitute for the real world, as we have all learned the hard way during lockdown.  But as renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males says, "The dangers of both the virtual and real worlds have been wildly exaggerated. Teens don’t need more restrictions."  Truer words have never been spoken.

And will today's youngest generations, and future generations, ever forgive us?

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  What would be a good shorthand to describe what needs to be done?  Twenty-One Debunked thinks we should call it the "Reverse Icelandic Model", that is, the reverse of the vaunted Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM).  When the pandemic and related restrictions and isolation intersected with the existing IPM that had been in place for two decades, it really did a number on the mental health of young people in Iceland.

One Silver Lining Of The Pandemic And Its Aftermath

Four years after the pandemic began, and roughly one year after the very last traces of the illiberal restrictions have been removed, one can observe that one particular and very platitudinous phrase seems to have vanished entirely from our lexicon.  It was a phrase that long predated the pandemic, and first became common about 40 years ago, which was used to cover any number of illiberal policies, most notably the 21 drinking age.  So what is it?

"If it saves even ONE life, it's worth it"

Those nine words have clearly been a very, very slippery slope towards totalitarianism, which really came to a head during the pandemic.  And both sides of the lockdown and mandates debate have since given that idea up for the time being recently.  Thus, we may actually have a chance temporarily to finally end other illiberal policies like the 21 drinking age and similar abominations.  Pendulum Theory can therefore be used to our advantage. 

Better thing to replace it with:  "Safety Third".  So what's first and second then?  Liberty and justice for all, not necessarily in that order.

What are we waiting for?

Cannabis Use Associated With DECREASED Covid Severity

Two and a half years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, our unofficial working theory was finally confirmed:  cannabis use was recently found in a new study to be associated with decreased Covid severity, contrary to what some pundits have claimed.  Remember, our own theory was that that was why states (such as Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, DC, Alaska, and the entire West Coast) and countries (Canada, Netherlands, and Uruguay) with at least de facto legalized recreational cannabis (as of January 2020) saw lower Covid-related death rates compared to places where cannabis was not yet (if ever) fully legal for recreational use by early 2020, and especially when compared to their neighbors.

Some exceptions are Michigan, Illinois, and Nevada, of course.  Those states did not do very well with Covid despite cannabis legalization in place by 2020, but the first two were latecomers with relatively delayed implementation of their legalization.  And the Netherlands, contrary to popular opinion, does not have full legalization, but rather a quasi-legalization scheme where, as the locals there would say, "the front door is legal but the back door is illegal".

But overall, it seems our theory panned out quite nicely.  Even when looking simply at cannabis use rates, rather than legalization, a similar pattern emerges overall.  Think the Southern US states vs Northern states, or Easten Europe vs Western Europe, or even Sweden vs. Denmark to some extent.

Game. Set. Match.  Any questions?

Stop Scapegoating Kids And Teens For Adult Problems!

 The following Tweet basically says it all:

As renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males has repeated noted, it seems to be a great American pastime to scapegoat kids and teens for adult problems.  Alas, COVID seems to be no different in that regard.  One thing European countries generally haven't done is force kids under age 12 or so to wear face masks, even in countries where adults are required to.  Whereas while American adults generally have more freedom than their European counterparts now (aside from Sweden and a few other countries), there are many places in the USA (even some parts of Florida where school administrators are openly defying their governor) where kids as young as TWO are forced to wear masks AND (anti)socially distance in school and sometimes even in daycare too.  The USA is one of vanishingly few countries who currently does so, and also one of vanishingly few countries that is in such a hurry to vaccinate kids under 18, let alone kids under 12.  Even 18 months into the pandemic. schools and even colleges are becoming increasingly prison-like these days--and yes, even for those who got "baptized" with the magic vaccine.

That is of course very reminiscent of how alcohol is treated:  the USA has a drinking age of 21 and strictly enforced (with the young drinkers themselves targeted disproportionately for punishment), low alcohol taxes, and relatively lax DUI laws for adults by international standards (even if stricter than in the past).  And alcohol is routinely used as an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behavior.  Meanwhile, most European countries set their drinking ages at 18 or less (and often not even enforced), while alcohol taxes are higher and DUI laws are a lot stricter on average for all ages.  And alcohol is far less likely to be accepted as an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behavior.

And in both cases, defenders of the status quo smugly claim that "Europeans may be able to handle more freedom, but Americans can't."  Because reasons.  All without seeing the irony in literally implying that Americans are inferior to Europeans!  

We at Twenty-One Debunked of course support lowering the drinking age to 18, while also raising alcohol taxes and toughening DUI laws for all ages.  And when it comes to COVID, we believe it is long past time to end all restrictions for all ages, period, regardless of vaccination status.  These restrictions were originally supposed to be short-term measures to "flatten the curve", that is, to merely delay infections a few weeks to avoid catastrophically overwhelming hospitals and buy more time. That's it, that's all these measures are capable of doing.  Beyond that, they are all pain and no gain.  Then the powers that be decided to move the goalposts repeatedly, and as they say, the rest is history...

Imagine the counterfactual where young people were the ones in charge.  By March 2020, or perhaps even February, imagine if young people decided to "ground" their parents and grandparents just for a few weeks to protect them from the virus, while young people were free to live life as normal, partying and all.  Raves, keggers, and even cruises would continue at least for everyone under 30 or 35.  Schools and colleges would be as wide open as the rest of the economy and society.  And instead of discharging contagious COVID patients back into nursing homes, we actually got serious about protecting their vulnerable residents.  And instead of putting all "nonessential" workers of all ages on the public dole for 18 months, imagine if they took that money and instead used it to pay for a voluntary three to six month sabbatical for any workers who were over the age of 60 and/or immunocompromised or with otherwise serious underlying conditions.  And we made any and all promising early treatments and prophylaxis readily available to all from the start.  And we otherwise let the virus rip, which the virus kinda did anyway under lockdown albeit slower and more painfully.  How many lives could have been saved that way?  I think we already know the answer by now.  And herd immunity would have been reached well before the vaccines were launched.

This disgusting perversion of American Exceptionalism needs to end.  Yesterday.  Seriously ageists, KNOCK IT OFF!  The song "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd comes to mind.

Is There Really Any Link Between Vaping And COVID?

Is there really any link between vaping and COVID?  Most likely not, according the results of the largest study on the matter to date.  That study, done by the Mayo Clinic, found literally no correlation between vaping and being diagnosed with COVID.  And of course, the MSM was predictably crickets about that.

Not only that, they found that current combustible cigarette smokers were at a lower risk of contracting the virus.  That latter finding is rather puzzling until you consider something a bit esoteric that is frequently pointed out by Dr. Dmitry Kats:  some of the nicotine in tobacco, upon combustion (and also in the liver to a degree), turns into nicotinic acid, better known as Niacin (Vitamin B3) which he notes seems to really work wonders in curing and preventing COVID.  To achieve this same benefit without putting one's lungs in jeopardy, it would be better to simply take niacin directly, at least 500 mg at a time, along with cofactors Vitamin C (which gets depleted by smoking), Vitamin D, zinc, quercetin, thiamine (which also gets blocked by nicotine), B-12, magnesium, selenium, melatonin, and the amino acid lysine.  

So why did a previous smaller study seem to find that (younger) vapers were more likely to get COVID than non-vapers?  Well, smaller sample size can magnify any biases and confounders in a study, and one obvious bias is that younger vapers often share devices, which can clearly spread the virus.  They may also be more likely to attend parties that can turn into superspreader events.  But the act of vaping itself, while not exactly the healthiest habit in the world, does not appear to be directly causally linked to an increased risk of contracting the disease. 

Interestingly, even that previous smaller study of teens and young adults only found a correlation with "ever used" vape products, but NO correlation with recent use.  That is a rather strange finding for a study that purports to show a causal link to vaping.

As for the theory that people who got that mysterious vaping illness EVALI in 2019 and early 2020 were at greater risk of COVID later on, that may very well be true.  But we know now that it was primarily the result of black market THC (i.e. cannabis) vape products adulterated with questionable additives, most notably Vitamin E acetate.  And it is very telling that states where cannabis was legal for recreational sale in 2019 saw not only fewer per capita cases of EVALI than states where it was not, but also fewer COVID deaths as well.  Ditto for countries where cannabis was and still is fully legal (Canada, Uruguay) as well as where it is de facto legal (Netherlands) compared to their neighbors where it was not.  Thus, the lingering subtle lung damage from using tainted vapes several months prior may very well increase one's susceptibility to severe and fatal COVID, meaning that the cannabis prohibitionists whose policies created these black markets may have even way more blood on their hands than we thought.

But legal and untainted vape products, whether nicotine, cannabis, or otherwise?  The evidence that they significantly increase the risk of COVID simply isn't there, period.  Another myth bites the dust.

The No-Brainer Solution To The College Question (2021 Edition)

Last August, Twenty-One Debunked had argued that colleges and universities should reopen with minimal restrictions for the most part.  And guess what, we still do, with even fewer restrictions still.  

This time around, that means:

No vaccine mandates or "passports" for anyone 

No mask mandates for anyone 

No testing mandates, except perhaps a rapid test for students upon initial arrival on campus and before and after long holiday breaks, as well as perhaps for certain employees 

No quarantines for anyone unless testing positive and/or showing symptoms 

No prison-like rules or conditions 

No six-foot antisocial distancing rules (at least not outside the classroom)

No public or private gathering bans (ok, maybe a Rule of 500 if you really wanna be anal about it)

No closures or class cancellations lasting more than a few days, if even that

No kicking students out of dorms en masse to be sent home to infect their parents/grandparents 

All classes in-person full-time (unless students choose otherwise)

100% capacity 

PERIOD

And, of course, lower the drinking age to 18, along with the smoking and toking age too.  Or at the very least, treat it as such de facto if not officially.

Let America Be America Again!

'Nuff said

UPDATE 1:  The Tweet below is precisely what we do NOT want to see.  EVER AGAIN.

Ironically, their neighbor "Zoo Mass" sounds like LESS of a zoo in comparison.  As for K-12 schools, once again Sweden still has the right idea overall:

I mean, Team Reality has only been saying exactly this for the past 18 months, right?

UPDATE 2:  As of the end of September, it looks like many if not most colleges in the USA, from state schools all the way to Ivy League schools are NOT heeding our advice one bit.  Even ones with a 100% vaccination rate (!) due to mandates seem to have the craziest rules that would make Orwell himself blush!  These overpriced gilded cage wannabe prisons need to be boycotted at once, as that is the only way to get them to stop this insanity for good.  Honestly, if you can't find a college that offers even a near-normal college experience after 18 months of this madness, perhaps you should take a gap year (or two or three as the case may be) until you can find one.

The Logical Conclusion Of Social Host Liability Laws

We at Twenty-One Debunked have a long history of opposing the ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age and all of its ancillary laws, especially social host liability laws where hosts are liable for any harm that guests cause after leaving the premises after consuming alcohol, DUI or otherwise.  We have always considered such laws to be an affront to personal liberty and especially its flip side, personal responsibility, and also believe that such laws have a chilling effect on social interactions and community in general.  Even if these laws briefly had some merit at one time, that train has long since left the station.

And now, just like we predicted but did not say out loud for fear of giving the authoritarians any ideas, some mainstream news outlets are claiming that, in Canada of all places, the same logic can be applied to hosts whose guests inadvertently contract COVID on their premises.  Of course, the legal basis for this assertion is flimsy at best, never been tested, and it is practically impossible to prove who gave such a widespread virus to whom.  But alas the Overton window has a way of shifting unexpectedly, as we have learned repeatedly, and new precedents can be conjured out of thin air at least for a time.  

And clearly the authors of this idea seem to be inspired by social host liability for alcohol, as they mention such laws almost in the same breath as well.  They should really be careful what they wish for!  Especially in our notoriously overly litigious society, much more than Canada.  What next, how about if the guest goes on to infect someone who infects someone who infects someone who dies and/or (in the USA) gets a six or seven figure hospital bill?  How many degrees of separation before the host is no longer liable?  What about the flu or other infections?  Slopes are indeed much slipperier than they appear.

Such nascent precedents must absolutely be rejected and nipped in the bud before they begin, lest there be a permanent chilling effect on social interaction well beyond the end of the pandemic, with massive collateral damage.  The end of socialization portends the end of civilization, after all.  And any judge who enforces them needs to be removed from the bench at once, forever.  (At the very, very least!)

Interestingly, even for alcohol, the only two countries that have social host liability are the USA and Canada.  Even countries that have more of a "brother's keeper" and communitarian ethic simply do not have such laws or precedents.  One could argue that the USA in particular needs such laws to keep our hyper-individualism in check, but that is a circular argument and begging the question.  Kinda like, you know, the 21 drinking age itself.

The Cruise Ship Solution For Herd Immunity

Or, "How To Turn Super-Spreaders into Super-Resistors"

It's a bit late in the game, but as they say, hindsight is 2020, pun intended.  

What if way back in March 2020, instead of imposing destructive and counterproductive lockdowns and mass quarantines, and grounding all cruise ships, we instead eschewed lockdowns, kept everything open, and actually offered totally FREE cruises (food and alcohol included) to anyone between the ages of 18-24 and perhaps even 25-34 year olds as well (but no one else) with no serious underlying conditions?  And if we also had the drinking age (and smoking/toking ages) on those cruises be set at 18 instead of 21?

Those are, of course, the age groups who are among the least likely to suffer severe illness or die from COVID-19, yet due to their high level of social connectedness (and of course partying) they are the most likely to spread it to others.  Giving them the chance to voluntarily take themselves "out of circulation" at sea for just a few months from the general population and far away from older and more vulnerable people (who are up to hundreds of times more likely to die from the virus) would speed up the inevitable transition to "herd immunity" while simultaneously protecting the vulnerable.

And for the love of all that is good, we should certainly NOT have closed colleges and kicked out the students, sending them home to go infect their parents and grandparents!  Maybe very briefly cancelling in-person classes, and isolating those students who were actually sick, but that's about it.  Otherwise, treat it like a flu or norovirus outbreak.

Net result is a much shorter pandemic and far fewer deaths, for a fraction of the cost of what we have been doing since March.  And without the massive collateral damage of lockdowns either.  Especially if we also recommended and provided everyone with the best treatment and prophylaxis (see here) that we know now would have worked wonders.

Again, hindsight is 2020.