21? Try 12, Mr. Mayor

I can’t help but laugh at the proposal put forth by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to raise the age at which anyone in Chicago can buy cigarettes.

EMANUEL: Looking out for kids, or self?

For Hizzoner seems to think he can say that no one under 21 can buy a pack of smokes, and it will be so.

PERSONALLY, I REMEMBER that it was about the time I turned 12 that my peers started using cigarettes – and I don’t mean the kid who takes a dare to puff on a lit cigarette while his “friends” gawk in awe and amazement at his “bravado.”

That kid is usually about 8. He (or she) really doesn’t know any better.

I’m talking about someone who starts feeling “the need” to have a cigarette. Yes, it really does happen that young.

So 21? By that time, someone who has taken up the habit is an addict (yes, I use that word purposely) who knows the ways and means of obtaining their preferred tobacco product.

THE IDEA THAT someone who’s ONLY 19 or 20 will somehow be stopped from smoking is nothing but a joke. One of those silly ideas that political people come up with from time to time, and we suspect that deep down even they don’t believe it to be true.

But Emanuel felt compelled to tell us Wednesday how he wants to raise the smoking age to 21 (to match the drinking age, I suppose).

It is part of a larger-scale proposal that includes increases on the municipal taxes charged on cigars, chewing tobacco and those roll-your-own cigarette products (for people who believe they can somehow create a better product than the mass-produced death sticks). One that Emanuel says could raise about $6 million more I revenue for city government.

Of course, if you’re cutting off about eight years of age worth of smokers (officially three years of age, since people under 18 aren’t supposed to be buying cigarettes in the first place), that means you’re theoretically selling fewer cigarettes.

THERE ALREADY ARE the people who are predicting how pointless this whole proposal is. Most likely people who are sucking back a puff of tobacco fumes (and maybe even coughing up a hack or two) while making their angry pronouncement.

Now I must admit to not smoking myself. It’s a habit I never picked up, not even when I was 12. Something about the smell of tobacco never appealed to me, and the smell and sight of cigarette ash downright disgusts me.

But I do have childhood memories of my “peers” discussing amongst ourselves which places were safe to sneak a smoke, and which local businesses would look the other way and sell a pack or two of cigarettes to minors.

Now I’m sure that Emanuel thinks he’s making some grand pronouncement about public health. Perhaps he thinks he’s going to warrant national praise from health-related officials for taking such a “bold” stance to protect our children.

NONSENSE. THE IDEA that Emanuel thinks an age limit is somehow going to stop smoking for anyone is way too naïve. Why 21? Perhaps the mayor just reversed the numerals of "age 12" similar to how Carlton Fisk went from uniform number 27 to number 72 when he switched from Boston to the Chicago White Sox.

I could envision a scenario in which the people who now are calling for Rahm to be impeached, recalled or publicly flogged (and are probably sucking back a puff or two on a cigarette while doing so) will now have their kids joining in the political action.

This strikes me as being more of an effort to detract attention from all the rants and rages being spewed these days to use police conduct towards African-American people as a reason to depose the mayor they couldn’t beat back on Election Day last year.

Instead, it likely gives them something to laugh at while they continue to walk picket lines demanding the removal of Rahm Emanuel from office.

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Will Walgreens become the Preferred Drug Store for cigarette smokers?

Will Walgreen's lengthy Chicago-area history help it keep business if tobacco products actually become an issue?

I have to admit to being somewhat amused this week by the announcement by CVS that they will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products later this year.

It has me wondering if the business battle between newcomer CVS and long-time Chicago-area pharmaceutical retailer Walgreen’s will now turn to trying to gain a business advantage concerning those people who need to have their daily dose of “smokes.”

WILL CVS NOW try to claim a high moralistic attitude because they won’t sell cigarettes? Will they be the start of a trend in which the sight of all those racks of cigarette packs and cartons behind the cash register will become obsolete?

Or something you only see in a seedier sort of business?

Is that what Walgreen’s is destined to become? Since the Deerfield-based retailer indicated this week they do not plan to follow suit on cigarettes.

They’re adopting the line of logic used by convenience stores, gasoline stations and other businesses that include tobacco products on their shelves – they add to the financial bottom line in a way that can make the difference between being profitable or going out of business altogether.

HOW FAR WILL Walgreen’s be prepared to carry this decision out? Because they certainly want to be taken seriously in terms of health care issues.

In fact, there are those industry analysts who contend that CVS’ decision to drop cigarettes from their stores is less about a high-minded moral statement and more about a bottom-line business decision.

As in they can make more money ultimately by having various clinics, vaccination services and other health care options in their stores – services with which the sight of cigarette cartons would just be too much of a clash!

Personally, I don’t smoke. I never have. Just something about the smell was always so unappealing that I never felt compelled to try.

WHICH MAKES ME not so much appreciate a business that doesn’t encourage smoking, as much as dislike a business that does.

I have way too many memories of getting stuck in lines waiting to make a purchase because the person right ahead of me either can’t make up their mind what brand of cigarettes they want, or (more often) are getting all worked up into a frenzy that demands to see a store manager because the sales clerk can’t figure out which of the variety of brands it is that the customer wants.

Invariably, it winds up being a small purchase I was making (sometimes, as little as purchasing a newspaper or two – yes, I still prefer ink on paper to this format).

Which makes such a purchase a bigger deal than it has to be!

THERE’S ALSO THE case that I currently live at a place with both a Walgreen’s and a CVS store within three blocks of me. I can’t say I favored either one of them in the past.

But I may well have to start spending more money at the CVS if this tobacco sales issue actually becomes a controversy.

Because I’m sure the people who want to view their cigarettes as some sort of civil rights issue (never mind the real issues of our society) will be more than willing to make a stink about this – and not just because their clothes and breath reeks of inhaling too much tobacco fumes throughout their lives.

There are times when I wonder if people are willing to “fight to the death” for their cigarette habit as intensely as those who are making an issue of “concealed carry. Perhaps it’s the same people – a cigarette pack in the shirt pocket and pistol tucked in the hip.

OR MAYBE A cigarette pack and pistol tucked in the purse?

While the rest of us consider fighting for issues that really matter in our daily lives. Including which place might help us look out better for our health.

Could that now be CVS?

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21 smoking age? Who’s kidding whom!

I recall a conversation I once overheard between I couple of guys I knew – one of whom was upset that a local gas station would no longer sell him cigarettes without giving him a hassle.

Got to get to them young to stop smoking

The two guys then went through a list of local businesses, literally identifying which ones were willing to provide the tobacco products with ease, which would not and which would require a certain amount of dickering around with the sales clerk!

THIS MAY SOUND like a picayune matter. Something rather petty and a complete waste of conversational time.

Except when one considers that this conversation took place about a third of a century ago (I really am getting that old) back when I was in Junior High School.

Which means I was 12. So were the other guys – neither of whom was a really close friend. But they weren’t exactly enemies or hostile toward me either, just like many people we all encounter in our lives.

This moment of my life popped into my head when I read the newspaper headlines over the stories saying that 12^th Ward Alderman George Cardenas wanting to impose a new city ordinance creating a minimum age of 21 to be able to purchase cigarettes.

THE IDEA THAT anybody is waiting until anywhere near the age of 21 before deciding whether to take up smoking is such a silly thought. What a joke!

It almost makes me want to laugh something along the lines of Nelson Muntz from “The Simpsons” – who would probably then light up a cigarette and take a few puffs to show how ridiculous the concept truly is.

The idea that raising the minimum age at which someone can legitimately buy a package of cigarettes from 18 to 21 will do anything to reduce the amount of cigarette smoking is just downright absurd.

It really was at that much younger age that my generation picked up on the tobacco habit. If anything, I was always the exception in finding the very smell of cigarettes and sight of stubbed cigarette ash to be repulsive that I never took up the habit.

MOST OF THE people I knew who got into smoking started out at that very young age.

By the time they were 18 or 21 or whatever, they were too-well hooked on the habit that quitting was quite an ordeal.

While I am aware that there are statistics indicating that fewer young people are actually smoking on a regular basis, my gut reaction tells me that they are getting attracted to the nicotine habit at the same young age.

Heck, I have a 10-year-old niece whom I wouldn’t be surprised to see smoking someday (her mother, also my step-sister, smokes). Although I was pleasantly pleased one time when she happened to be in my automobile (a 16-year-old Saturn sedan) and she got offended at the sight of a cigarette lighter in the dashboard.

NEWER CARS JUST label that device as an outlet for the cellphone charger – which is how I use it.

But it makes me happy to know that someone has tried to put a message in her head that the use of tobacco products isn’t the nicest of habits one can acquire.

If we really want to reduce the number of young people who take up smoking, we have to get at them at that young age – 10, 12. Thirteen may be as old as one can get and have the message have any impact.

Focusing on 21? Cardenas might as well be one of those people who thinks that you can make people healthier by eliminating the 32-oz. tubs of pop at the movie theater!

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