Some smokers’ rights defending groups have confronted the suggestion to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco to 21 years with scepticism. However this scepticism has no substantial reason of justification. As of more recently 21 is already the minimum age requirement to purchase tobacco in most of the United States.
Raising the legal age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 is not an anti-smoking restriction that violates anybody’s rights. It remains a legitimate form of regulation that can be applied by the government and an expected intervention by the law that ensures that smoking is not practised by underage people by setting the limit as the age of self-guardianship of 21 instead of the age of legal responsibility of 18. The range of ages between 18 and 20 falling out of their entitlement to purchase tobacco is negligible to impact on anybody’s rights and is not a restriction but a form of legitimate regulation required by the law as applied among other jurisdictions in most of the United States. In other words it is a normal situation that has nothing to do with prohibitive moves.
What is instead a matter of ultimate and serious concern is raising the age limit by one year every year until no living person can smoke legitimately. Young citizens becoming of age would acquire their status of responsibility without using it to make a judgement on whether to smoke, so what is the justification brought forward by the law of having the age limit which would be a variable, if it does not intend to prevent underage smoking but instead take advantage of the existence of the law to pursue an external cause of eliminating smoking?
The reason the anti-smoking regime of the British government goes on legislating against smoking without considering the opposite view is because they meet no declared opposition from the public in the form of resistance which would have been indicated by a public demonstration of people who are concerned as smokers demonstrating about their rights.
If they see no opposition from the public, the government assume that they can go on and that everybody else agrees on average with what they do while they do not. It is intermittent that somebody smokes and that the rest do not, so if you do not share the same interest in common with the next person you cannot associate with them unless you identify members of your own group. This makes public demonstrations regarding smokers’ rights less likely to occur instead of holding congregations uniting members of the same group.
Our rights that are not respected by smoking bans and hence that are not recognised by the law include the basic human right to free motion and free circulation without being compensated to do so when telling us where to go along with what to do there. Making arbitrary and direct use of the law that is punishable for trivial purposes that relate to everyday life to generalise the consequences of localised rules throughout the whole area of the land is not the route to follow instead of the Constitution that restricts what each politician can and cannot do and what they can or cannot vote on.
The right to retain the fruits of your labour is not respected by plain packaging legislation that applies censorship to messages and ideas robbing the results of artistic creation from their proprietors which constitutes a concerning form of censorship and an impediment to free speech. It can be established that no government is entitled to infringe on intellectual property rights of the private sector.
Before plain packaging was imposed on cigarette manufacturers by violating their right to retain the fruits of your labour and their right to free speech, there were no pictorial health warnings that were introduced in the UK simultaneously with the plain packaging, while pictorial health warnings are a preventative measure that should exist instead of plain packaging and not because of it:
Contraband products exist alongside genuinely originating products and can be distinguished from the originating mark of authenticity by the creator that demotes contraband products to imitations, making that a reason to preserve their decorative artwork and distinctiveness instead of deleting it from censorship.
Bring Back Smoking Freedom 