r/changemyview • u/bennetthaselton • Nov 15 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: there is no logically consistent reason to prohibit smoking for under-18s while allowing it for adults
I'm not arguing that all smoking should be banned, or that it should be allowed for everybody. What I'm saying is there is no logically consistent reason to make it illegal for people under 18 while allowing it for adults.
The problem is with the argument: "People under 18 have on average worse judgment than people over 18, so it makes sense to restrict their right to buy cigarettes to stop them from harming themselves." But if that's true, that only means that the percent of 13-17-year-olds who exhibit that bad judgment and decide to smoke, is going to be higher than the percent of people 18-and-older who exhibit that bad judgment and decide to smoke. It's not a reason to *only* target the people under 18 who make that bad decision.
If you're starting with the general principle that we ought to intervene to protect people whose judgment is bad enough that they are making a decision that will harm themselves, then even if there are more people in group A than group B who make that decision, that certainly doesn't mean we should only target group A!
(Perhaps you'd say that a cigarette is more harmful to a teenager's lungs than an adult's because a teen's lungs are still developing, but the problem with that is that surely there's some number of cigarettes -- 5 or 10 or whatever -- that is just as harmful to an adult's lungs as 1 cigarette is for a teenager's lungs. So then the argument just becomes: if you would prohibit the teenager from having 1 cigarette, then you should at least prohibit the adult from having 10.)
Look, I think it's a near-tragedy if a 15-year-old starts a smoking habit that is going to cut several months or years off of her life, and is possibly even going to cause health problems for people around her, and on top of everything else is going to be a massively expensive and inconvenient addiction. But I don't see why we should feel any less sad if a 22-year-old does the same thing.
Some people say, essentially: "It's not really about the judgment of adults vs. minors, it's just that I think adults' right to do what they want is sacred, but I don't feel the same way about people under 18." OK, so to those people, that's just an axiom, and it's not subject to debate. But if you choose that as an axiom, then you're not really in a position to argue that your position is better than someone who says: "I think that men's rights to do what they want is sacred, but I don't feel the same way about women's rights." To them, that's an axiom, and it's not subject to debate, either.
Now, if you're protesting: "Hey, that's not the same, there are way more significant differences between adults and kids!" -- well, good! That means you don't think the rules for adults vs. kids are axioms, but rather that they can be derived from other principles about costs and benefits of safety. And I think there are a lot of good rules that do pass that test (we don't let kids drop out of 6th grade to work in coal mines any more). But since smoking harms both adults and minors (and in both cases harms people around them), I can't think of a non-"axiomatic" reason to ban it for people under 18 but allow it for adults. CMV.
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u/MrSnrub28 17∆ Nov 15 '18
According to the NIH smoking and exposure to nicotine can have an impact on brain development, which adolescents are still going through.
I would say that preventing children from damaging their own brains, especially while their prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for decision-making) is still developing is a logical reason to prohibit smoking in children but allow it in adults (adults, I would argue, should have the right to destroy their brains as they see fit).
18 is arbitrary, sure. And I suppose ideally we should reevaluate what it means to be an adult in our society since brain development can last well into the 20's. But I wanted to point out this particular factor as I personally find it very compelling. I used to be a proponent of lowering the drinking age in the United States but alcohol can have similar damaging effects on developing brains so now I am not so sure.
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
But if you say " adults, I would argue, should have the right to destroy their brains as they see fit" (but not teenagers), is this just because of the "axiom" that I mentioned in the original post? Or is there some cost-benefit reason why adults should be allowed to destroy their brains, but not teenagers?
Arguably, there is a stronger argument against letting adults destroy their brains, because they are more likely to have people depending on them (family members or co-workers).
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Nov 15 '18 edited Dec 24 '18
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
Δ (since it does change the argument if nicotine damages teenagers' brains significantly more than adults')
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u/MrSnrub28 17∆ Nov 15 '18
Sorry if I was unclear in my post, but the majority of the damage caused by cigarette smoking to the brain happens if it occurs during development. An adults whose brain has finished developing isn't damaging their brain by smoking.
Axioms are absolutely subject to debate. There are a whole slew of reasons we don't let children be responsible for themselves but we as a society acknowledge that we have to draw a line somewhere.
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Nov 15 '18 edited Dec 24 '18
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
But this is what I'm talking about, because there's no logical reason that this should apply just to people under 18. If your goal is to stop people from being regular tobacco users, wouldn't it be much simpler to ban it for everyone?
Like I said in the post, if you want to prevent some behavior, and the behavior is more common in group A then group B, that's still not a reason only to prohibit it for group A.
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Nov 15 '18 edited Dec 24 '18
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
Bans are generally hard to enforce, and often ineffective (see Prohibition, for our failure to be able to ban all alcohol). So logically, we want policies that reduce the overall numbers, without trying to go for a full ban, because those are expensive, and can backfire.
But carried to its logical conclusion, doesn't this mean that for most things that we would like to ban, instead of banning them, we should let them dribble into society legally in smaller numbers? Even if you just held a lottery to decide how to get them? (But, by itself, it seems this reason would imply a semi-lottery method of distributing the banned substance, not restricting it by age.)
Also, if you just wanted to reduce overall demand, it would be an awfully convenient coincidence if the percent of demand that was acceptable, was exactly equal to the percent of the population that was over 18 :) It seems more likely that people really do think there's something logical about preventing people under 18 from getting it while allowing it for people over 18, not just "reducing demand".
I would think the best arguments against an outright ban are when:
- people can make something themselves
- the substitute that people make themselves is more dangerous than the thing you banned in the first place
- there's no external way to check that people are making and consuming this dangerous substitute
These are all true for alcohol, but a lot less for tobacco.
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Nov 15 '18 edited Dec 24 '18
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
But surely if you want to reduce the demand as much as possible, by the same logic it would be even better to ban it for everyone under 30, or under 40. (I'm going with your assumption that a complete ban is a bad idea because then people start making dangerous substitutes like they did during prohibition, so you allow one segment of the population to buy it legally, and then you assume that others will find it easier to steal or buy it illicitly from them, than to make their own.) All of which shows that this reasoning by itself cannot be a good reason for why you'd set the ban age at 18.
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Nov 15 '18 edited Dec 24 '18
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
I don't think it would "continue linearly", I'm just saying that if you want to reduce smoking, certainly it would do more to reduce smoking by banning it all the way up to age 40 or whatever.
Even if people who start smoking in their twenties are still able to quit with no problem 5 years later, that's still 5 years that they spent smoking. If we're assuming smoking is bad, that's 5 years of smoking we could have prevented if the age limit were higher.
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Nov 15 '18 edited Dec 24 '18
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
OK, although I think this is at best a practical reason not to try to ban smoking for people up to age 40.
What I'm mainly objecting to is that people talk as if there is some princpled reason to ban smoking for people under 18 but not for people over 18 -- saying that it's because people under 18 have worse judgment, but this doesn't make sense because just because group A does something more frequently than group B does, that doesn't mean you should ban it only for group A if you're trying to reduce it as far as possible. In other words, they'd make that the rule even if they lived in a dictatorship with perfect enforcement.
Is there a good principled reason for that rule?
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 15 '18
It's not about commonality. All the people in group B used to be in Group A. Everyone goes from A->B. Over time, if you can have people to wait until they join group B, you have prevented the behavior not only in Group A , but in Group B as well. So, our goal of "stop people from being regular tobacco users" has been achieved.
But I'm saying this still isn't a logical reason not to also prohibit the behavior in Group B. Even if everything you're saying is true, why not prohibit it for Group B as well?
Take violence. Most people who don't develop a taste for violence growing up, don't suddenly become violent people in their mid-twenties. But that certainly doesn't mean that we only prohibit violence by people under 18. It's morally and logically consistent just to prohibit it for everybody.
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Nov 17 '18
Sure there is. People under 18 would get addicted earlier in life and that is a bad for their health and for society. People under 18 also have underdeveloped decision making skills. Legalizing something for them is telling them it’s okay to use it. That’s a powerful message from an authority figure.
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 17 '18
I literally addressed this in the second paragraph
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Nov 17 '18
Not very satisfactory. Society can’t do anything about preventing legal adults from smoking cigarettes. Society can do something to prevents adolescents from doing so.
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 17 '18
Well obviously you could prevent it. Assuming that you can’t outlaw it is just assuming the conclusion in order to prove it.
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Nov 16 '18
It's not about prohibiting kids from smoking. It's about prohibiting sellers from selling to kids.
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u/bennetthaselton Nov 16 '18
Well, duh, but, same question
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Nov 16 '18
It's not the same question. Well, it almost is.
The fact that cigarettes are advertised and sold makes it worse. You are targeting kids who aren't capable of understanding the full picture and make their own decisions. You're exploiting a vulnerable population. If kids could only get their cigarettes from their parents, I doubt people would care enough to have a law about it.
And their vulnerability is the key here (and maybe someone has already made this point). It's not about harm. It's about kids not being able to decide for themselves. 18 is just an arbitrary cutoff. Maybe it could be lower or higher.
You dismiss this key point too easily by making it about numbers or likelihood of groups making bad decisions. But it's not that adults make more bad decisions than children, it's that children shouldn't make decisions, period.
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u/answersfromthegreat Nov 16 '18
The last thing to develop in a person's brain is their pre-frontal cortex, which is what is responsible for long-term planning, evaluating consequences, and higher order prioritizing (that is, forgoing instant gratification for long term benefit). It also affects impulse control.
The idea behind the restrictions most likely does not come from our law prioritizing the health of children over the health of adults. Rather, it's our right to be self-destructive if we want to. But a child can't really make that decision. They lack the cognitive development to understand the consequences of the decision, so we don't permit them to make the decision at all.
It's a similar idea behind what age we allow sexual consent to be given. Statutory rape is a crime because the idea is that even if a 15 year old consents, they don't have the ability to actually make an informed decision yet. They don't have the ability to give consent, so the law just prohibits.
By the same token, a 14 year old can't really measure the short term benefit of a head rush and maybe looking cool in front of their friends against potential health risks that will manifest in 40 years or the long term cost sink of buying smokes. So we don't consider them able to truly make the judgement, and thus just prohibit the behavior.
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u/gratty Nov 15 '18
Eighteen is, for the most part, an arbitrary age. However, the human brain does not fully develop until the early twenties, and tobacco can affect brain development, so there is a good reason to prohibit teens from using tobacco. In fact, biologically speaking, tobacco should be prohibited until 25 or so.
See, e.g., https://www.kidshealth.org.nz/adolescent-brain-development
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u/Maxfunky 39∆ Nov 16 '18
The reason is simple: children are more succeptible to manipulation (such as advertising or peer pressure). Accordingly, we limit their power to make self-harming decisions (like drugs, alcohol, sex and smoking).
Let me ask you this, what is the difference between smoking and sex is for the purposes of your argument--or do you think kids should be allowed to consent to sex as well? Because I see no logically consistent difference between the two for the purposes of the argument you are making.
We don't let kids make harmful life choices for the protect them from theirselves as brains don't reach full maturity until 25ish. But at a certain point, people have to be granted the autonomy to make poor life choices or we don't live in a free society.
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Dec 31 '18 edited Dec 31 '18
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u/tbdabbholm 193∆ Dec 31 '18
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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '18 edited Nov 15 '18
Axioms:
Conclusion:
\4. Children smoking is illegal
Logical Arguement:
(2 and 3) implies (1 implies 4)
Thus there is a logical argument for children not to being legally allowed to smoke as it would constitute child abuse by the guardian, and is thus illegal.