“U.S. Raises Tobacco Buying Age to 21,” ran a Wall Street Journal title yesterday. This implies that a large chunk of American citizens are children, or that voting does not count. Or perhaps worse. (Forget that “tobacco” does not legally mean tobacco anymore, but whatever the Federal Drug Administration says the word means, such as e-cigarettes.)
Regarding the first alternative, it is absurd for the Public Health State to treat all individuals between 18 and 21 as children. As I wrote in a recent Reason Foundation paper,
The FDA calls indistinctly “youth,” “adolescent,” “child” or “kid” anybody from 12 through 17, but this group is not homogeneous. A 17-year-old, who can enroll in the army with his parents’ permission and is on the verge of having the right to vote (18 years of age at the federal level) and to reach the age of majority in many states, is certainly different from a 12-year-old child. Those whom the FDA considers “kids” can often be held criminally responsible for their actions. In many states, they can marry and in most states, they can be licensed to drive unsupervised from age 16 (the highest threshold is 17; the lowest, 14 and a half).
The second alternative—voting doesn’t matter—is true to the extent that a single vote does not count, for the probability that it will change the election result is (literally or nearly so) as low as the probability that, say, Donald Trump will walk through a section of the new steel wall on the Mexican border. But, of course, recognizing the right to vote to a few million children does have some effect.
Perhaps the worst alternative is that a common statement like the Journal’s (generally made without the constraint of a title’s length) is believed to be literally true. “The U.S.” means either part of the United States citizenry, and then the proper shorthand would be “the U.S. government”; otherwise, you are sowing confusion or falsehood. Or else “the U.S.” means the totality of the citizenry, and then all Americans unanimously agree to forbid some of them to do what the others may legally do. As Alice would have said, “curiouser and curiouser.”
Incidentally, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, mathematician Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll, was one of the independent discoverers of cycling or incoherence in voting results.
The proposed law has been voted by Congress and is apparently supported by the President. (Note in passing that he has not yet signed it, so the Wall Street Journal’s title looks more Fox-News than Wall-Street-Journal.) Let’s wait and see what happens, but don’t bet your life on political rationality or on the libertarian instinct of the political class.
READER COMMENTS
Nick Payne
Dec 23 2019 at 12:46pm
I don’t buy the argument that 18-21 year-olds shouldn’t be treated as not-children. I certainly don’t think they should be treated as adults, but recognize not-children is not the same thing as an adult since there can be indeterminates.
My reasoning would be that most 18 to 21 year olds (swap 21 with 22 or 23 and I think argument holds) have never had to earn a living, pay a bill, manage debt, or even manage their own time. Adults do most all those things for most 18-21 year olds.
That 18-21 year olds can vote or join the military doesn’t seem sufficient to justify classification as adults. The 26th amendment was at least in part justified by arguments that the ability to soldier = adulthood, so if you don’t believe that the ability to soldier automatically satisfies adult-ness, the voting age argument doesn’t hold. What young soldiers do is amazing but they are still doing so with the supervision of adults who have met my original criteria: earning a living, paying bills, managing debt, managing their own time, etc. Not that discipline and intensity of experience should not count towards adulthood.
We all know plenty of people well into developmental adult hood, say 30+ years old, who act like children. A model score that ranks adultness might better differentiate who can smoke/vape/vote. Military service, my criteria, and others could be independent variables.
But the easier/more practical and less gamable-by-special-interests solution seems to me to be that because people less than 21 are so overwhelmingly not-adults and because smoking is so bad for you, the government (with heavy support of parents and other rearing institutions) should, under public health justifications, not let kids smoke.
Jon Murphy
Dec 24 2019 at 9:30am
If we’re counting paying bills, earning a living, managing time, and the other items on your list, than 18-21 year olds are adults. A lot of schooling is managing time (especially in college). Many teens work. Many teens pay bills, even if just their car insurance.
To Pierre’s larger point, why is an 18 year old mature enough to be given a gun, explosives, and trusted to obey the rules of war and Law of Nations, but not trusted enough to decide what substances to put in their bodies? What’s the distinction? It’s more than just paying bills.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 24 2019 at 11:20am
@Nick Payne: I was not arguing that one is necessarily an adult, or should be considered one, at 18. I was arguing that the treatment of 18-21 “children” by the state is utterly incoherent and dangerous. Underlying my argument is the idea that the state should not have the power to decide arbitrarily who is an adult and who is not. Once an age threshold is fixed, that should be it, whatever the fads of the mob and the whims of the rulers (and this would apply to the age of sexual consent too). The danger is further illustrated by the temptation of the FDA to put “young adults” (21-24) in the same bag as “children” (see my Reason Foundation paper, p. 57). Ultimately, it’s like saying, “Everything I don’t like must be forbidden to children, and everybody under 99 is a child.”
Robert EV
Dec 24 2019 at 4:12pm
Every citizen under the age of 35 is legally considered a ‘minor’ for purposes of serving as president of the United States, by the founding law of our current form of government. Likewise 30 for senator and 25 for representative.
Yeah, I agree with you (except I think smoking [and non-filtered wood-burning fireplaces] should be universally banned in areas above a certain population density). But this is a disagreement we have with our government in general, not with this specific piece of legislation.
Aren’t you at least happy that the definition of vote-eligible citizen has altered over the last couple of centuries?
How much does culture have to change before you’re okay with age-threshold mores changing too?
Jon Murphy
Dec 24 2019 at 5:34pm
Having age requirements on the office of the presidency or senator is not the same as age requirements for the purchase of an item. The former is a job requirement and not an infringement on liberty. The latter is an infringement on liberty explicitly under the “parental government” justification for powers
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 24 2019 at 11:42pm
I would add that, in a free society, we would expect that politics (and politicians) be regulated and constrained while voluntary actions and relations (and private individuals) would be free, not the other way around. The concept of a free society seems difficult to understand otherwise.
Robert EV
Dec 25 2019 at 1:25pm
Okay. But limiting who can hold a job to ‘adults’ of a certain age seems to be justifying the idea of arbitrary age limitations to the culture in general. As well as the idea of the rulers of government being adults (“parental government”) vis-a-vis those of younger ages.
To eliminate paternalism you have to give people equal rights regardless of ancestry, sex, income, and age.
Robert EV
Dec 25 2019 at 1:29pm
“As well as the idea of the rulers of government being adults”
Adding on to this: “We, the founders, are going to limit who you, the citizenry, can elect as your representatives, because we don’t trust you to choose wisely. I mean, what if you elect an 18 year old, for heaven’s sake! Oh foolish citizens, we must prevent this possibility.”
Joseph E Munson
Dec 25 2019 at 9:21pm
The whole child vs adult dichotomy is highly unstable, especially when you consider intellectually disabled adults and gifted children.
Honestly, I see at least 15 to 17 year olds in a similar position as women were a hundred years ago — real differences in biology are exaggerated to the max to impose right restrictions. Parents have similar rights of 19th century husbands. More so, actually, so one hopes they get good ones.
I learn fairly utilitarian though, and Tobacco is so bad, if this results in a net decrease in tobacco use I support it.
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