On August 11th, I walked into the Clearview General Store to notice several prominently displayed warnings, stating that it was now necessary, by law, to be 21 to purchase tobacco in Cook County. It was only several weeks earlier, I had heard about this topic for the first time. For the next two days, I thought about this issue a lot. I pondered it from several angles, constantly confused by the county commissioners’ decision.
Still, taking responsibility for my own lack of follow-through with investigation on important county affairs, I refuse to blame the surprise which came over me with this new law on any fault of poor communication from the county. Where had I been, to miss opportunity to express my concern over such an obvious intrusion upon the life of adult human beings? And furthermore, to try and elucidate why, I believe such a precedent as this will prove to be ineffective in the short-term; as it will to be naive in the long.
Then, as fate would have it, my interest was rewarded. On Friday the 13th of December, as I carried out my work in my place of employment, Fika Coffee; in walked my county commissioner, Ginny Storlie.
As she was getting ready to leave I was able to engage her in conversation. I inquired about the process that went into passing the new law. It all sounded quite thorough and proper, careful and with good intent. I trusted her ability, as well as the rest of the county commissioners to do their job. Yet there was one thing she said which surprised me—it was that in all their hearings and processing of public opinion, not a single word of opposition was placed before them. I found that, in one sense, not necessarily hard to believe—for I know acutely the difficulty of opposing popular opinion today—but in another larger sense, I found it quite alarming. Certainly opposition was out there. Why had it not found its way into the conversation? Isn’t that the duty of county commissioners, to hear all sides?
Now in a perfect world, I don’t believe I would have to say this, but I will because this world is far from perfect, and I aim to be understood as best as I am able—the intention of this new law, to prevent young people from accessing tobacco products, and vaping paraphernalia, is something which I am fully aligned with.
I recognize the adverse health effects upon teenagers of smoking anything, and I believe it is our duty as adults to provide a social environment for young people which is least likely to inculcate such poor, and dangerous, lifestyle habits. Rather, my opposition is that I don’t believe this intention to be adequate of itself to produce the results it intends.
To begin with; popular opinion, or group mind, is the driving force of almost all social dictates these days, and this law is no different. This law clearly rides into action on the wake of popular opinion; albeit a popular opinion that is with due concern. Still, sound reason has become what is so often sacrificed and quickly forgotten by the haste which popular opinion necessitates. Yet it should be understood that hasty decisions set just as much precedent as do well-considered ones. This hasty decision undermines any understanding of how a young person actually goes about developing themselves, or making decisions.
What this law fails to recognize is the actual manner in which a child matures into an adult. To begin with, there are two primary impulses which guide a child through the teenage years. First, is the impulse of imitation, or mimicry. And second is the impulse of rebelliousness, or the pursuit of freedom which comes with the ability to think more and more for oneself.
The impulse of mimicry begins to fade from the foreground as the impulse of rebelliousness takes greater hold of the conscious thinking in the child. This transition happens as the child approaches the mid to late teen years. Any one of us willing to look back upon our youth should be able to recall how active these two forces were.
Not only did we have role models and aspirational figures in our life that meant the world to us, but we also so commonly found the imposition of boundaries to be overbearing upon our developing sense of self, which demanded exploration of new unknowns. So much so, that we did just about anything to come up against them and perhaps even break through.
Simply put, this law fails to recognize either of these developmental impulses which live within every teenager. And in doing so, it imposes a law which attempts to mean well, but only goes a good way in creating an opposite effect of its intention.
For this new law carries no weight in changing the culture which breeds the soured instincts of young people to participate with such damaging substances as tobacco. And furthermore, it actually imposes a new, definitely perceived to be unfair, boundary for a young person (but actually an adult legally) to feel further marginalized by. That means, the impulse for mimicry and rebelliousness of the teenager has no new material to which to apply itself at—for the life of the adult culture goes unchanged by this law. But it also means that even new restrictions, larger barriers, are now placed in front of the young adult. The young adult is now given an even more stimulated awareness of its inclination to rebel.
Take this as a joke if you would like, but I am serious; I believe it would be a far more effective experiment to restrict tobacco sales for all people 21+. Perhaps then, the absolute hypocrisy of a bunch of adults doing what they tell the children not to, could stand on its head for once.
Nevertheless, at some point, hopefully soon, we are going to have to acknowledge the depravity of our culture, and that our decisions as adults are what determine, more directly and influentially than any law, how young people develop. The dependence which adult life places on substances, addictions, and stimulations is so prevalent in our culture, so accepted, that it seems to be an obvious naivety to think that children can somehow avoid this same fate by imposing a law.
There are so many more angles which can be considered here. One I would like to bring up is this: why should children be expected to value their own bodies, lungs and brains included, if we continue to let our culture rid our social life of any activities which actually necessitate healthy lungs and brains? Nothing that I know of, no life at all, develops capacities to sit unused—for they would just wither away anyways. The human being is no different here as best as I can see.
How about we begin to value things which actually necessitate healthy lungs and minds? This would of course require that we adults, have to frightfully stare into a far greater harm of our time, the abyss which is our love for screens. Of course, a law reprimanding young adults is so much more convenient than the actual work required to raise healthy young people into the world!
I leave lots of room for pondering, questioning, and arguing over this issue; which is essentially an issue over the best way to support the development of a child into a mature human being. But it is absolutely necessary for this discussion over this issue to include an actual understanding of how a child does develop—this law seemed to forget that. But our culture seems to have forgotten understanding altogether; trading it for the preference of hasty intentions, and momentary self-gratification.
If this honestly is our best option at a short-term solution to a serious issue, then so be it. But may it be a short-term solution to a much bigger working problem; the question of human culture altogether, whose hypocrisy should invite a new willingness to wonder about the weak foundational understandings we cling to, and the withering potentials for education they represent.
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