When the City Council voted to raise the legal age to buy cigarettes from 18 to 21, the bill’s sponsor, James Gennaro, claimed to be acting on international evidence.
“We looked at other places that have gone to 21 in other parts of the world,” said the Queens Democrat, “and we saw that there was a big difference to be made by doing that.”
So we called with a simple question: What “other places” would those be? In response, Gennaro told us: Needham, Mass., parts of New Jersey, “a large island” in Hawaii and the United Kingdom. Of these, only the UK is outside America, and only Needham raised its age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21.
Even here, the evidence is far from conclusive. Needham is a modest Boston suburb, not the huge city New York is. And though Needham claims the percentage of its high-school students who smoke has been cut in half, it’s by no means clear that it is all the result of lifting the age for sales.
Then there’s the absurdity of a city that would make it illegal for a 20-year-old Marine back from Afghanistan to buy a pack of Marlboros. It’s especially ridiculous when the 20-year-old remains free to smoke and possess cigarettes. Which tells us that the likely punishment will be reserved for some hard-working bodega owner.
There you have it: yet another law promoted on exaggerated scientific claims whose main effects will be to boost the black market and make New York even more hostile to small business.