That two quart drink just hit the spot. Now I'm checkin' my revolver, and rollin' a cigarette.

Tell kids they can not do something, they will do it. The same goes for lots of adults, including me! I would do any of the things Nanny Bloomberg tries to regulate out of our lives, "for our own good," even if I hated them, just to piss the cretinous son-o-bitch off! m/r

Bloomberg’s New Smoking Crusade | National Review Online

NOVEMBER 1, 2013 By  Katrina Trinko

He wants to raise the smoking age to 21 — why not even higher?

his way out the door, Nanny Bloomberg strikes again: New York City is on the cusp of banning anyone under 21 from buying cigarettes or e-cigarettes.

On Thursday, the City Council passed a bill hiking the legal age to buy cigarettes, and the law will come into effect six months after New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg signs it. “This is going to have an important effect reducing young people from starting to smoke. . . . This is literally a piece of legislation that will save lives,” said Christine Quinn, city-council speaker and recent unsuccessful mayoral candidate.

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 theTimes 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.

The evidence on underage drinking suggests that raising the minimum age for buying cigarettes won’t change that dynamic.

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