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Smoking is one of the most common mistakes that people voluntarily make. Even if the effect that is has on human health temporarily or on a longer period of time, the issue doesn’t seem to concern the masses as much as it should. However, there is one state that always tends to create serious trends. Even in laws. California wants to change the minimum smoking age from 18 to 21.
State Senator Ed Hernandez (D-Azusa) has billed for the increased age of adolescents that start smoking too early and end up the habit for a longer period of time. As a result, in California, 9 out of 10 eighteen year olds that start smoking, remain smokers for years. This is biggest concern behind the Bill 151 of the Senate, taking into consideration all the children and teenagers that are tempted every day. In fact, every years counts not less than 36.000 children than begin smoking on a regular basis.
Mr. Hernandez has made several announcements about the issue, including some addressing to the tobacco companies, who, in his opinion, should be careful about how they help sustaining the spread of this habit at an inappropriate category of customers.
“Tobacco companies are aware that people tend to become addicted to smoking if they start it at young age. […] We can no more bear to sit on the sidelines while huge tobacco markets to our children and gets another era of youngsters snared on an item that will at last kill them.”
Curiously, this kind of attempt is not the first one that happened in the States. Utah, New Jersey, Maryland and Colorado also tried making this change become possible, but unfortunately, with no further result. The one city that has succeeded in setting their minimum legal smoking age at 21 is New York City.
In addition, the bill also raises the problem of advertising, which shouldn’t be using or referring to individuals that are under the age of 21.
The American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association and the Cancer Action Network all support the proposal that the Bill 151 holds tight to. California Medical Association president Luther Cobb said that could lead to preventing highly spread diseases. It is a very important fact, because in the US, cigarette smoking causes 480.000 deaths California Medical Association president Luther Cobb said that her per year, meaning that one of five people die because of this habit.
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