Protect 18

With the recent inventions of vape and JUUL and their prevalence among teenagers had undoubtably raised extreme moral panic around tobacco usage. Beginning around 2010-2011 tobacco use among U.S. middle and high schoolers started to rise due to the introduction of e-cigarettes, starting at around 2.1 percent and rising to an astonishing 38 percent in 2019, although nearly all other forms of tobacco use decreased over the time period. (CDC) Not to mention that this indiscriminately includes all that have tried vaping or e-cigarette, even if they are not addicted or regular users, which distorts the image. (Justice 2020) With an up peek in smoking among teens due to the introduction of e cigs, vape, and smokeless tobacco, which has prompting raising the smoking age to 21, we can’t ignore the tremendous progress in the decrease of tobacco use with a smoking age of 18 or lower. From 1955 to 1997, the smoking rate for men has decreased from 55 percent to 35 percent and decreased for wom

When it comes to drinking age and most recently tobacco age nationwide it is no secret that we are the only modern, westernized, first world country that forbids adults over the age of 20 from engaging in these basic adult recreational activities. The most comparable countries to the United States, arguably Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United Kingdom all have a drinking age and tobacco age below 20 and nearly all of Latin America, Europe, and Africa have the legal age below 20 as well. Nonetheless support is widespread in the U.S. for this gap in adult rights, which is granted at 18 but set at 21 for alcohol and tobacco. The major health organizations, NHSTA, and NTSB support these laws and represent these policies as being backed by the strongest, most non-negotiable research, but one question lingers, why haven't other developed, first world countries with high standards for public safety take on these policies?