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Ryan Rana

Mrs. Schneider

English 11 (H)

2 October 2010

Raising the Age

Imagine this, you are walking outside a mall and see someone who looks no older

than seventeen smoking? Most likely they are of legal age, but who is to say that they

aren’t giving cigarettes to or using them around their younger high school friends. There

are many eighteen year olds in high school who smoke. Not only are they starting a life

long habit, but they are also influencing their younger friends who look up to them into

doing the same. Both the people are susceptible to lung cancer and other health problems.

All these things can be avoided by increasing the smoking age to twenty-one.

Smoking is one of the unhealthiest acts that you can participate in. I know many

of you have heard this before but let’s look at the details. Some of the immediate causes

of smoking are the constriction of airways and increase of heart rate and blood pressure.

Long-term effects can cause lung cancer or a chronic lung disease called emphysema.

Smoking also increases the chances of a stroke by about fifty percent. Smoking doesn’t

only affect the smoker but the ones around them. It affects three hundred thousand infants

a year. Children of smoking parents are twice as likely to start smoking themselves. A

person who does it isn’t only affecting themselves but others around them as well.

Now that the health stuff is out of the way, let’s see how we would go about

fixing all these issues. Some places are already raising the legal smoking age to nineteen,

but that is not good enough. As some nineteen year olds are still in high school for
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various reasons and not everywhere is raising the age to nineteen. Many of the young

teens that get cigarettes get them from their legal aged friends in school. By increasing

the legal age, that age difference will generally keep the people out of each others social

circles and tobacco out of the teens’ hands. This will also eliminate virtually all of the

cigarettes from schools. This in turn will also decrease the amount of smokers drastically.

Studies have shown that ninety percent of smokers started the habit before twenty. If

legal awareness were also raised to twenty-one then the mature looking sixteen and

seventeen year olds would be under more scrutiny and identification checking. It all

seems good in theory right?

There are claims of issues that could arise from this seemingly helpful bill. One

claim is a government-funded subsidy to the tobacco companies to keep them in business.

This could drastically affect the economy. Participants in the tobacco industry argue that

commercial tobacco production is a vital part of America, since it was a major industry

that helped the country grow, and part of the world economy, as the US is the fourth

largest tobacco producer. They state that thousands of farmers in the United States make

their living from raising tobacco leaves for use by the industry. They also say that the

tobacco industry contributes billions of dollars in tax revenue to the state and federal

government every year. If the tobacco companies go out of business then the taxes and

revenue from the industry would vanish. They also claim the money that is spent on the

cigarettes would not be spent on anything else. A pack-a-day smoker would spend over

one thousand dollars a year on cigarettes only, not to mention the high medical bills that

might go along as well. Although this is a possibility, it is highly unlikely. The tobacco

industry would only shrink but still stay in business, because you can’t completely stop
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smoking.. The revenue from the cigarettes go in to people’s pockets, and generally when

people have money, they are willing to spend it, putting money into the economy still.

Not only is it good for the economy, but people have more money to use and feed their

families. No one would be harmed as a result of this bill being passed.

Could you imagine living with those health problems, addictions and habits? No

one should have to deal with these experiences. The truth is they can all be prevented by

raising the age to legally purchase cigarettes and tobacco to twenty-one. The hasty

decisions of the youth will no longer lead to life long problems; all of this accomplished

with the passing of a bill.


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Works Cited

Ahmad, Ph.D, Sajjad. "The Cost-Effectiveness of Raising the Legal Smoking Age in
California." 25. (2005): n. pag. Web. 26 Sep 2010.
<http://mdm.sagepub.com/content/25/3/330.abstract>.

Billimek, John, and Sajjid Ahmad. "Limiting youth access to tobacco: Comparing the
long-term health impacts of increasing cigarette excise taxes and raising the legal
smoking age to 21 in the United States." Health Policy 80 (2007): n. pag. Web. 27
Sep 2010. <http://faculty.unlv.edu/sajjad/Health%20Policy%20tax%20vs%20age
%2021.pdf>.

Kaplan, Thomas. "Bill could raise smoking age to 21." (2007): n. pag. Web. 26 Sep 2010.
<http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2007/mar/07/bill-could-raise-smoking-
age-to-21/>.

McManis, Sam. "Smoking bill makes good sense / Raising legal age can only help teens."
(2002): n. pag. Web. 26 Sep 2010. <http://articles.sfgate.com/2002-06-23/bay-
area/17550850_1_anti-smoking-california-medical-association-7-eleven-clerk>.

Unknown, . "Disadvantages of smoking - Bad Effect of Smoking." 222 (2007): n. pag.


Web. 26 Sep 2010. <http://www.knowledgebase-script.com/demo/article-
222.html>.

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