Should the Minimum Legal Sale Age of Tobacco Be Increased to 21 Years of Age?

Opening Statement

October 21: Should the minimum legal sale age of tobacco be increased to 21 years of age?

What is tobacco?

What we commonly call "tobacco" is a green, American plant with nicotine-rich leaves which are cured by a process of drying and fermentation for smoking or chewing. After tobacco is picked, it is dried, ground up, and used in different in various. It can be smoked in a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and hookah as well as chewed (called smokeless tobacco or chewing tobacco) or sniffed through the nose (called snuff). Tobacco also contains over 4,000 thousand different chemicals designed to make the products more user-friendly and addictive. Tobacco contains Nicotine a highly addictive stimulant as well as a relaxant, which enslaves its users. 

Health Risks

Tobacco use remains being the world's single greatest cause of preventable death in the United States, killing more than 480,000 people each year. Tobacco creates many health and life risk factors for tobacco users. Tobacco puts you a higher risk of  Cancer – Cancer of the lungs, mouth, throat, esophagus, and more, respiratory/cardiovascular diseases, strokes, heart disease, emphysema, Chronic bronchitis. Tobacco can damage nearly every organ in the body, including the lungs, heart, blood vessels, reproductive organs, mouth, skin, eyes, and bones. Tobacco use costs the U.S. more than 300 billion in health care expenditures each year.

Who smokes tobacco?/ Who does the industry want to smoke tobacco

Majority of tobacco users are of the ages 18-40. More than 6,000 adolescents under 18 smoke their first cigarette, and approximately about 3,000 become daily smokers. 9 out of 10 smokers start before the age of 18, and 98% start smoking by age 26. From 1964 to 2014, the proportion of adult smokers declined from 42.0% to 18.0%. The tobacco industry spends $700,000 per hour on tobacco advertising directly marketed to our youth under the age of 18 because they know that majority of users will become addicted by 21. Advertising and marketing to our youth has led to the sad reality that each and every day, 1 out of 5 adolensents dies.