Prohibition Reborn

If you’ve walked into any gas station, liquor store or smoke shop recently, you have probably noticed signs announcing the new federal smoking age of 21. As part of the 2020 Consolidation Appropriations Act, President Trump signed into law Tobacco 21, the bill that raised the nationwide smoking age to match the drinking age. The bill was largely bipartisan and cited the recent spike in underage use and deaths from vaping-related illnesses that shocked the country.

Similarly, 100 years ago, Prohibition began: a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. Just as we saw in the 1920s with alcohol, restricting access to nicotine products will likely only enhance the black market and make smoking more dangerous and appealing. We need better enforcement of already present underage laws, not prohibition of the products.

At 18, a U.S. citizen can purchase firearms, enlist in the military, buy a home, and vote, but they cannot smoke or drink. Since 1984, the federal government has required states to enforce a drinking age of 21, yet 60 percent of teens said they had consumed alcohol by age eighteen, according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The prevalence of underage teens who have no problem getting their hands on alcohol suggests that a mandated smoking age will not curtail teen smoking and will instead replicate the response to Prohibition.

Across the country, an epidemic of unexplained lung illnesses and deaths occurred, mostly in the under-21 age group. The CDC links the epidemic to e-juices and THC cartridges containing vitamin-E acetate, a thickening agent used to create denser clouds when exhaled. Vitamin-E acetate is not used in mass-produced products but rather in homemade and counterfeit e-juices. In response to the outbreak of illnesses, many states have attempted to pass emergency bills to temporarily ban the sale of vape devices and liquids. However, restricting access to vaping products will only bolster black market sales and increase the likelihood of e-juice makers adding this deadly ingredient to their products.

In the last five years, the U.S. has seen an enormous spike in teen-smoking rates despite anti-tobacco campaigns by Truth Initiative, an organization working toward lowering smoking rates. A CDC study shows that in 2011, 1.5% of high school students reported using a nicotine product in the last 30 days. By 2019, that percentage had increased to 27.5%. This increase coincides with the emergence of low-profile devices like JUUL. Legislators cite this unprecedented increase, along with the outbreak in illnesses, as their justification for raising the smoking age.

National data by Truth also shows that the ages of 18 to 21 are a critical period where many smokers transition from experimental smoking to regular, daily use. Delaying the age at which people begin experimenting with nicotine is believed to reduce the chances of addiction. However, a study by The Surgeon General shows that the average age adult smokers report smoking initiation is 15.3 years. Despite the legal smoking age, people who become addicted start smoking at an extremely young age and will likely already be addicted by age 21.

The laws that we need are already in place, yet we are seeing an unprecedented prohibition of the products due to faulty enforcement of laws. The only ways teens are able to access products are through lack of checking IDs, the use of fake identification, or having older people purchase for them.

What we need is a crackdown on false identification. When trying to reduce underage drinking, police forces use underage officers who attempt to purchase alcohol with insufficient identification. These “underage compliance checks” serve as a beneficial tool to check whether retailers are abiding by age and ID laws. Instead of continuously increasing the legal age for smoking, law enforcement should begin doing underage compliance checks at vape shops and gas stations to incentivize retailers to comply with the law and reduce underage consumption. More laws will only send us into a period of tobacco prohibition, enhance the dangerous black market, and make the use of nicotine more appealing to underage teens trying to rebel against authority. We need more regulation, not more laws.