Perhaps only in America must high school seniors jump through so many hoops to get liquor. This is best exemplified in Superbad, where a group of seniors ends up with a couple of eccentric police officers, in late-night parties filled with illicit substances, and on a bus with a crazy person who smashes their bottle…
Soon, 21-year-olds in Brookline, MA won’t be able to legally buy cigarettes. A new town law prohibits anyone born on or after January 1st, 2000 to buy cigarettes ever, regardless of their age. This first-in-the-nation law means that an entire generation of residents won’t be able to legally smoke in the town unless they leave…
As if America didn’t already have an appalling record on youth rights, the Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to raise the voting age to 25 unless 18 to 24-year-olds serve in the military or pass a civics test. Really, Vivek? When there’s a growing movement to lower the voting age to 16 to give…
Observing the United States in the 1830s, the French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his Democracy in America that “the position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in one.” Tocqueville was observing the exceptionality of American society, with its…
There is no doubt that many youth rights issues are not well represented to those who have the most resources and abilities to make change on a county, state, or federal level. The issues of drinking and smoking age are no different and I firmly believe that spreading out support over as many districts and…
Reposted from Protect 18 with permission from the author. The recent inventions of vape and JUUL and their prevalence among teenagers have undoubtedly raised extreme moral panic around tobacco usage. Beginning around 2010-2011 tobacco use among U.S. middle and high schoolers started to rise due to the introduction of e-cigarettes, starting at around 2.1 percent…
Most people would probably agree that tobacco smoking is bad, and that it is worthwhile to try to reduce its prevalence. But the recent trend toward raising the legal minimum age for purchase from 18 to 21 is the wrong approach. One indicator of officially sanctioned ageism is policymakers’ willingness to artificially increase the length…
A bill has been introduced in the California legislature that will raise the smoking age to 21, making it the highest in the nation. NYRA member, Denis Hiller, has organized a campaign against this bill and testified before a California Legislative Committee on June 26 in oposition to this bill. Explaining his decision to fight…
