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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.
The attitude towards smoking has changed so much in my lifetime. When I was in high school (80-85), the area around the door to the student parking lot was the semi-official smoking area. Students could openly smoke without any problems. The teacher lounges were a haze of smoke. The only real restrictions on smoking were restaurants had to offer a "non-smoking" section, bars could be all smoking. Private offices were often OK for smoking, even the downtown office building I worked in circa 1993 still had some accommodation for smoking (smoking lounge, departments could set their own smoking policy -- most banned it totally, but two allowed it, and a couple more allowed it after hours).
Now, it's totally different. No smoking in any restaurant or bar, most buildings ban smoking with a large distance of their doors, pretty much any public place has no smoking at all. Even the parks have banned "tobacco use" (which IMHO is kind of ridiculous, but OK, less litter and the picnic table zone is smoke free). Unless you want to smoke in your own home (most rentals are no-smoking) or in your own car, you're pretty much out luck for smoking.
So I'm kind of curious how many new smokers there are given how inconvenient it is to smoke, especially if you're under 21 or a teenager. Plus there are all the vaping options, which seem like they would be way more attractive (good flavors, little odor so you can get away with it in places you could never smoke). And let's not forget the cost, with all the new taxes, a pack of cigarettes is like $8.
I would think that the rate of adoption for cigarettes would be low enough at this point that new enforcement measures would mostly be for show or a waste of effort. I also wonder if some of the new laws aren't an effort by "stop smoking" organizations looking for fresh PR to keep funding going when it already seems like they could just close shop and declare victory.