Smoking Stupidity???

Once again the government has recognized what is obviously a problem in the UK and dealt with it in what is possibly the most illogical manner. Raising the legal age to buy cigarettes from 16 to 18 in a bid to stop teenagers smoking is far from their brightest move yet.

Its hard to decipher whether our MP's merely want to be seen as proactive (with as little effort as possible) or whether they are in fact so completely oblivious of teenage culture that they really believe teenagers will stop smoking just because the age restrictions have changed.

I am not for a minute saying that age restrictions have no effect on the amount of teenage smokers, infact I believe the very opposite, but the governments approach, in my opinion, is coming from the totally wrong angle. Far from decreasing the amount of smokers it will only increase the amount of people doing it illegally.

What the government seem to be missing, or ignoring, is the truth about why most kids start smoking. Contrary to popular belief kids don't really think smoking itself is cool, the attraction truly lies in the age restriction and the thrill of illegal comsumption. Surely it wouldn't take much investigation to realise that barely anyone starts smoking after they are legally allowed to do so.

Most teenagers long for adulthood and crave the respect of their older peers. One obvious way to earn this respect is to look and act older than they are. Age restrictions on specific products only encourages the younger generation to obtain them in order to look older.

Perhaps it would be too brave a suggestion, but if there were no restrictions at all perhaps an 11 yr old wouldn't be so attracted so something kids half there age could have???