Raising the legal age for smoking not so crazy after all
KAMLOOPS — Raising the age for legal smoking from 19 to 21 isn’t as crazy and pointless as it sounds.
Health Minister Terry Lake has floated the idea, saying the longer people are legally not supposed to smoke, the better the chances they’ll never start.
The seemingly obvious problem with his theory is that no matter what the law says, people are going to start smoking when they want to. That’s why anti-tobacco campaigns focus heavily on trying to convince young people not to get hooked on it.
StatsCan numbers show that one in 10 of 15- to 17-year-olds smoked in 2011. That’s 121,000 of them. However, there was a substantial decline in smoking in the 15- to 19-year-old age range.