New law proposes to restrict smoking to centenarians

A US lawmaker has made our own governments' habitual cigarette tax hikes look positively timorous with a proposal to outlaw smoking for everybody under 100 years old.

Democrat Richard Creagan, a Hawaii lawmaker, wants the tropical state to raise the tobacco minimum age to 30 in 2020, 40 in 2021, 50 in 2022, 60 in 2023, and 100 in 2024.

But Dr Creagan, himself a physician and a former smoker, says it is because drastic measures are needed to stop the "highly lethal" habit.

"This is more lethal, more dangerous than any prescription drug, and it is more addicting," he told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

"We, as legislators, have a duty to do things to save peoples' lives. If we don't ban cigarettes, we are killing people."

He has left e-cigarettes off the bill and also supports the legalisation of marijuana as he says it is not as addictive nor deadly as tobacco.

Observers of the ongoing "war on drugs" might be skeptical that an effective ban would stop smoking rather than establish it as a lucrative black market, but smokers themselves have so far been silent on the matter.