A Stitch in Haste

New York hack politician seeks to raise the state’s smoking age to 19:

The Senate Health Committee is expected tomorrow to consider the bill, which is sponsored by the same senator, [Republican] Charles Fuschillo…who sponsored the statewide ban on smoking in most indoor public places.
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Three states — Alabama, Utah and Alaska — have raised the tobacco-purchasing age to 19.
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Fuschillo said the goal of his bill is to make it more difficult for high-school kids to get their hands on cigarettes. Many younger teens, he said, use 18-year-old school friends to buy cigarettes for them. Raising the age by a year will greatly diminish that option, he said.
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Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long, who quit smoking eight years ago, branded the bill as nothing more than “feel-good, politically correct legislation that really won’t do anything.”

And here at A Stitch in Haste we have a name for that: The Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling. The politicians “did something.” The fact that it was something stupid and useless is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

I see little need to analyze this nonsense any deeper than the standard “an adult who can vote, own a gun and serve in the military should obviously have the right to buy a pack of cigarettes.”

On the other hand, as a gay I find the politics of this maneuver strangely familiar. Although no one is 18 forever, 18-year olds, as a group, are a permanent minority, with little if any political power. So it’s easy for hack politicians to infringe their rights for some vague, self-proclaimed “majoritarian” purpose. Yup, that definitely sounds familiar.

And I as asked in this post earlier today, is it really somehow less wise to be governed, at least in part, by unelected judges than by elected morons like this?

Similar Posts:

• New Jersey to Raise Smoking Age
• On Banning Flavored Cigarettes
• Two “Warm Fuzzy Feeling” Anecdotes
• Second-Hand Smoke Is Will Be Hazardous to Your Health
• State AGs Want Anti-Smoking PSAs on DVDs

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