Bloomberg's new crusade: Raise the smoking age to 21

There’s no doubt smoking is unhealthy (although reflect for a moment on the fact that New York teens too young to smoke can legally obtain an abortion, without parental consent). But it’s no sure thing that the new ban will be effective. Just consider what 16-year-old New Yorker Nicole Spencer told the New York Times (note that she was so blasé about her underage smoking that she gave her full name and allowed the Times to photograph her): “I buy them off people or I bum them off people,” Spencer said while holding a cigarette. She started when she was 13, and estimated to the Times that half her high-school friends smoked as well. Does the City Council really think that, if teens five years below the current legal age are smoking, raising the legal age by three years is going to change their behavior?

The data back up Spencer’s experience. According to the American Lung Association, “almost 70 percent of adult smokers began smoking before they turned 18.” “Most smokers try their first cigarette around the age of 11, and many are addicted by the time they turn 14,” the group explains. The Centers for Disease Control warns, “Each day in the United States, nearly 4,000 people younger than 18 years of age smoke their first cigarette, and an estimated 1,000 youth in that age group become new daily cigarette smokers.” Yet federal law bans anyone younger than 18 from buying cigarettes. Clearly, teens have found ways — whether bumming off friends or buying from their elders — to obtain cigarettes despite current law.