aside from the issue of 'prohibition still doesn't work', i don't think giving kids or "underage" adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone
Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.
TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.
How is BolexForSoup incorrect? Also, why should anyone care if a person goes to jail for selling cigarettes to minors? It wouldn't even be a valid source of income for these people if kids could buy them directly from the store so I'm not even sure what you're suggesting we do
"Noone goes to prison for underage smoking". False. The people selling the cigarettes, poor people trying to make a buck, go to jail for the underage smoking.
No. I am pointing out that you are making two conflicting statements.
You are doing mental gymnastics.
Back to the point "Noone goes to prison for underage smoking". Yes they do. When you make prohibition laws creating the concept of "underage smoking" you ARE sending SOMEONE to prison.
If you genuinely don't understand how the English language works and you want to create your own form of doublespeak where you say "Noone goes to prison" but you really mean "let's imprison poor people and still not solve the issue" them I'm seriously concerned for you.
You "corrected" someone by making an entirely different point from the one they made. In fact, the person you said was "wrong" actually stated the very thing you did.
No one is saying your point is wrong. Just that it isn't a correction.
I would argue that society should reserve the right to punish individuals who harm others for their personal benefit.
And I would argue that selling a physically addictive substance that directly causes harm with no benefit to the user for personal profit is causing harm.
So while I don't support arresting people for smoking, I 100% so support arresting people for selling.
So you just outright said that people should be free to smoke, but anyone who sells what is being smoked should be incarcerated.
How is that not a complete oxymoron?
No. You have a factually flawed bias against a thing, and you want to mob up with other people to enforce your opinions and will upon people you disagree with.
As a result, you want to imprison poor people and not accomplish what you claim to want to accomplish.
How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.
There is already a black/gray marked near many schools (for the younger, there are cigarettes and for the older there is weed.) it’s a market where there is just one person selling, it is more a fluid market where the young people sell and buy to each other, mostly there are multiple kids with connections to get the goods in any school and then it rotates through the different kids by selling, buying, stealing etc.
Source: I’m 26 now, and don’t believe that has changed since I left school.
I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it's "cool", making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.