City Council raises NYC smoking age to 21. Sorry, angsty teens

Mayor Bloomberg has never been one to shy away from a public health fight. At least as long as it didn’t touch his precious diet soda. And since smoking is a thing that basically everyone hates, he had supported a bill that would raise the age at which people could buy tobacco products to 21. Well, that bill has passed the City Council 35 to 10, mean high school and college students trying to look cool and disaffected will need something new to pair with that old copy of No Exit they totally stole from the library.

We feel for the teenagers of the city. After all, if you don’t know who’s cool just by looking at them, you might accidentally have sex with someone who’s not cool. And as for the people who are actually 18 and legal adults, well, that sucks. But at least you can still vote, so maybe start pooling your power there and only support candidates who will lower the NYC smoking age down to 18. There’s already a group that’s pissed about this, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, and it really looks like they could use a young person web designer.

Don’t panic just yet kids, according to amNew York, the law won’t take affect in the city until the spring of 2014, so you’ve still got a few months to take advantage of bodegas where clerks just do the eye test or figure 15 is close enough to 18 anyway. And don’t you laugh, kids of other cities. The mayor is fond of talking about how everyone totally went along with New York after we banned smoking in bars, and Bloomberg is about to have nothing to do but travel the country and lobby other cities to do this, so you could be next.

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