New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn introduced a bill today that would hike the city's smoking age from 18 to 21. “By raising the legal purchase age to 21, we will prevent a generation of New Yorkers from becoming addicted to smoking and ultimately save thousands of lives,” Quinn said in a press release posted on Joe My God. And she's mostly right—making it harder to get tobacco will, almost certainly, decrease access, delay initial exposure, nix some addictions, and save smokers and society enormous health costs and death tolls.

But here's a question about this thinking: What interest does society have in prohibiting adults from using a legal substance? Tobacco is unhealthy—it's potentially lethal—but we don't prohibit Whoppers, Krispy Kremes, and Mountain Dew. All those things are unhealthy and potentially lethal. (In fact, a study from the Columbia University and City College recently found that "the total health burden of obesity surpassed the total health impact of smoking.") Even when those unhealthy products are regulated, they're not banned in any age group. The argument for delaying the drinking age three years into adulthood is partly a matter of public safety—not just the safety of the individual, but the safety of the everyone else in the general public. "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that the 21 minimum legal drinking age has reduced traffic fatalities involving drivers 18 to 20 years old by 13 percent and saves approximately 900 lives a year," says the Minnesota Department of Health.

But allowing 18 year olds to smoke doesn't necessarily make them dangerous to others. You might even make the opposite case: By prohibiting this substance from adults—who can vote, drive, and go to war—you're encouraging a huge black market for cigarettes. And black markets come with lost revenue for public health, gangs that control those revenues, and violence to defend their illegal market share. Either way, someone gets screwed.

I don't have the answer. BUT SLOGGERS ALWAYS HAVE THE ANSWER!