NJ To Make It Illegal For Teens To Possess Tobacco

[JCMAN320]

Eyewitness News New York
Lawmakers target teens

NEW JERSEY (WABC) -- New Jersey lawmakers are targeting teen smoking. An Assembly health committee on Monday advanced a bill to prohibit the use and possession of tobacco by those under age 19. Violators would face community service.

While it's currently illegal for anyone under 19 to buy tobacco, possessing it is not.
Sponsors of the bill cite statistics showing a third of New Jersey high schoolers smoke at least occasionally and 90 percent of smokers begin before they turn 18.

They say New Jersey would become the 20th state with such a law. The bill passed the Assembly in 1999 and the Senate in 2000 but then-Gov. Christie Whitman failed to act on it.

(Copyright ©2008 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

[Radiohead]

One possible unintended consequence: reducing the perceived dangers of other "illegal drugs". Yea, cigs are no good, but there are other "drugs" that are a lot worse; do we want to lump tobacco in there with them?

Also, it makes smoking that much more of a middle-finger-up statement to society. That "I don't give a F%#k" attitude is kind of attractive to the opposite sex. Now inhale deep, strike that hip pose, and you'll get the girl (or the guy).

How ironic. Legislators never learn.

[Ninjahedge]

No, I agree with this.

What use is forbidding the sale if they can pretty much just show up and smoke in the parking lot at school, or wherever?

Thing is, you do not put it in the same league as things like Heroin. They have to make sure that the law is just a means to provide some muscle to the whole anti-tobacco campaign. You do not start marketing/pushing it like the kids were doing crack.

You try to make it look more like public deification than "Youthful Disobedience" and you will get further. Sadly, I do see them possibly lumping them all together.

Ah well. Thing is RH, you can't really say that making this law will encourage the sale and use of other illegal substances as it is not ILLEGAL for people of age to buy it. It will become just like Alcohol is today, good bad or otherwise. The connection to other illicit substances is a bit of a straw-man....

[LeCom]

Ugh. While I do find local Jersey teens walking around chewing tobacco and spitting into those murky plastic bottles disgusting, let them smoke if they really want to. Jeez, they're 19, that's old enough to vote and enlist, as well as do pretty much anything else in just about the rest of the world. They're old enough to make their own [bad] choices. Way to make smoking cooler, feds.

[JCMAN320]

This is for children under the age of 19

[injcsince81]

Nanny state strikes again.

I say if you're of age to serve in the military, you are of age to buy and possess booze and cigarettes.

That's 18, right?

[Ninjahedge]

The 19 years old is to keep it out of schools. But you can be 18 and out of HS, so moving the enlistment age to 19 would make it more difficult to get recruits.

So they keep the military at 18, and smoking at 19.

As for booze, they found that more accidents occurred between the ages of 18 and 21 due to inebriation when it was legal. The problem with that being, many MANY people who were NOT drinking and driving were hurt as well. That being the case, it was a public hazard, not just a hazard to the ones participating.

It's a difficult thing to write laws that cover things w/o splitting hairs.

As for this law? Like I said before, it gives the "don't sell to minors" law a bit of backbone. I have never heard of teens complaining about how difficult it is to get cigs. People complain about everything that is a burden, so the current legislation must not be that much of a burden.



Also, enough already with the equating cigs, alcohol (and in some cases drugs) with things like Driving, Military enlistment, Voting and, in some really lame comparisons, childbirth. People are constantly willing to complain about their freedoms being infringed on some of these things when they refuse to acknowledge that companies like RJ Reynolds have been marketing for YEARS to get the juvies hooked.

Stats have shown that the % of smokers that are ABLE to quit is MUCH lower the earlier they started in life, regardless of the # of years they have smoked. So passive pushing on teens ensures that there will still be cash in the barrel as these companies slowly divest into other areas that would cause a significant economic upheaval if they wee forced to pay for the crop they they have been sewing for 40-60 years (namely lung cancer, emphysema, et all...). So, oddly enough, by trying to pervent people from starting earlier and "robbing" them of that "freedom", they are conversely allowing them a bit more freedom to choose what they want for themselves later in life.


BTW, I am not saying that people should not be able to make their own decisions about things once they come of age, but people complaining about 1 year (difference between 18 and 19) of not being allowed to posess something as trivial as tobacco should really re-examine their lives and the true importance that that substance plays in them.

[LeCom]

People are constantly willing to complain about their freedoms being infringed on some of these things when they refuse to acknowledge that companies like RJ Reynolds have been marketing for YEARS to get the juvies hooked.
If there was an establishment trying to hook young people on cigarettes, I'd be much more outraged about that than the bill being discussed in this thread. Don't encourage youngsters (yes, YOUNGSTERS, not children, since, in my book at least, if you're 18 then you're no longer a child, unless you're trying to say that children are currently fighting overseas) to smoke, but don't outright ban it either. Allow them to make an informed choice; let them know of all the harms that tobacco brings, but leave it up to them to choose whether this harm will outweigh the pleasure that they will receive from it.

[Ninjahedge]

If there was an establishment trying to hook young people on cigarettes, I'd be much more outraged about that than the bill being discussed in this thread.

There is, and I am! ;)


Don't encourage youngsters (yes, YOUNGSTERS, not children, since, in my book at least, if you're 18 then you're no longer a child, unless you're trying to say that children are currently fighting overseas) to smoke, but don't outright ban it either.

The thing is, how do you keep it out of High Schools? I can see why they made the age 19, just to keep it away from public schools. People may complain, but if you can't go one year longer w/o a ciggie, well, something is definitely wrong.


Allow them to make an informed choice; let them know of all the harms that tobacco brings, but leave it up to them to choose whether this harm will outweigh the pleasure that they will receive from it.

You know it does not work that way!

How many kids are taught about the dangers of unsafe sex? Drinking and driving? General "X-TREME" activities? Steroids? etc etc etc. All the medical evidence in the world is undone by one celebrity or one really good movie showing a guy smoking, or jumping off a roof onto another person (remember jacka$$?).

The thing they have found about smoking, however, is that only a few tries will get you hooked. Threats of death when you are 60 have little effect on an 18 year old. "I'll quit then!".

If they can make it harder for teens to get this stuff by restricting it to all kids going to school, they will save a lot of $$ in the end when it comes to general health care costs (lung cancer is expensive to all of us, especially when the patients insurance runs out. But even before that, it is an expense that costs the insurance companies, which is summarily passed on to the rest of us).

Anyway, I know where people are coming from about freedoms and adulthood. I am not trying to harp on "kids don't know nothing" or anything similar. The new bill just gives backbone to the "no sale to under XX" and helps keep it 100% away from schools.