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Hawaii is considering a bill that bans cigarette sales to anyone under 100
(CNN) "The legislature finds that the cigarette is considered the deadliest artifact in human history."
So begins the text of a new bill introduced in Hawaii's State House, calling for a phased ban on cigarette sales in the state by 2024.
Hawaii has some of the most restrictive cigarette laws in the nation. In 2016, it became the first state to raise the age to buy cigarettes to 21. Now, its new bill calls for raising the cigarette-buying age to 30 by next year, up to 40, 50 and 60 in each subsequent year, and up to 100 by 2024.That would effectively clear Hawaii's store shelves of cigarettes, although tourists could still bring them in.
And curiously, Hawaii would offer its centenarians the chance to buy cigarettes near the end of their life -- if they could find them.
Can't we instead simply restrict kids under 100 to designated smoking areas?
(Score: 1) by j-beda on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:33PM
I have always thought that slower acting legislation might be more effective:
Every two years raise the legal age by one year.
Nobody who was of legal age will suddenly be "too young". People below the cutoff age will eventually be legal, but the legal age will gradually be well above the age when people are easily hooked. The system does not have a huge sudden shock, so businesses will not need a major sudden change, but the future is very clearly shown so people can plan accordingly.
Similar things might be done to the minimum wage to gradually bring it higher, or to the hours in a work week or number of holidays in a year (add one extra federal holiday every five years for example). We have had huge productivity gains over the last century, but the lowest level workers are still working almost as hard now as when we first got sane worker protections (40 hour work week, etc.) in the 1920s. If we implemented some system to gradually "share the gains" going forward maybe the average will continue to improve.