Has the Tobacco 21 Movement Already Crested?

The ignoble experiment to raise the legal drinking age to 21 in the 1980s has generated much controversy despite the political and media pseudo-consensus favoring it, and we at Twenty-One Debunked have, well, debunked it time and again.  Of course, the data from the 1970s and 1980s on which nearly all drinking age studies are based are now quite outdated, as the USA is almost a completely different country now.  So what if there was a way to re-run this same natural experiment today?

Well, it turns out that there is, albeit with a different psychoactive substance:  Tobacco 21 laws have proliferated since 2012 and especially since 2015, mostly at the local level but increasingly at the state level as well (with Massachusetts being the most recent one to do so).  And what were the results?  A big nothing in terms of teen smoking rates, basically.  There has been essentially no hard evidence that there was any sort of correlation between a state's or locality's tobacco age limit vs. their teen smoking (or vaping) rate, period, regardless of whether it was 18 or 21 (or, less commonly, 19).  Thus, raising the age limit from 18 to 21 has been an unnecessarily ageist endeavor, and one can thus easily extrapolate these results to alcohol and cannabis going forward as well.

True, from 2013 to 2017, there was a massive drop in teen and young adult smoking.  But that was more likely due to the explosion of vaping during that time than any other factor, and happened in states in localities that kept their age limits at 18 all along as well as those who raised them.  Which, by the way, also debunks the laughable idea that vaping is somehow a "gateway" to combustible cigarettes--if anything, raising the age limit for e-cigarettes/vapes may even steer young people back towards combustible cigarettes according to some studies.

As for Chicago's supposed success story in terms of reduced smoking rates in the first year after hiking their age limit to 21 in 2016, note that Chicago also recently hiked their cigarette tax as well, to make their cigarettes some of the most expensive in the nation.  Pennsylvania also hiked their own cigarette tax while leaving their age limit at 18, and if anything Philadelphia has seen more progress in reducing teen smoking than Chicago from 2013-2017 according to the YRBSS.  Thus, no causal link has been proven.

And while the Tobacco 21 movement luurrrves to gloat about their very first victory in the Boston suburb of Needham, MA, they conveniently ignore another Boston suburb, Cohasset, where teen tobacco use actually increased in the year following enactment of their own local Tobacco 21 law.

Some may dismiss the relevance of tobacco age limits to alcohol (or cannabis), of course, but keep in mind that just a few years ago, Tobacco 21 advocates actually predicted that raising the age limit for tobacco to 21 would be more effective that raising the drinking age to 21 was in the 1980s.  Tobacco is far more addictive, which in economic terms means that while the short-run elasticity is lower than for alcohol (or cannabis), the long-run elasticity is higher than for these other substances.  And easy access to a daily or almost daily source is thought to be far more important for tobacco as well.  Thus, the failure of Tobacco 21 laws to have any meaningful impact on teen and young adult smoking rates would also apply a fortiori to alcohol and cannabis as well.

The Tobacco 21 movement now seems to be running out of steam, as their initial euphoria pinned on irrational exuberance is fading fast.  This year, only one state raised their smoking age to 21, compared with three states last year and two states in 2016, and fewer localities have changed their laws this year as well.  The momentum is almost completely gone now.

And the fact that Big Tobacco has now recently jumped on the Tobacco 21 bandwagon (yes, really), after at least feigning opposition at first, shows that the movement has jumped the proverbial shark, and is now tainted as well.  Strike three, yer out!

2018 is almost over, and the current 2010s decade is also almost over as well.  Let this be the time now to flush the idea of the 21 age limit (for any age-resticted product) down the toilet for good with all of the other dumb things from this despicable decade.

FDA and New York Take Aim at Flavored Vapes

After much saber-rattling with JUUL and other leading vape manufacturers, the FDA now plans to ban the sale of most flavored vape products (except mint and menthol) in retail stores and gas stations to reduce availability to young people.   Flavored vapes would only be allowed to be sold in vape shops and tobacco shops, and online sites with strict age verification measures.  New York State plans to go even further, banning the sale of flavored vapes entirely, much like San Francisco has already done.

Oh, and the FDA also apparently wants to ban menthol combustible cigarettes as well, because they are believed to be harder to quit than non-menthols (though that is probably due to their generally higher nicotine content, the harsher taste of which is masked by the menthol).  All other flavors have already been banned as of 2009.  This particular ban, however, will likely take much longer to finalize and longer still before it is actually enforced.

Twenty-One Debunked has mixed feelings about these bans.  On the one hand, they are in some ways still better than hiking the age limit to 21, and there is some truth to the idea that fruity flavors may make nicotine-containing vapes seem more benign than they actually are, increasing the likelihood of accidental addiction among young people.  On the other hand, these bans, though modest, can also be a slippery slope and even perhaps a boon to Big Tobacco.  So while we do not oppose these bans, we are still a bit wary about them nonetheless.

What would probably have the largest effect in terms of reducing the number of young people getting hooked on vaping is capping the maximum allowable nicotine content of vape products down to European and Israeli levels.  Over there, JUUL reduced their nicotine content so they can be sold in those markets, and such products remain effective smoking cessation devices with a somewhat lower likelihood of accidental addiction happening quickly  among young experimenters.  Meanwhile, in the USA, there is a joke that the unusually high-nicotine JUUL products sold here are kinda like the horror film The Ring: you will get hooked in seven days.  Not really far off the mark.

The best thing to stop the "epidemic" of teen vaping, of course, is to stop fanning the flames of moral panic.  After such modest bans like the ones discussed above are in place, hopefully the mainstream media will finally STFU about this supposed "epidemic".

UPDATE:  On November 13, 2018, JUUL announced that they will no longer restock any orders to retailers for any flavored vape pods other than tobacco or menthol, and will only continue selling them online to people 21 and older, and will also end all social media promotions as well.  So it looks like 18-20 year old vapers who prefer such flavors will need to stock up very fast at their local stores before they run out.

And as of November 15, the FDA will go ahead and pursue the aforementioned regulations.  The new regulations may not be fully implemented for months in the case of flavored vapes, and years in the case of menthol combustible cigarettes, but are essentially a foregone conclusion now.  Flavored vapes, except for mint, menthol, and tobacco, will only be sold in stores that do not allow people under 18 to enter or have separate sections that disallow people under 18. 

Thus, in their zeal to pre-empt regulators, it looks like JUUL is being unnecessarily ageist towards 18-20 year olds.  And why can't JUUL just offer a nicotine-free option for pods, and reduce their sky-high nicotine content in their current ones to European levels?

Smoking Tobacco May Actually Be Eradicated By 2030

Well, in the UK at least, particularly in England, according to a new report.  The British currently have the second lowest smoking rate in Europe after Sweden, and only slightly higher than the USA, and rapidly falling for the past several years.  And if current trends of the past five years continue, smoking rates will drop below 5% of the adult population (what researchers define as a "smoke-free" country) by 2030.  Given that nearly half of British adults smoked in the early 1970s, this is no small feat.

And the real kicker?  This is all happening without raising the smoking age to 21, as it is currently 18 (just like their drinking age) with no plans to hike it any further.  The Tobacco 21 fever currently sweeping the USA by storm simply hasn't caught on over on the other side of the Atlantic.  And unlike in the USA, there is no moral panic over vaping either.  If anything, Public Health England encourages current smokers to switch to vaping to help them quit.  These kinds of ageist American-style moral panics, with very few exceptions, are really quite foreign to them.

And come to think of it, after an initial boom in e-cigarettes for a few years, even vaping is now on the decline as well.   It appears that's what happens when you don't turn something like that into a media circus / moral panic / deviancy amplification spiral.

It is things like this that almost make us wish that Britain, our mother country, would just revoke America's hard-won (but subsequently squandered) independence.  (Tongue firmly in cheek, of course.)

Guess Who Now Openly Supports Tobacco 21 Laws? Go On, Guess...

Tobacco 21 laws, or laws that raise the age limit to buy tobacco products to 21, are unfortunately gaining popularity as a sort of "feel good" measure despite the relative dearth of evidence backing them up.  Well, now we can add a new name to the list of supporters:  Philip Morris Altria Group.  That's right, a company whose former name is literally synonymous with Big Tobacco now supports, whether grudgingly or otherwise, a smoking age of 21 (even at the federal level) despite at least feigning opposition just a few years ago followed by awkward silence on the topic.

So why the sudden turnaround?  Probably a cynical combination of public relations as well as the realization that raising the smoking age to 21 (compared to 18) in several states and localities did NOT really end up hurting their bottom lines after all.  And even more cynically, they can perhaps now leverage the arguably enhanced forbidden fruit effect to their own benefit, all while patting themselves on the back for their "corporate social responsibility".

(RALPH!)

You know, kinda like they did all along (to one degree or another) when the age limit was 18, and like the alcohol industry has done with the 21 drinking age.  Put up a public fight at first, take a dive, stay quiet for a few years, then publicly support the new laws while leveraging them (and simultaneously fighting against higher taxes or any new regulations).  Quislings.

Thus, it is safe to say that our cynicism is now fully maxed out.  And that really says something indeed.

Do Tobacco 21 Laws Really Work?

One preliminary study seems to think so about California's law that raised the age limit to buy tobacco and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21 as of June 9, 2016.  But the devil is really in the details.  The study did not, I repeat, did NOT, look at actual teen smoking rates, only the degree of retailer compliance as measured by decoys, which did in fact improve since then in terms of sales to people under 18.

The two problems with this logic are 1) it is not necessary to raise the age limit to 21 to discourage retailers from selling to people under 18, as simply better enforcement against scofflaw vendors would do the trick, and 2) survey data do not really show any decrease in teen smoking that can be unambiguously linked to the policy change, whether in California or elsewhere with a Tobacco 21 law.  Teen smoking dropped nationwide from 2015 to 2017, and while it dropped somewhat faster in California, keep in mind that California also raised their cigarette tax significantly during that time, by $2.00/pack, and Pennsylvania saw an even larger drop in teen smoking despite keeping the age limit 18 and a cigarette tax hike of $1.00/pack, only half as large.

As we have noted before based on survey data for the past few years, there is really no robust correlation between a state or local smoking age (whether 18, 19, or 21) and the teen (or adult) smoking rate.  The strongest predictors of both teen and adult smoking are the tax/price of cigarettes and the prevailing social attitudes towards smoking, and in fact prices seem to have a larger effect on young people than adults.  It is practically axiomatic.  Retailer compliance is also inversely correlated with smoking by people under 18, but again it has proven to be entirely possible achieve nearly 100% compliance without raising the smoking age any higher than 18, as long as there is the political will for it.  And it doesn't even require the criminal justice system at all, since the best tobacco-control success stories involved only administrative penalties (i.e. fines and/or tobacco license suspensions) against rogue vendors.  Nor does it require criminalizing young people themselves.

If anything, if NYC is any indication, retailer compliance actually deteriorated following their age limit hike from 18 to 21 in 2014.  This was in spite of heavy crackdowns against contraband tobacco during that time.  In any case, while teen smoking rates declined in NYC following the law change, they did not drop any faster than the rest of the state or the nation as a whole, in fact they declined at a slower rate in NYC compared with the control locations, and teen vaping actually increased despite the fact that the law applied equally to e-cigarettes as well as combustible cigarettes.  If that's "success", we would really hate to see what failure looks like.

And in fact, this also once again calls into question how effective the 21 drinking age (and now toking age in some states) is as well.  Spoiler alert:  not very.  Thus, if there is a silver lining to the recent hike in the smoking age to 21 in some states and localities, it is that re-running this same failed social experiment with a different age-restricted psychoactive substance only to see it fail yet again in more modern times, a fortiori, is probably the strongest evidence against the very concept of such ridiculously high age limits in general.  If you give the pro-21 crowd enough rope...

The Latest Moral Panic: Juuling in the Classroom

Those who are old enough to remember the 1973 song "Smokin' in the Boys' Room" by Brownsville Station (and/or it's 1985 Motley Crue cover version) would certainly remember that there was a whole lot of actual smoking going on in school or at least on school grounds back then.  Since then, in part because of the declining popularity of tobacco in general and in part due to today's stricter rules and laws governing smoking in and around schools, such conduct has declined considerably.

But now, there seems to be a new moral panic du jour taking hold lately:  Juuling.  What's that, you ask?  Well, JUUL is a fairly new brand of e-cigarette (vaping device) that was first launched in 2015 and really took off in 2017 in terms of popularity.  As for why it is so popular, it probably has something to do with the appealing fruity flavors and the fact that it is very easy to conceal since it literally looks just like a USB flash drive and doesn't smell like tobacco.  High school (and younger) students apparently even sometimes sneak using it in class, thus if one were to ever do an updated cover version of the aforementioned song for 2018, it might as well be called "Juuling in the Classroom".

So what should we make of all this?  First, don't panic, lest we continue to fuel a deviancy amplification spiral rather than let this fad burn out on its own.  The good news is that combustible tobacco consumption is now at a record low among young people, and still falling.  Vaping is actually rarely used by teens who have never also tried combustible cigarettes.  If anything, vaping in general (including, but not limited to, Juuling) is displacing combustible cigarettes on balance, and is significantly safer as well--perhaps even 95% safer by some estimates.  The bad news?  Vaping is, of course, not completely safe, as most vape juices (including all JUUL brand ones, even if its users don't realize it) do contain nicotine, which is highly addictive and is even a known neurotoxin, particularly for the developing early adolescent brain.  Other concerns include the relative lack of regulation as to how these things are made and what sort of contaminants may be lurking inside, but again, it still pales in comparison to the dangers of combustible tobacco cigarettes, which contain literally thousands of other nasty chemicals as well as nicotine, including many known carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens.  So insofar as vaping displaces smoking, it is a net win for public health.

Secondly, we should note that this apparent fad exists even in states and localities where the age limit is 21 for both smoking and vaping (or at least for buying these things), including New Jersey.  Thus, raising the age limit is unlikely to solve anything in that regard compared with keeping it 18 and enforcing it on vendors the same as with combustible tobacco products.  Keep in mind that until fairly recently there was no age limit at all for vaping devices and liquids/pods in many states and localities.

And finally, there are practical ways of reducing any potential harm from all of this:

• Regulate vaping devices and juices/pods the same as combustible cigarettes (but no stricter), and require strong quality control standards and testing
• Warning labels alerting users about the fact that they contain the addictive drug nicotine
• Tax nicotine-containing vape juices/pods by weight or volume adjusted for nicotine content (but much lower than combustible cigarettes)
• Increase the number of nicotine-free vape juices, particularly for Juul brand ones which currently lacks such options 
• Consider banning or phasing out any vape juices/pods that have fruity, floral, or any other non-neutral or non-tobacco-style flavors unless they are completely nicotine-free ones
• Educate the public, especially young people, on the truth about vaping, particularly with an eye towards preventing accidental addiction to something they may not even realize contains nicotine at all
• Social norms marketing to help defuse any deviancy amplification spiral

Most importantly, we need to see the forest for the trees, and stop tilting at windmills already. 

What Really Happened After Raising the Smoking Age to 21? (Updated)

In 2014, New York City became the first major city in the USA to raise the tobacco purchase age to 21.  Prior to that, it was 18, much like the rest of the country.   The law was passed by Mayor Bloomberg at the end of 2013, and it went into effect in May 2014.

Since then, five states (California and Hawaii in 2016, New Jersey in 2017, and Maine and Oregon in 2018) and Guam (2018) have also raised it to 21 and numerous counties and towns/cities did so as well from 2013-2018, though a few localities had also done so earlier as well.  When Needham, MA did so in 2005-2008, there was much praise from the pro-21 crowd when surveys showed that teen smoking rates had dropped much faster in Needham than in its surrounding communities (which were 18) from 2006-2010.  So it is very curious indeed that no one seems to be talking about what happened anywhere else since they raised their own smoking ages to 21.

We think we know why.  At first glance, it does appear to have had some effect.  According to the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), teen smoking rates did in fact drop from 2013 to 2015 in NYC:

2005   11.2%
2007   8.5%
2009   8.4%
2011   8.5%
2013   8.2%
2015   5.8%
2017   5.0%

Those are the percentages of combined 9-12 grade students who reported any current cigarette smoking in the past 30 days.  Looks impressive at first:  a relative 29% drop from 2013 to 2015.  But take a look at the same data for the nation as a whole, for comparison:

2005   23.0%
2007   20.0%
2009   19.5%
2011   18.1%
2013   15.7%
2015   10.8%
2017     8.8%

As you can see, the nation as a whole also saw a similar (if even faster) drop in teen smoking at the same time, with a relative 31% decrease from 2013 to 2015, despite no change in the smoking age in most places.  And the teen smoking rate in NYC was already much lower before the law change, having dropped more dramatically than the rest of the USA prior to 2007 and then remaining at a low level since.

How about San Francisco, another major city that raised its age limit to 21?

2005   10.9%
2007   8.0%
2009   10.4%
2011   10.7%
2013   7.5%
2015   5.4%
2017   4.7%

They also saw a similar size drop from 2013-2015, to the tune of 28% (vs. 29% in NYC and 31% in the USA overall).  Just one problem though.  San Francisco did not raise their smoking age until 2016, so these data show that the drop in the smoking rate happened while it was still 18, before the age limit was raised.  Thus, it would actually be part of the no-change control group, not the experimental group.  And if you include the decrease since 2011, San Francisco in fact saw more progress than NYC.  In fact, when we look at the 2017 data, we see that while the smoking rate continued to drop after San Francisco's age hike to 21 (and California's a month later), it seems to have dropped at a slower rate afterwards.

What about state-level data?  California's data from 2015 and 2017 show the following (the YRBSS has no state-level data for California before 2015 for this question):

2015  7.7%
2017  5.4%

That is a 29.9% drop, compared with an 18.6% drop for the nation as a whole for that two-year period.  But keep in mind that California also raised their cigarette tax by a whopping $2 per pack, effective April 1, 2017.  The YRBSS was taken after that, since the survey was done in the fall semester.  And cigarette taxes are well-known to reduce smoking, especially among young people, who are more price-sensitive.  Thus, California's smoking rate would have likely dropped just as fast without the age hike.

New Jersey has no post age-hike data yet.  But what about Hawaii, who raised their smoking age to 21 in early 2016 (but with no tax hike at all since 2011)?

2005   16.4%
2007   12.8%
2009   15.2%
2011   10.1%
2013   10.4%
2015   9.7%
2017   8.1%

Here we see a drop of 16.5% from 2015 to 2017, slower than the 18.6% drop for the nation as a whole.  Not very impressive.

And what about Pennsylvania, with no change in the age limit (18) but a $1 per pack cigarette tax hike in 2016, now just slightly below California's tax rate?

2009   18.4%
2015   12.9%
2017     8.7%

Here we see a drop of 32.6% (nearly a third) from 2015 to 2017, faster than the national drop of 18.6%, despite no change in the age limit and a tax hike only half the size of California's a year later.  In Philadelphia particularly it dropped by more than half, from 7.2% to 3.5% in those two years.  And the statewide drop from 2009 was likely at least partly a result of the federal cigarette tax hike that year as well.

Game. Set. Match.

Thus, we can conclude that the decrease in teen smoking in NYC and elsewhere following the hike in the purchase age was most likely NOT causally linked to it, and would most likely have occurred regardless given the above counterfactual data.  Kinda like we at Twenty-One Debunked initially predicted back in 2013 after first learning of the law change being proposed.  So if that wasn't the cause, what was?  Well, we know that nationwide, as well as in NYC, the secular trend for the past four decades (except a brief increase from 1992-1997) has been downward for both teen and adult smoking.  This was due to a general combination of education/awareness, taxation, regulation, and advertising restrictions, and the resulting cultural changes.  And in very recent years, electronic cigarettes have gained popularity as an alternative to combustible cigarettes, and in fact overtaking the latter and becoming at least twice as popular among high-schoolers by 2015.  Note that this was also true in NYC despite the 21 age limit applying to e-cigarettes as well.  And according to another CDC survey, the National Youth Tobacco Survey, the massive increase in vaping from 2011-2016 was in fact slightly outweighed by the decrease in combustible cigarette and cigar smoking, indicating a net displacement and substitution effect.

Interestingly, while the YRBSS did not ask about vaping until 2015, the data for 2015-2017 are quite instructive.  While the nation as a whole saw a modest but significant decrease in vaping from 2015 to 2017, California saw a smaller decrease than average and NYC saw a slight increase, as did Hawaii.  Likewise, Pennsylvania saw a larger than average decrease, which is not surprising given that they also significantly hiked their vape tax as well in 2016.  Though there are only two years of data, for 2017 these data are more reliable than the Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey since unlike MTF, there was no change in the question for the YRBSS.

Bottom line:  it looks like the supposed benefits of raising the smoking/vaping age to 21 were, shall we say, all smoke and mirrors.  The supposed success of Needham, MA was likely a statistical fluke and/or a result of endogeneity, much like the "early adopter" effects of the first few states to raise the drinking age to 21 creating that particular mirage in the 1980s.  Or perhaps increased enforcement in general relative to neighboring towns did the trick regardless of the age limit, like it did in Woodridge, IL and several other communities the 1990s with an age limit of 18.  Studies show that whenever vendor compliance exceeds 90-95%, there is indeed a dramatic drop in teen smoking regardless, by as much as 50% compared with previously weak enforcement and low compliance rates, especially for the youngest teens.

This all should be food for thought for policymakers debating not just the age limit for tobacco, but also for alcohol, cannabis, or anything else for that matter.  And even if such benefits of the 21 age limit were real, we at Twenty-One Debunked would still not support an age limit any higher than 18, on principle alone.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

New York's Backyard Will Have a Smoking Age of 21

Well, its official now.  Effective just 60 days after it was signed today, Westchester County, NY (aka my own neck of the woods!) will now have a tobacco purchase age of 21, joining NYC as well as Orange, Rockland, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties and all of New Jersey.  It applies to both combustible tobacco products as well as e-cigarettes / vaping devices.  Thus, all of "New York's Backyard" except Putnam County (and Connecticut) will have an age limit of 21.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

The only silver lining is that, just like the rest of New York State (where most other counties are still 18), the so called "smoking age" is only for purchase (not possession or consumption) and is more accurately called a "sale age" in that only the vendor would actually be breaking the law (and thus punishable) in such a case.  Thus, it is a relatively "non-violent" type of age restriction law (albeit still very ageist and repugnant nonetheless) since it is a very different kind of onus.  That is not true in some other parts of the country, unfortunately, and is certainly not true with the 21 drinking age except maybe in Louisiana.  So thank God (or Nature) for such small mercies.  But still, we say to those who voted for the age limit hike:

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!

And speaking of NYC, it is very curious indeed that no one seems to be talking about what happened in NYC since they raised their smoking age.

We think we know why.  At first glance, it does appear to have had some effect.  According to the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), teen smoking rates did in fact drop from 2013 to 2015 in NYC:

2005   11.2%
2007   8.5%
2009   8.4%
2011   8.5%
2013   8.2%
2015   5.8%

Those are the percentages of combined 9-12 grade students who reported any current cigarette smoking in the past 30 days.  Looks impressive at first:  a relative 29% drop from 2013 to 2015.  But take a look at the same data for the nation as a whole, for comparison:

2005   23.0%
2007   20.0%
2009   19.5%
2011   18.1%
2013   15.7%
2015   10.8%

As you can see, the nation as a whole also saw a similar (if even faster) drop in teen smoking at the same time, with a relative 31% decrease from 2013 to 2015, despite no change in the smoking age in most places.  And the teen smoking rate in NYC was already much lower before the law change, having dropped more dramatically than the rest of the USA prior to 2007 and then remaining at a low level since.

How about San Francisco, another major city that raised its age limit to 21?

2005   10.9%
2007   8.0%
2009   10.4%
2011   10.7%
2013   7.5%
2015   5.4%

They also saw a similar size drop from 2013-2015, to the tune of 28% (vs. 29% in NYC and 31% in the USA overall).  Just one problem though.  San Francisco did not raise their smoking age until 2016, so these data show that the drop in the smoking rate happened while it was still 18, before the age limit was raised.  Thus, it would actually be part of the no-change control group, not the experimental group.  And if you include the decrease since 2011, San Francisco in fact saw more progress than NYC.

Thus, we can conclude that the decrease in teen smoking in NYC following the hike in the purchase age was most likely NOT causally linked to it, and would most likely have occurred regardless given the above counterfactual data.  Kinda like we at Twenty-One Debunked initially predicted back in 2013 after first learning of the law change being proposed.  So if that wasn't the cause, what was?  Well, we know that nationwide, as well as in NYC, the secular trend for the past four decades (except a brief increase from 1992-1997) has been downward for both teen and adult smoking.  This was due to a general combination of education/awareness, taxation, regulation, and advertising restrictions, and the resulting cultural changes.  And in very recent years, electronic cigarettes have gained popularity as an alternative to combustible cigarettes, and in fact overtaking the latter and becoming at least twice as popular among high-schoolers by 2015.  Note that this was also true in NYC despite the 21 age limit applying to e-cigarettes as well.

Bottom line:  it looks like the supposed benefits of raising the smoking age to 21 were, shall we say, all smoke and mirrors.  The supposed success of Needham, MA was likely a statistical fluke and/or a result of endogeneity, much like the "early adopter" effects of the first few states to raise the drinking age to 21 creating that particular mirage in the 1980s.  Or perhaps increased enforcement in general relative to neighboring towns did the trick regardless of the age limit, like it did in Woodridge, IL and several other communities the 1990s.  We doubt there would be any real benefits for Westchester County or anywhere else that adopts such a law.  And even if such benefits of the 21 age limit were real, we at Twenty-One Debunked would still never support any age limit any higher than 18, on principle alone.

Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

Latest 2017 MTF Survey Results

The results of the annual Monitoring the Future survey for 2017 are in.  And here is a brief summary of the results:

• Alcohol use in general as well as "binge" drinking among all three grades (8, 10, 12) remains at the same record-low levels as 2016.  
• Tobacco use overall in all grades continued its long decline to a new record low in 2017, particularly for cigarettes, though vaping (e-cigarettes) did increase slightly in 2017 after decreasing a bit in 2016.
• Cannabis use went up slightly in 2017 from 2016 after declining for several years, though generally still remains below 2012 levels, and of course far below the peaks in both 1979 and 1997.  This dovetails with another recent study of legalization states which found no significant increase in teen use post-legalization.
• Opioids, including heroin, remain at very low levels among teens, while the opioid epidemic continues largely unabated among adults.
• Inhalant use went up slightly among 8th graders after a long decline, though still remains at low levels.
• All other substances decreased or saw no significant change either way in 2017.

So what can we conclude from all of this?  First, we can conclude that cannabis legalization did not increase teen cannabis use as the fearmongers claimed it would. Nor did the use of other substances increase as the "gateway" theory would have predicted--in fact, most other substances decreased.   So much for that theory.  Second, it would appear that e-cigarette vaping is to some extent displacing cigarette smoking, rather than exerting a "gateway" effect as was often feared--smoking would have increased along with vaping if those fears were true, and in fact the opposite has occured instead.  Which any way you slice it, is ultimately a net win for public health even if vaping is not completely harmless.  In fact, the drop in cigarette smoking was much faster from 2013-2015 than it was in the years before or since, coinciding with the period of greatest increase in e-cigarette use.   And finally, we can conclude that the kids are (mostly) alright, at least compared to the many adults around them who continue to drink themselves to death and/or rot and rust in opioids.

How to Quash a Black Market in Five Easy Steps

A black market (or underground economy) typically occurs when the legitimate market for a particular good or service is either nonexistent, out of reach, or otherwise far too insufficient to meet the demand for that good or service.  Black markets are by definition illegal to one degree or another, while informal markets that are technically legal or quasi-legal are known as gray markets.   While the usual proximal cause for a black market is prohibition of a good or service (and thus no legitimate market existing), a black market can also occur (albeit to a much lesser extent) when the taxes and/or other government fees on or surrounding the product or activity are excessively high relative to what consumers are willing to pay (and relative to the informal economy).  Sometimes taxes can be so high so as to be considered "prohibition by price", though the relative price difference is typically far more important than the absolute price.

Twenty-One Debunked believes in raising alcohol taxes significantly in conjunction with lowering the drinking age to 18.  The level we suggest ($24/proof-gallon, equalized for all alcoholic beverages), though significantly higher than now, would still be too low to encourage a significant amount of moonshining and bootlegging.  But what about cannabis, which is currently being legalized in more and more states, many of which started out with fairly high taxes and/or licensing fees?  Though a positive development overall, in some of such places, the black market still exists to one degree or another, albeit much less so than when cannabis was illegal.  And of course we all know that places like NYC with extremely high cigarette taxes have their share of black markets in untaxed, out of state, counterfeit, and/or stolen cigarettes as well.  So how does one solve such a problem?

Enter Rear Admiral Luther E. Gregory.  In the 1930s, Prohibition was repealed, and Washington State along with other states were now faced with the task of shutting down the well-established bootleggers and speakeasies that persisted even after Repeal.   Admiral Gregory was asked to head the state's Liquor Control Board, and given carte blanche to come up with a solution, one which worked surprisingly well in fact:

1. End Prohibition, first of all.
2. Give amnesty and issue licenses to anyone willing to play by the state's rules, whether former bootleggers or otherwise.
3. Set the alcohol taxes as low as possible at first, the lowest in the country in fact.
4. Punish sellers who don't play by the rules, with an iron fist--i.e. blacklisting scofflaws from ever selling liquor in the state again.
5. After holding down alcohol taxes for three years, abruptly raise taxes to the point where they're now the highest in the nation.

Problem solved.  The legal market proved to be competitive with what was left of the black market, and drinkers preferred the former over the latter, driving the latter out of business.  And the black market never came back even after raising taxes dramatically.  Looking back, it should have been so obvious indeed.

Substitute "cannabis" for "alcohol", and there is no reason why this strategy would not work in this day and age.  And instead of holding down taxes for three years, merely one year should be sufficient to get the same results, even if the hike is automatically scheduled.  Doing so would minimize the greatest risk of the strategy, namely, that the fledgling legal cannabis industry would then become so powerful that they would resist and successfully quash any attempt to raise taxes in the future.  They would not become that powerful in just one year, and probably not for several years, but the black market could be easily quashed in that timeframe all the same.

As for cigarette taxes, both NYC and NYS should implement this strategy as well.  And of course, the low-tax states such as Virginia should also raise their cigarette taxes (within reason) so as to not be such a source state for cigarette smuggling to other states.  And of course, lower NYC's age limit back to 18 as well.  Same for cannabis in legalized states as well.

In fact, this strategy would work for just about any type of black market.  That's because it is based on the hard facts of economics, not half-baked wishful thinking.  Unlike prohibition or unrealistically high age limits, taxes are not a "blunt" policy instrument, but rather a razor-sharp, double-edged sword.

So what are we waiting for?

What Happened in NYC After Raising the Smoking Age to 21?

In 2014, New York City became the first major city in the USA to raise the tobacco purchase age to 21.  Prior to that, it was 18, much like the rest of the country.   The law was passed by Mayor Bloomberg at the end of 2013, and it went into effect in May 2014.

Since then, two states (California and Hawaii) have also raised it to 21 (both in 2016) and several counties and towns/cities as well from 2013-2017, though a few localities had also done so earlier as well.  When Needham, MA did so in 2005-2008, there was much praise from the pro-21 crowd when surveys showed that teen smoking rates had dropped much faster in Needham than in its surrounding communities (which were 18) from 2006-2010.  So it is very curious indeed that no one seems to be talking about what happened in NYC since they raised their smoking age.

We think we know why.  At first glance, it does appear to have had some effect.  According to the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), teen smoking rates did in fact drop from 2013 to 2015 in NYC: 

2005   11.2%
2007   8.5%
2009   8.4%
2011   8.5%
2013   8.2%
2015   5.8%

Those are the percentages of combined 9-12 grade students who reported any current cigarette smoking in the past 30 days.  Looks impressive at first:  a relative 29% drop from 2013 to 2015.  But take a look at the same data for the nation as a whole, for comparison:

2005   23.0%
2007   20.0%
2009   19.5%
2011   18.1%
2013   15.7%
2015   10.8%

As you can see, the nation as a whole also saw a similar (if even faster) drop in teen smoking at the same time, with a relative 31% decrease from 2013 to 2015, despite no change in the smoking age in most places.  And the teen smoking rate in NYC was already much lower before the law change, having dropped more dramatically than the rest of the USA prior to 2007 and then remaining at a low level since. 

How about San Francisco, another major city that raised its age limit to 21?

2005   10.9%
2007   8.0%
2009   10.4%
2011   10.7%
2013   7.5%
2015   5.4%

They also saw a similar size drop from 2013-2015, to the tune of 28% (vs. 29% in NYC and 31% in the USA overall).  Just one problem though.  San Francisco did not raise their smoking age until 2016, so these data show that the drop in the smoking rate happened while it was still 18, before the age limit was raised.  Thus, it would actually be part of the no-change control group, not the experimental group.  And if you include the decrease since 2011, San Francisco in fact saw more progress than NYC.

Thus, we can conclude that the decrease in teen smoking in NYC following the hike in the purchase age was most likely NOT causally linked to it, and would most likely have occurred regardless given the above counterfactual data.  Kinda like we at Twenty-One Debunked initially predicted back in 2013 after first learning of the law change being proposed.  So if that wasn't the cause, what was?  Well, we know that nationwide, as well as in NYC, the secular trend for the past four decades (except a brief increase from 1992-1997) has been downward for both teen and adult smoking.  This was due to a general combination of education/awareness, taxation, regulation, and advertising restrictions, and the resulting cultural changes.  And in very recent years, electronic cigarettes have gained popularity as an alternative to combustible cigarettes, and in fact overtaking the latter and becoming at least twice as popular among high-schoolers by 2015.  Note that this was also true in NYC despite the 21 age limit applying to e-cigarettes as well.

Bottom line:  it looks like the supposed benefits of raising the smoking age to 21 were, shall we say, all smoke and mirrors.  The supposed success of Needham, MA was likely a statistical fluke and/or a result of endogeneity, much like the "early adopter" effects of the first few states to raise the drinking age to 21 creating that particular mirage in the 1980s.  Or perhaps increased enforcement in general relative to neighboring towns did the trick regardless of the age limit, like it did in Woodridge, IL and several other communities the 1990s.  And even if such benefits of the 21 age limit were real, we at Twenty-One Debunked would still not support an age limit any higher than 18, on principle alone.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

Vote Green, Not Brown!

We at Twenty-One Debunked just seriously lost some respect for California, a state that we, until fairly recently, regarded as one of the least-worst states in the country (though the bar is set rather low to begin with) in terms of social policy in general.  Looks like the Golden State just joined Hawaii, NYC, San Francisco, and a growing number of localities in this country in raising the purchase age for tobacco to 21, with Governor Jerry Brown (remember him?) signing it into law on May 4, 2016.   The law change takes effect on June 9, 2016, just a few weeks later, when the age limit will rise from 18 to 21 overnight without even so much as a grandfather clause.  Brown also signed other bills on the same day restricting e-cigarette use (i.e. "vaping") in public and expanding the coverage of various no-smoking zones, among other things, but the one that really stood out the most (and rankles the most with us) is the 21 smoking age.  The one exception:  active-duty military members age 18-20 can still buy cigarettes and other tobacco products.  But this exception is a rather hollow way of addressing the fundamental injustice of being old enough to die for one's country but being too young to smoke (or drink for that matter), and doesn't make things much better.  So even with this exception, Twenty-One Debunked still opposes this new law regardless.

Hopefully, there will be a ballot measure in November that will undo the hike in the smoking age.  Until then, though, we might just want to boycott all things from California whenever possible.  That includes major Hollywood movies (which still feature omnipresent product placement from Big Tobacco) and fruits/vegetables grown with fracking wastewater thanks to the very same Governor Jerry Brown.  VOTE GREEN, NOT BROWN!!!

Tobacco, The Ulitmate Dark Horse of Drugs

Almost immediately after posting a recent article about the roundly debunked "gateway drug theory", we at Twenty-One Debunked felt we should post another separate article about the particular case of tobacco, especially in the form of commercial cigarettes. While our organization does not generally view tobacco as a particularly high-priority issue, perhaps it is something we should be revisiting given both recent evidence as well as recent efforts to raise the smoking age to 21.

While the primary dangers of smoking tobacco (i.e. cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, birth defects, etc.) have been well-known for decades, what has been much less appreciated is the neurotoxic properties of cigarettes.  The thing is, nicotine is a known neurotoxin, and it is likely that at least some of the thousands of other chemicals in cigarette smoke are also toxic to the brain as well.  One reported effect of nicotine is that it can "prime" the brain's reward system for addiction in general, including to other substances.  This seems to be particularly true for the early adolescent brain.  While these findings are based primarily on rodent studies, human studies seem to dovetail with this idea far more for tobacco than for cannabis or even alcohol.  Thus, the psychopharmacological aspect of the gateway hypothesis seems to hold true indeed for tobacco, and if there were such a thing as an actual gateway drug (which is a very big "if", if you ask us), tobacco would have to be it, hands down.

Additionally, tobacco is also emerging as a potential "dark horse" in the etiology of psychosis and schizophrenia as well.  This has been informally hypothesized for many years now while being overlooked by most researchers, and is only very recently beginning to be taken seriously by mainstream science.  Perhaps cannabis (which is often mixed with tobacco in many countries, and whose use is often predicted by prior and concurrent tobacco use in general) has been taking a major bum rap in that regard as well?  All while Big Tobacco has subtly and sedulously promoted tobacco smoking as "self-medication" for decades, of course.

That said, Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes any attempts to raise the smoking age any higher than 18.  Instead, we (along with the TSAP) believe that we should deal with cigarettes the way we would deal with any other defective product such as the historical examples of the Ford Pinto, lawn darts (Jarts), leaded gasoline and paint, DDT, incandescent light bulbs, and old-style refrigerators.  Either 1) require the defects to be sufficiently fixed, or 2) failing that, remove such products from the market.  And yes, commercial cigarettes as they exist today are indeed defective by design in that they addict, enslave, and kill far more people than they have to.  Worldwide, they kill about 6 million people per year, hence the name of Robert N. Proctor's bombshell of a book, Golden Holocaust.

Since 2013, the endgame strategy that the TSAP (and Twenty-One Debunked) currently supports has been to let tobacco phase itself out by gradually reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to a (relatively) non-addictive level.  Since 2009, the FDA now has the authority to set a legal limit on the nicotine content of tobacco products, as long as the limit is not zero.  Much research indicates that there is a threshold level of nicotine required to create and sustain addiction, and if all cigarettes were to fall below this threshold, smoking rates would plummet precipitously.  In fact, one tobacco executive was quoted as saying, "‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week."  This idea was originally proposed by Henningfield and Benowitz in 1994, and has been endorsed by the American Medical Association and several other experts including Proctor himself.  Malcolm Gladwell also discussed it in his aptly-titled 2000 book The Tipping Point.   Thus, the TSAP recommends reducing the maximum nicotine content (not delivery) of cigarettes from the current level of 1-2% to less than 0.1% within 5 years, and doing the same for quasi-cigarettes (i.e. little cigars) and perhaps roll-your-own tobacco (but no other products).  That alone would reduce smoking prevalence by as much as 80% within a fairly short timeframe, with further reductions possible in the more distant future.  Alternatively (or in addition), the FDA could require the pH of such products to be raised to 8 or higher to discourage deep inhalation, as is naturally the case for most typical cigars and pipe tobacco currently.

The TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked also recommend that the following measures be taken as well:

• Ban the use of additives in cigarettes, especially those that are harmful or increase the addictiveness of tobacco.
• Ban the use of any radioactive fertilizers or harmful pesticides for growing tobacco.
• Phase-out the practice of flue-curing tobacco, which is a major resource hog and bad for the environment.
• Improve the quality control standards for tobacco products (and electronic cigarettes) to be at least as high as for food.
• End all government subsidies for tobacco farming and production.
• Divest completely from Big Tobacco at all levels of government.
• Vigorously enforce the current age limit of 18 for tobacco and e-cigarette sales to achieve 100% retailer compliance. 
• Continue to allow widespread availability of reduced-harm tobacco and nicotine products (i.e. snus, e-cigarettes, etc.) so that smokers can easily switch to less dangerous alternatives.
• Improve education and smoking cessation programs, funded by tobacco tax revenues.
• Give out free nicotine patches, gum, etc. to any smokers who want to quit.  NYC already does this. 

At the same time, the TSAP most certainly does NOT support outdoor smoking bans or any other policy that treats smokers like criminals or second-class citizens.  Smokers are NOT the villains here, as that dubious honor belongs to the merchants of death known as tobacco companies.  In fact, we have repeatedly pointed out that, far from being a drain on society, smokers actually save society money in the long run since they more than pay their way as far as taxes go.  Cigarette taxes, especially in NYC where they are extremely high, have basically become a "reverse Robin Hood" way to rob from the poor and give to the rich, since smoking has increasingly become a poor man's vice.  And the wide disparity in cigarette taxes across states has led to a serious black market for untaxed/low-tax/counterfeit/stolen cigarettes, with the main beneficiaries being organized crime syndicates and even terrorists.  Thus, we recommend that the handful of states with cigarette taxes higher than $2.00/pack reduce their tax to $2.00/pack or lower, and the states with taxes of less than $1.00/pack raise it to $1.00-$2.00/pack.  NYC should cut its tax in half.  At the federal level, we recommend no further tax hikes, but a national price floor of $5.00/pack including tax to discourage smuggling.

The tobacco industry has basically dug its own grave.  Time to push them in there, yesterday.

Just Say NO to the Tobacco to 21 Act!

If some US Senators get their way, the entire nation will join Hawaii, NYC, and several other municipalites with a smoking age of 21 for tobacco.  Not only is the effectiveness of such an idea rather dubious, but just like the vile abomination that is the 21 drinking age it is ageist/adultist and tyrannical and has no place in a free society.  The age of majority is 18 in nearly every state, and in a free society no age limit for any civil right or privilege should ever be any higher than the age of majority except for senior citizen stuff and perhaps certain specific professions (i.e. President of a nuclear superpower) in which adulthood alone may not be fully sufficient.

We are especially disappointed in Senator Elizabeth Warren, an erstwhile favorite of the True Spirit of America Party.  She is one of the leading co-sponsors of the Tobacco 21 Act.  It's too bad since we at the TSAP love just about everything else about her.  Seriously.  If you are reading this, Sen. Warren, we strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this ageist and illiberal mockery of the age of majority.

Let America be America again.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

Will Hawaii Raise the Smoking Age to 21?

The state of Hawaii is seriously considering joining NYC and a few other localities here and there in raising the tobacco smoking age to 21.  We at Twenty-One Debunked have already discussed in previous posts why we oppose raising the smoking age any higher than 18, just like we support lowering the drinking age to 18 and legalizing cannabis for everyone 18 and older as well.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.

That said, if alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis were all currently legal for everyone 18 and older, and we had to pick ONE of them to ban (or raise the age limit to 21), I would nonetheless pick tobacco hands-down since it is the least useful and most harmful of the three.  It kills more people than all other drugs combined, and there are essentially no significant health benefits to cigarettes that cannot also be had by other means.  With perhaps some very rare exceptions, the risks of smoking tobacco far outweigh any possible benefits.  Unlike alcohol and cannabis, tobacco (at least in the form of traditional cigarettes) is typically not a recreational drug so much as it is an extremely addictive poison, and the only product that kills half of those who buy it.  And in terms of environmental destruction, pollution, and wasting resources, the other two substances don't even come close.

NYC Raises Tobacco Purchase Age to 21

Much to our chagrin, Mayor Bloomberg has finally signed the bill that would raise the tobacco purchase age to 21 in New York City.  He was originally against such a move in 2006, but the City Council finally convinced him, which was really not that difficult to do considering his history as a jerk and a nanny-stater.

The bill, which bans the sale of tobacco products and e-cigarettes (but not paraphernalia) to anyone under 21, takes effect in 180 days from today, which will be on May 19, 2014.  NYC Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will be in power then, and it remains to be seen how he will handle such a law.  We hope he will listen to reason and repeal it before it goes into effect.

As we have previously noted unequivocally while the issue was first being discussed, Twenty-One Debunked does NOT support raising the age limit for cigarettes to 21.  The one bright spot to the new law is that, unlike with alcohol, it does not apply to possession or use of tobacco (currently no age limit), or to the sale of paraphernalia (which will remain 18).  However, that does not make it any less ageist, and it will only expand the city's already extensive black market for untaxed/out-of-state/stolen/counterfeit cigarettes.  What allegedly works in the small town of Needham, MA (which is debatable) would be unlikely to work in a place like NYC.  While another bill was passed today to increase penalties for black-market sellers, it does not get to the root of the problem:  extremely high cigarette taxes compared to surrounding areas.  And the 21 age limit only pours gasoline on the fire.  I would bet that cigarette retailers in Westchester County (where the age is 18) and Long Island and New Jersey (where it's 19) would probably be the greatest beneficiaries of the new law, in addition to the mobsters and terrorists that profit from the black market in the city.

As a result, Twenty-One Debunked is calling for an all-ages boycott of all tobacco products in the five boroughs of NYC, beginning on May 19, 2014 when the law takes effect (and lasting until repeal).  If you live in the city and smoke, be sure to (legally) buy your smokes elsewhere--or better yet, quit.  Tourists should also avoid buying tobacco while visiting.  The more die-hard boycotters might even want to include alcohol on the do-not-buy list, for obvious reasons.  Watch the tax revenue shrink precipitously.

For this and many other reasons, we hereby say "good riddance" to lame-duck Nanny Bloomberg when he finally steps down on New Year's Eve.  Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

To NYC: Don't Raise the Smoking Age

You are probably wondering and scratching your head as to why Twenty-One Debunked, an organization founded for the purpose of lowering the drinking age to 18, would care even one iota about tobacco policy and the rights of smokers.  After all, we have repeatedly pointed out the hypocrisy of banning 18-20 year old legal adults from drinking alcohol while simultaneously allowing them to (among other things) consume a far more toxic substance.  However, the answer is contained in the question itself--for many of the same reasons that the drinking age should lowered to 18, so should the smoking age remain 18.

New York City is currently proposing to raise the age limit for purchasing tobacco from 18 to 21, and Mayor Bloomberg is now in favor of such a change despite originally being against it.  If it passes, NYC would join two other towns (in Massachusetts) and the nation of Sri Lanka as the few places in the entire world where no one under 21 is allowed to buy cigarettes.  Proponents claim that it would dramatically reduce smoking rates among young people:  one study estimates that raising the age limit to 21 would reduce smoking among 18-20 year olds by 55% and among 14-17 year olds by nearly two-thirds within seven years, and that in turn would lead to lower rates of adult smoking over the long run, thereby saving countless lives and improving public health. 

However, there are good reasons to doubt the results of the study.  First of all, the study is purely theoretical without any empirical data on places that have actually raised the age limit to 21 in real life.  Secondly, one need look no further than the drinking age to see that such impressive results would be highly unlikely.  For example, Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) found that, after adjustment for confounders, raising the drinking age from 18 to 21 merely reduced self-reported past-month drinking among high school seniors by five percentage points and self-reported "binge" drinking by three percentage points.  Using 1980 as a base year, when the rates of these behaviors were 70% and 40%, respectively, these numbers represent declines of roughly 7%, far less than what the above study claims would happen for smoking and small enough to be mostly or even entirely due to reporting bias.  And the NSDUH found that the average age of onset of drinking actually dropped from 16.6 to 16.2 between 1980 and 2002.  If that's "success," we'd hate to see what failure looks like.

Thus, it is far from obvious that raising the age limit for tobacco would yield any substantive public health benefits.  The most likely result would be the creation of even more technical criminals, and the expansion of the city's existing black market for untaxed/low-tax/counterfeit/stolen cigarettes and fake IDs, with the primary beneficiaries being organized crime syndicates and even terrorists.  Further erosion of respect for the law would occur as well, along with possible riots.  And why the sudden desire to raise the age limit now?  Cigarette use among young people is now at a record low in both NYC and the rest of the nation, and the massive decline in youth smoking since the 1970s occurred without raising the smoking age.  If NYC is so gung-ho about further reducing smoking among the mere 8.5% of its high school students who are still foolish enough to smoke, perhaps they should better enforce existing laws before they even think of passing new ones.

More fundamentally, raising the smoking age to 21 would be (like the 21 drinking age) a serious violation of the civil rights of 18-20 year olds, who are legal adults in virtually all other aspects of life.  It is also yet another blow to everyone's freedom from the hectoring "public health" fascism of the creeping nanny state that Mayor Bloomberg exemplifies.  Both Twenty-One Debunked and the True Spirit of America Party believe that, while smoking is a stupid and filthy habit that we strongly discourage, the fact remains that 18-20 year olds are adults and if they want to choose pleasure over longevity that should be their choice, not the government's.  We believe that, in a free society, all adults should be free to do as they please as long as they do not harm or endanger nonconsenting others more than the minimum, Darwin Awards notwithstanding.  And before anyone brings out the tired, old canard about "social costs", remember the studies show that smokers actually save society money (on balance) by dying earlier than nonsmokers, and thus they more than pay their way as far as taxes go, even in many of the low-tax states.  (Unfortunately, one cannot say the same for drinkers, but that can be solved by simply raising the tax on alcoholic beverages.)  Thus, Twenty-One Debunked simply cannot tolerate raising the smoking age to any age higher than the age of majority, even if it did improve public health.

The answer is clear.  Old enough to fight and vote = old enough to drink and smoke.  'Nuff said.