Sorry, kids, no more tobacco for you

What an incredibly dumb decision to raise the minimum age to buy e-cigs to twenty one. Why make it more difficult for adults who want to try and quite smoking, or at least reduce the harm caused by tobacco cigarettes? Unfortunately this was a decision that was made without an understanding of the current science.

Maybe they should raise the driving age to 21 next.

Banning Santa Claus because he smokes a pipe, is overweight and has rosy cheeks after enjoying an adult beverage?

Might as well raise the legal age to do anything in Boston to 65 to appease the dinosaurs running this parochial backwater burg.

if kid want to smoke, let em smoke. at 18 they are adults. let them smoke, let them drink, let the move out, go to college, the military, or prison. they have the right to make choices. period

I am as anti-smoking as it gets, almost militantly so, but I don't agree with this decision. It seems to be part of this whole extended adolescence thing that goes on now. 18-21 year olds are technically adults, yet are being coddled and treated as children in so many ways. They are no longer considered adults as my age group was when we were that age in the 1970s, a more progressive time. The way things are going these days I'm starting to wonder how long it will be until the voting age goes back to 21.

Although I'm 22 and unfortunately a smoker I will try to be completely unbiased. I started smoking when I was 14. Getting cigarettes at that age was ridiculous easy. We would stand outside a store asking every person that went in to buy my friends and I a pack of cigss in return they can keep the change. Another way of getting ciggs were asking older friends and relatives. By the time I was 16 or 17 when I got my state issued ID I would attempt to buy cigs from any store whose clerk that didn't know how to do the math on how old I was. This law will barely make a dent in curbing smoking. I had many 21 y/o buy me ciggs when I was younger. So an 18 year old can sign up for the military, vote, buy scratch tickets, porn, drive a car just about do anything but buy booze and drive a semitruck but in Boston is not allowed to buy cigarettes? Smoking cigarettes are a terrible thing to do especially with all the chemicals and synthetic tobacco but it shouldn't be restricted to younger adults.

Thanks for the business!

-Every convenience store owner in every surrounding city and town

Maybe I'm unfamiliar with the way these things work, but is the Board of Health, a seven member panel consisting of people affiliated with places like East Boston Neighborhood Health Center and the Dimock Center, simply able to make a unilateral decision like this? There doesn't have to be legislation or a referendum or anything?

If I marketed a new product today, that they found was poisonous and addictive next week, it would be off the market by the end of the month. We all pay the price for these "freedom loving" smokers - through insurance rates.

*shrug* You can't rent a car or be a US representative until one is 25 either. According to Wikipedia, a 18 year old can't even run for *local* office in some places[1]

[]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy_law...

and demanding governments (local, state) stop infringing on their adult rights. These same governments demand 18-21 year olds be legally considered emancipated adults, will treat them as such in a court of law, hold them to adult responsibilities. The federal government demands 18 plus adult males sign up for selective service (military draft), and accepts 18 plus males and females for military service. Yet, these same governments deny them the legal right to buy and drink alcohol (a legal product), and buy and use tobacco (a legal product) or ecigarettes, some of which contain nicotine (a legal product).

Ironically, 18-21 year old adults, and younger teenagers, even children, are given powerful, mind altering (legal) prescription drugs like they were candy. The same governments that deny 18-21 year old adults the right to buy and use alcohol, tobacco, and products containing nicotine, have no problem with these powerful, addictive, mind altering, prescription drugs, many with terrible side effects.