Lawmaker wants Hawaii to raise legal smoking age to 100

(Image credit: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

published 6 February 2019

Dr. Richard Creagan doesn't think that higher taxes on cigarettes and anti-smoking campaigns are doing enough to get people to kick the habit, so he's come up with a different solution.

Creagan, a former emergency room physician, is a Democratic member of Hawaii's state House of Representatives, and his new bill, HB 1509, would quickly raise the minimum smoking age over five years — to 30 in 2020, 40 in 2021, 50 in 2022, 60 in 2023, and 100 in 2024. This would effectively ban the sale of cigarettes to most people in the state.

"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 is highly lethal," Creagan told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. Every year, roughly 500,000 people die in the United States from smoking-related conditions, and since the state is "obligated to protect the public's health," the bill doesn't go too far. "We don't allow people free access to opioids, for instance, or any prescription drugs," he said. The bill will likely be heard by the House Health Committee this week.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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