Smoking age should remain 18

The golden age of 21 is an age when one can reflect back on the years that have molded oneself into the young adult they are today.  The age when drinking is legal and gambling is permissible.  But should it be the age when it is formally legal to buy a cigarette?
 
Having parents who have smoked majority of their lives, one passing away in 1996, and the other battling lung cancer just this past year, one could only assume I would be for any anti-smoking initiative or campaign I come across.  But when I hear that California legislators are trying to raise the legal smoking age from 18 years old to 21 years old, a sense of uncomfortableness seemed to set in.
Earlier this past year, the California State Assembly passed a measure raising the legal age required to purchase tobacco products in the state to 21, the highest in the nation.  The bill now goes to the state Senate. If passed, the only thing stopping it from going into effect is Gov. Gray Davis’ signature.
 
Is this really a solution or just another attempt for governmental control? I strongly oppose smoking and despise when I see a teenager lighting up a cigarette, but enough is enough. There comes a time in life when one needs to think for themselves.
Responsibility must set in, meaning that today’s teen needs to prove and reassure society that the new, younger generation is more educated and aware than ever before of the dangers of smoking. Teens owe it to their parents, educators and other influential members of their life to show they are solely mature enough to decide what is right and wrong. Teen smoking has long been a cancer in our society, but setting limitation on top of another is not the cure.
 
Raising the required age goes far beyond restricting young adults from smoking.  It ultimately restricts what makes this county of ours great — freedom.  It makes no sense that at the age of 18, one is allowed to vote and die for our country, but at the same time not given the decision to smoke.
 
I have not seen any evidence that laws that restrict the sale of cigarettes to minors actually affect the children who smoke. Teenage smoking in California has dropped considerably over the past few years thanks to the overwhelming vast amounts of anti-smoking information in the schools, hospitals, medical offices and in the media.
 
Restrictions posed upon teens will not prevent or stop adolescents from doing what they want. A teen can choose to get a hold of a cigarette by many alternative routes.  The same scenario applies to drinking.  The legal age may be 21, but the largest groups of drinkers are those under 21, who have many accessible ways of getting alcohol without personally purchasing it.
 
Concentrating on strengthening existing laws and continuing the strong surge of anti-smoking campaigns is where the focus must stay. Though the bill’s chances of passing are slim, you can be sure the fight will continue. Baby sitting a teen up until legal age will only be an added expense to California’s already skyrocketing debt.
 
Raising the legal age means more funding for additional police to patrol streets looking for underage smokers. I can think of a dozen better programs that can benefit from more funding. The new restrictions are estimated to cost between $26 million and $66 million a year in lost tobacco taxes. Some anti-smokers might rejoice, but our economy will react differently.

— Andrew Misagal
senior pr major
 

Too much gun control a negative thing

I’m writing to voice an opposing viewpoint to your editorial regarding the bill to block frivolous lawsuits against firearms manufacturers. This is not a preferential treatment law; there are many laws that protect industries from undue harassment. The firearms companies are still responsible for actions resulting from their own misconduct or defective products.
 
It’s easy to make shallow comparisons between firearms manufacturers and tobacco companies, but the similarities are very superficial. The lawsuits against the tobacco companies are the result of harm suffered from the legal and intended use of the product. The tobacco industry still denies that smoking contributes to lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and other disabling or terminal illnesses. Have you known a gun manufacturer to say gunshots don’t cause injury or death?
 
Firearm companies and supporting organizations have always stressed the fact that misuse of firearms is extremely dangerous. There has never been any attempt to cover up the fact that one must use exercise caution and prudent judgement when using them.  In that sense they are more like automobiles. When automobile manufacturers are sued it is because their product was defective not because of deliberate misuse.  Automobile companies are never sued for criminal misuse of their products even though automobiles are inherently dangerous.
 
Any lawsuit waged against a corporation must be defended against whether it has merit or not. The anti-gun contingent wants to bankrupt the firearms industry with high stakes lawsuits for damages caused by deliberate, criminal misuse of the product. Why doesn’t the City of Los Angeles try to sue Ford, GM and Chrysler for death and damage resulting from the criminal use of automobiles?
 
I am all for reducing gun violence but I don’t believe that putting more restrictions on law abiding gun owners is the correct path. Criminals, by definition, do not obey laws.  They will have guns regardless of what the laws say. In the United States crime rates have not gone down where gun control has been increased but it has gone down where laws have been relaxed to allow citizens to be armed. The latter has not resulted in a “frontier mentality” but demonstrates that the key to reducing crime might lie more with the people than with the legal system.

— Larry Himmel  

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