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.

Latest Rat Study Repeats Same Old Mistakes

A recent rat study has been done that appears to justify the 21 drinking age at first glance.  But here's why it really doesn't:

1)  First of all, the study was done on rats, and rats are NOT people.
2)  There is no rat equivalent for 18-24 year old humans, as the "adolescence" in all rats essentially overlaps with infancy and does NOT overlap with adulthood.
3)  The human brain actually continues to develop well into the 30s and 40s, so 21 is an arbitrary age limit.
4)  Human brain development before 18, and especially before 15 or so, is qualitatively different and occurs on a much more fundamental level than that which occurs afterwards.

That's not to say that excessive drinking isn't harmful.  It is, at any age in fact, and especially so before 18.  But there is really no conclusive scientific evidence that drinking at 18 is any more harmful than at 21.

Besides, if the results of the numerous rat studies of the past actually did translate to humans in like fashion, then Canada, Australia, and Europe would all be nations of brain-damaged alcoholic felons!

The Kids Are (Mostly) Alright

The results of the annual Monitoring the Future survey of middle and high school students for 2014 were primarily good news overall.  Alcohol and tobacco use both dropped to record 40-year lows, and cannabis use saw the first decrease in years after steadily increasing since 2007.  Other drugs, both illicit and prescription, saw either decreases or no significant change in 2014, and most of those remained well below their most recent peaks.  Dangerous quasi-legal synthetic "designer drugs", such as "K2" (synthetic cannabis) and "bath salts", have plummeted to the lowest levels since they have first been measured.  And there was no substance that saw any significant increases in 2014.

One thing that makes such results remarkable is that 2014 was the first year that cannabis was fully legalized in Colorado and Washington, with a few more states on the way as well.  And there is currently zero evidence that any of the prohibitionists' fears have actually materialized.  Another remarkable observation is the fact that "extreme binge drinking" (i.e. 10+ drinks in the same occasion at least once in the past two weeks) among high school seniors has finally dropped to the lowest level since it was first recorded in 2005.  For example, from 2005-2011, it remained flat at 11%, and from 2011-2014 it had dropped by more than a third to 7%.  And lest you erroneously think that the longstanding 21 drinking age (or tougher enforcement thereof) is somehow the cause of that drop, significant decreases in teen drinking have also occurred in other countries where the drinking age is still 18.

But don't expect to hear such good news from the fearmongering mainstream media, of course.