HILO — A Big Island lawmaker has proposed incrementally increasing the minimum age to buy cigarettes, leading to a practical ban across Hawaii.
Democratic state Rep. Richard Creagan proposed legislation aimed at making the state the first in the country to ban the sale of cigarettes for everyone except people age 100 and over, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Sunday.
Under his bill, the minimum smoking age would increase to 30 in 2020, to 40 in 2021, to 50 in 2022, to 60 in 2023 and to 100 in 2024.
The measure would not apply to e-cigarettes, cigars or chewing tobacco.
Creagan said taxes and other regulations have slowed down tobacco use, but have not stopped the problem.
“Basically, we essentially have a group who are heavily addicted — in my view enslaved by a ridiculously bad industry, which has enslaved them by designing a cigarette that is highly addictive, knowing that it highly lethal. And, it is,” Creagan said.
Creagan said he started smoking as a teenager and did so regularly during his medical residency. The state is obligated to “protect the public’s health,” he said.
“This is more lethal, more dangerous than any prescription drug, and it is more addicting,” Creagan said. “In my view, you are taking people who are enslaved from a horrific addiction, and freeing people from horrific enslavement. We, as legislators, have a duty to do things to save people’s lives. If we don’t ban cigarettes, we are killing people.”
The measure is expected to be heard by a state House committee this week.
Hawaii is one of only a few states that do not allow the sale of cigarettes to anyone under age of 21.
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Information from: Hawaii Tribune-Herald, http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/
Aloha State Rep Creagan, if you were a medical resident does that mean you are a doctor? That means you know about the toxicity and addictive power of not only tobacco, but also prescription drugs.
All prescription drugs have toxic side effects that’s why they require prescription (permission) from doctors.
Tobacco smoking can kill from lung cancer, and it also causes accelerated degeneration to any organ due to blood flow constriction and loss of oxygen to organs, over several decades. Tobacco, nicotine, is a killer.
But hold on here doctor, the opioids your profession prescribes daily kills patients in a single dosage, incredible thousands per year.
Also countless of prescription drugs kill by suicide and other physical terminators of life. Even commonly daily used over the counter pain killers accumulate irreversible damage to the kidneys forcing too many people to undergo kidney dialysis to filter the waste products from their bodies. The list is endless to your drugs.
The petrochemical industry, Big Pharm, and the doctors have 55% of our nation’s people, and who knows world wide, on 4 different prescription medications taken per day, not including thenover the counter drugs, many of those prescriptions are from side of effects of the starter drugs they were put in.
This means 55% of our nation is sick, ill, diseased, making us a weak nation, and people demand health care? Well they’re not getting it, they are getting disease care which in America is more and more sickness. No wonder America is rated 37th in the world as to quality of health care.
Health care is not found in medical offices or pharmacy, disease care is. And until people can see this it will continue.
And your profession makes no statement on the condition of the chemical laden and disease promoting foods available to the public.
Why aren’t you making a stand against that. Heart attack, stroke, cancers, obesity, and diabetes are found in our foods, but you tolerate that when it only serves to provide $4,000,000,000,000.00 in income to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacy…that’s $4 Trillion or 1200 percent more than our national defense per year.
Yes please stand up against the people’s ignorance of tobacco which is more toxic and addictive than heroin and cocaine, and sold at every corner store or big box store; but don’t forget the rest of the poison.ps in our food and drinks.
Your people are weakening our nation. Have you ever thought about ridding the cause of your patient’s problem…Cause and Effect…? Remove the Cause and that removes the effect..
The disease which requires no toxic drugs. You are giving tobacco the good riddance effort, how about the rest…?
Mahalo
Charles