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Oregon Raises the Smoking Age (fastcompany.com)
From a report: Some 95 percent of lifetime smokers pick up the habit before their 21st birthday, so Oregon lawmakers yesterday passed a law making it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase cigarettes in the hopes of nipping the bad habit in the bud. "By the age of 25, this addiction is cemented in the brain and it becomes very difficult -- almost impossible -- to quit," State Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, told KGW. Oregon is not the first state to do this, and it probably won't be the last. No one under 21 can (lawfully) buy cigarettes in Hawaii, California, Washington, D.C., and Guam to date. It also passed in New Jersey, but noted beachcomber Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the bill -- although it could still become law there. According to the American Cancer Society, at least 250 localities across the country have passed similar local ordinances.
Because one act contributes to society while the other is costly to society.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Please provide a reference for where you got that information...
Smoking does cause a number of illnesses that are not lethal, but still very costly and may present themselves while a person is still quite young. You also have to factor in that most smokers are from low-income areas, so public school is an assumption. This would then be an extra cost where a person is home sick a lot more than a non-smoker and may also die earlier than the retirement-age resulting in a lower ROI on the person.
A quick search pointed me to:
https://www.treasury.gov/press...
where it points to a total cost of $130 billions. (from 1998, adjusted value would be $195 billion.). $130 billions is excluding the increased cost of reduced mortality, see below quote.
With each cigarette smoked taking seven minutes from the average smoker’s life — and taking
into account the lives lost due to smoking-related fires and smoking during pregnancy — the
estimated cost of reduced mortality is approximately $120 billion per year. This cost is the
equivalent of $5 dollars for every pack sold, and represents the amount over and above the lost
productive output mentioned earlier.
While these costs are impressive, they are highly subjective. Exactly how one would apply this
methodology to the human costs of smoking is a complex and certainly controversial question.
As a result, we have chosen not to include the costs of reduced mortality in estimating the cost of
smoking in the U.S.