As B.C. health minister Terry Lake considers raising the legal age for smoking cigarettes to 21, the debate is raging over whether this will make a difference to the number of young people smoking.
I suspect it won’t. While I applaud any effort to prevent kids from taking up cigarettes, and there are certainly measures in place to make it more difficult, they will always find a way.
When I was a kid, my parents both smoked. My siblings and I thought it was disgusting, particularly when we were stuffed into the back seat of the family car on vacation. Years later, my mother was horrified but in those days smoking wasn’t the scourge it is now. Winter was the worst: windows rolled up, Mom and Dad puffing away on their Belvederes, kids hacking and coughing in the back seat.
And no one went outside for a smoke back then. You watched TV while you smoked, you enjoyed a smoke at the breakfast table and you smoked on the chairlift at the ski hill. And you smoked in every restaurant, bar and even airplanes of course.
We nagged them constantly about quitting smoking. Then my brother took up smoking as a teen, and I dabbled in it when I was 16. It was handy having parents who smoked as it was easy to swipe a pack from the carton of smokes on top of the fridge.
My parents were horrified but I’m pretty sure their smoking didn’t influence me. It was something to do at parties when I was feeling nervous and unsure of myself. I’m sure I looked ridiculous, but I felt incredibly fabulous with a cigarette in my hand.
Then my grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer, a direct result of his lifetime of smoking. He was young when he died and my mother said anyone watching someone die of lung cancer would never smoke again.
My parents both quit smoking shortly after that, and it wasn’t long before my brother and I both gave up. I was never really addicted so it wasn’t that difficult.
A few years later, my dad used to say he would love to enjoy a nice cigar once in awhile, but my mom discouraged him, worried he’d become addicted. Sure enough, that one cigar turned into a habit that he continues to enjoy to this day. And yes, he inhales them. Mind you, he’s 83 and in perfect health so who am I to argue. He is clearly an anomaly.
When I became engaged to the man who is now my husband, he vowed to quit smoking. I told him it didn’t matter. I was in love and he could do no wrong. It turns out it did matter to me and yes, there has been nagging over the years, which as anyone who lives with a smoker knows is completely futile. He once quit for eight months and started up again at a family reunion filled with smokers.
I should point out he does not smoke in the house, and I now leave the nagging to our daughter, who worries about his health. He smokes a pack a day and has been addicted for 30 years. The odd thing is that he hates it. Unlike my dad who tucks into his cigar with enthusiasm, my hubby gets the nicotine into his system as quickly as possible before coming back inside. Watching him outside during the recent cold snap made me grateful I didn’t have the habit. The cost of a pack of cigarettes irritates me as much as the health risks.
Now I see high school kids smoking and it frankly stuns me. There are rules in place for selling to kids: the smokes are hidden away in every store and you can no longer buy them at the pharmacy. They still get them, though. It astonishes me that in the 21st century, kids still take up smoking knowing the health risks. And, if the threat of COPD, emphysema and lung cancer aren’t enough, they will age you faster than a lifetime of suntanning.
We’ve made it as socially unacceptable as possible. But I still don’t think raising the legal age for smoking is going to do it. Just as I swiped packs from my parents’ cartons of smokes, kids will find a way to get them. If hiding cigarettes behind a curtain and graphic warning labels won’t do it, I’m not sure what will.
The problem is that it’s easy for the government to raise the smoking age. It’s a quick fix. But meanwhile, the epidemic of fentanyl overdose deaths continues, and while there is obviously no quick fix, I think that’s where the government’s focus needs to be.