The sale of tobacco to minors has been prohibited for generations. I was curious and so I looked up the actual laws in our two states.Josh wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 12:27 pm “Personal responsibility” and “parents” were the excuse the tobacco industry used for years to market and sell harmful, addictive products to children for years. I’m quite suspicious of anyone who thinks they need to push responsibility for mass phenomena backed by billions of dollars onto relatively powerless parents.
Ohio passed a minimum age of 18 for purchase of tobacco back in 1939 and that remained state law until it was raised to 21 in 2019 by federal law
Washington passed a minimum age of 18 for tobacco in 1901 which is raised to 21 in 1909. It remained 21 until 1971 when it was lowered back down to 18 and then raised again to 21 in 2019
Did kids still smoke? Yes. At my HS there was actually a student smoking section outside and this was the 1980s. Was it just the over 18 kids out there smoking? No, of course not. Because the ban on youth tobacco was sieve-like. Cigarettes were readily accessible to kids despite the ban. It frankly had little to do with advertising and everything to do with the fact that kids could get cigarettes anywhere. Bumming them from their over 18 friends, stealing them from parents, etc. I expect there were kids over 18 who bought cartons to keep in their cars in the school parking lot to sell to kids under 18. That was what was getting children to smoke, not Joe Camel.
Government regulation of internet content will be ridiculously more sieve-like than the ban on tobacco sales to minors.
