Rasing legal smoking age in North Amercia. Annotated Bibliography

Reasons of Raising the Legal Smoking Age in North America
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Reasons of Raising the Legal Smoking Age in North America
Introduction
The urge to reduce smoking and save lives lost to smoking-related illnesses is high. This can be achieved by raising the bare minimum sale age for these products, preferably to 21. This strategy is more variable than higher taxes, tough smoke-free laws and tobacco cessation programs. Almost every smoker starts as a kid or a young adult. In turn, tobacco companies heavily target these age groups. Therefore, setting the minimum age as 21 will help us in preventing young individuals from getting into smoke and to minimize diseases, health costs, and deaths caused by smoking.
Review of Literature
According to the national data, 95 % of the adult users start smoking while they were under 21. At 18-21, many smokers transition from experimental to regular (daily) use (Sajjad & John, 2006). Every day, approximately 350 kids (under 18) become regular smokers. Sadly, one out of three of these kids will finally die. Additionally, 46 % of them become regular users before they were 18 and in a group of five, four of them started smoking before turning 21 (Dietz, Douglas, & Brownson, 2016). These statistics are shocking indeed, considering the high number of youngsters involved. It is an indication of how easy or simple it is for youngsters to join the smoking fray.
The growth process is more or less a simultaneous one, where one part develops, before the other. The development of the brain usually occurs in phases, and for young people, this offers the biggest challenge. Young people are highly susceptible to nicotine addiction and its impacts because they have brains which are still undergoing development. Therefore, delaying the age at which they first experiment or start smoking can minimize the risk of addiction. The systematic development of the brain basically means that there will be some things learnt earlier than others, and some pleasure points preferred to others.
There is quite a lot of evidence that establishes a clear variance in smoking tendencies and its impacts between the two genders. Research shows that the relationship between tobacco use and lung function is complicated. “In some cases, smoking cessation involving medication resulted in significantly higher abstinence rates than cessation involving counseling,” (Micheal, 2012). According to studies, the female gender is more susceptible to smoking, than their male counterparts (Sørheim et al, 2010). In fact, the female gender is associated with a reduction in lung function among users with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with low smoking exposure or early onset of the illness (Sørheim et al, 2010). These findings suggest that there is a gender difference in vulnerability to smoking effects, especially lung-damaging ailments.
Duke et al., (2014) explains that tobacco companies have the tendency of intentionally targeting young people through marketing. Their aim is to ensure that there is a recruitment of "replacement smokers" while they protect their profits. Simply put, these companies seem to have established some form of conveyor belt, which is relentlessly producing new addicts by the day. At the end of the day, their target is to ensure there are new smokers constantly replacing former or reformed smokers. It is clear that these companies have the statistics and they are aware that almost all smokers become addicts before they turn 21 (Duke et al., 2014). Therefore, the only way to counter the efforts of these companies is to increase this age of use to 21. In this way, we will be able to protect our kids and young adults from tobacco addiction at this critical time of experimentation and transition to regular use.
Morain and Malek (2017) explain that raising the required age of tobacco sale will keep tobacco away from high schools. From recent research, kids frequently turn to their older colleagues or classmates to get cigarettes. Younger students tend to feel that what their older counterparts do is ‘cool,’ so the best way to handle the issue, is from the top. Passing legislation against a certain age would go a long way. This law has been successful in the south, especially states like California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii (Schneider et al., 2015). Thus, setting the notch higher, at 21 years, will help North America too. For instance, the likelihood that a student in high school can legally access or buy tobacco products and share with or give to underage students and friends will be minimized.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are some genuine reasons for raising the legal smoking age in America. These reasons actually aim at saving the younger generation from the smoking addiction, rather than simply denying them the chance to smoke. Researches done by various scholars clearly indicate there would be greater benefits if the age limit is raised, than how it is now. However, raising the minimum age of tobacco sale and use in North America can help reduce the consumption, cases of developing related diseases, and the deaths. Therefore, there is a need to adopt this strategy and prevent our kids from smoking themselves to death, and this strategy is most likely the solution. While it might take some time and procedures, it will succeed in the end.
References
Sørheim, I. C., Johannessen, A., Gulsvik, A., Bakke, P. S., Silverman, E. K., & DeMeo, D. L. (2010). Gender differences in COPD: are women more susceptible to smoking effects th...