Welcome to 2017! In addition to having a narcissist president who tricked people into thinking they’d get their jobs back, residents of Ann Arbor under age 21 are now legally forbidden to buy tobacco products effective 2017. (The post-apocalyptic dystopian Hellscape of America is materializing at a chipper clip.)
The Age of Maturity Act maintains that a person’s simple decision to purchase tobacco and beginning the slow corruption of their once-buoyant, youthful body is restricted to those aged 21 and over. (Paraphrasing here, of course.)
Hoping to promote a healthier lifestyle, Dr. Jessie Kimbrough Marshall, the medical director of Washtenaw County Public Health, believes, “the law will save lives” and prevent tobacco addiction.
However, many Ann Arborites have taken flooded our public colloquium (i.e. MLive’s comment section) to express concern that the ordinance discourages independent thinking as the liberal nanny state’s final knell. Does not a profound nicotine addiction cultivated over many years constitute a discouragement of independent thinking?
It’s not that Dr. Marshall’s intention to uphold public health through the under-21 tobacco ban is without merit. Statistics show that 95% of adults started smoking before age 21. One more barrier to entry only reserves the sweet reprieve of nicotine entering the bloodstream for minors crafty enough to buy tobacco products in Ypsilanti.
We can all recite your drunk uncle’s go-to shtick about being legally allowed to vote for the president, enlist in the army to kill or be killed overseas, purchase a firearm and even get married, yet now you have to wait until you’re 21 to buy alcohol. Let’s just savor the idea that, at least in Ann Arbor, drunken family members lecturing younger relatives about the retrospective ubiquity of vice items can now tout tobacco as among the poisons oppressed in the name of public health.
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