Pediatricians Want To Raise The “Smoking Age” To 21

The statistics on young American smokers shouldn’t come as any surprise: According to the CDC, a whopping 95 percent of adult smokers began before the age of 21. Various organizations, including Tobacco Free Kids and Tobacco 21, support raising the legal smoking age to 21, making it even with the legal drinking age. The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, issued three policy statements in the journal Pediatrics last week aimed specifically at the USDA to promote the change in smoking age to 21.

Tobacco isn’t nearly as big an agricultural product in the US as it once was; the CDC estimates that the number of tobacco-growing farms in the US has plummeted since the 1980s from nearly 180,000 to only 10,000 in 2012. The US now ranks fourth in the world in tobacco production, behind China, India, and Brazil. Tobacco sales are also down; in 2014, almost 264 billion cigarettes were sold in this country, down from 273 billion in 2013. And imports are up, from 7.7 percent to 8.2 percent in 2014.

All that aside, tobacco is still a monster industry. There are substantial regulations and taxes in place, but tobacco is simply a far more valuable crop than most others; farmers can regularly pull in more than $1,500 an acre (compare that to around $300 for corn). The US cigarette industry is worth around $66 billion. And given that 18.7 percent of smokers are between 18 and 24 years old, we can, theoretically and conservatively, guess that half of those, the ones aged 18, 19, and 20, would stop smoking, putting a nearly double-digit percentage dent in buyers for cigarettes. Very bad for the tobacco industry, and for the states of Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina.

Except, maybe not, because the CDC also estimates that 88 percent of adult smokers began before the current legal age of 18, suggesting that teens are going to smoke whether it’s legal or not. 15.7 percent of all high school students in the country are smokers, which includes only a small percentage of teens legally above the smoking age. And there are plenty of arguments against the nearest comparison: the drinking age, currently at 21. The New York Times recently ran a point-counterpoint where experts argued over the efficacy of a drinking age set at 21; some like the current drinking age, but others see it as encouraging dangerous behavior or note that it is often simply ignored.

The same debate may counter smoking, with the obvious change that it is basically impossible to smoke safely, whereas drinking alcohol safely is very commonly done. Studies indicate that even a single daily cigarette has disastrous health effects over time, whereas a single beer or glass of wine is actually associated with positive health effects.

The US tobacco industry is big and powerful, and will fight tooth and nail to stop the smoking age being raised (though of course we should note that the campaign to raise the smoking age is not new). But as to whether raising the smoking age would actually result in fewer smokers, well, who knows?