Impacts of Hawaii Setting the Legal Smoking age to 100

As of February 2019, Hawaii has been considered raising the legal smoking age to 100; this is obviously an extreme method to make the majority of the population ineligible to buy cigarettes. This is after the age was raised to 21 3 years above the national average age of 18.  In a 2006 article published by Michael Markrich “For every 100,000 people living in Hawai’i, 20 live to be more than 100 years of age; on the Mainland, only 10 people out of 100,000 live to such an advanced age. Hawai’i is home to the greatest number of centenarians per capita–about 300 in all”

Having such a small proportion of a country being able to buy cigarettes is designed to restrict the number of smokers down and make the country healthier overall.

Cigarettes are an example of a negative externality; a negative externality is a good that is worse than it is perceived. There is a social cost and private cost, in a negative externality the social cost is greater than the private cost. The private cost is just the cost of the pack to a consumer, whereas the social cost is the lost hours in work where people are sick or the extra burden of hospitals treating smoking-related illnesses.

A country with similar laws to that of Hawaii is Turkmenistan. They completely banned smoking and enforce the rules tightly. As a result, it has the lowest smoking rate according to the WHO. However, due to cigarettes being addictive the black market for tobacco is booming with many citizens unwilling to curb smoking.

This could also be the case in Hawaii with cigarette sales going underground and having traffickers bring in tobacco. I think there could be more effective ways to combat smoking. As mentioned before smoking is highly addictive, this means if the price is put up demand won’t really change much (inelastic PED) this means the Hawaiian government could levy a tax on tobacco products and gain considerable revenue. With this money, they could then provide health centres to help guide people through quitting smoking instead of forcing them to go cold turkey.

https://www.rferl.org/a/qishloq-ovozi-turkmenistan-smoking-crackdown/27728410.html

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/forums/asia-central-asia/topics/smoking-in-turkmenistan

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/04/health/hawaii-cigarette-ban-bill-trnd/index.html

Ortiz J (2018) No smoking? Hawaii lawmaker wants to say goodbye to cigarettes forever Available at: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/02/05/smoking-ban-hawaii-aims-ban-cigarettes-tobacco-legislation/2774631002/ Accessed: February 23rd