Comment by cgriswald
1 day ago
I’ve told you that access was not a problem at all. All your questioning is because you can’t grasp my lived reality. You think I’m mistaken, but actually I just don’t care to try to convince you because you’re already so sure.
Disinterest was what really “saved” me from these vices but lacking that, it was my parents. I also had access to perfectly legal things that were bad for me that I actually wanted and it was my parents who helped me there too; no mandatory ID required.
You don't know that you had access though based on what you said. You think you might have had access looking back.
>I could have easily gotten a teenager to get me cigarettes (and drugs, but I didn’t know what those were really). I had also already tasted alcohol. Any of this I could have stolen from any number of places.
You never tried it so you have no idea how well it would have worked. You really think those teenagers would have kept giving you cigarettes for free? You didn't even know what drugs were so I don't know how you could possible know there were teenagers you knew who would have just given them to you.
Again I'm sure you could have stolen a few cigarettes, or a few bottles of alcohol. But your parents would have smelled both on you or caught you quickly because 8 year olds are idiots. Then they would have cut your access to teenagers or locked up their liquor better. And because of age restriction laws, that's all it would take for them to keep you away from it.
It doesn't sound like you have kids and it's probably been a while since you were 8, but you are severely overestimating the ability of a 2nd grader to get away with anything.
>but lacking that, it was my parents
Of course it was your parents. Mandatory ID laws aren't going to stop terrible parents from letting their kid have a beer every night before bed time. They make it easier for well well meaning parents to do the right thing and keep their kids out of stuff they shouldn't have.
Again minimum age and ID laws have been proven to reduce access and reduce alcohol and cigarette use. Even if you were some kind of criminal genius 2nd grader capable of stealing a few bottles of wine a week, you would be an outlier. There's no room for debate that these laws have their intended effect.
There’s “no room for debate” in your argument because you’re basing it on false assumptions, trying to gaslight me, moving goalposts and you personally don’t care about the trade offs. It’s very easy to be right when everyone else is wrong. Congrats.
There are clearly trade offs with any law, but your argument was never that the benefits aren’t worth the price it was that minimum age laws don’t work.
There’s no gaslighting going on here. “As an adult Looking back to when I was an 8 year old, I belong that had I been motivated I could have acquired alcohol and cigarettes” is not a persuasive argument that most or even many 8 years olds have access to alcohol and cigarettes.
It’s not even a good argument that you had access because you don’t know that you did.
“I think that I could have got teenagers to get me cigarettes” is not good evidence that you had access to cigarettes. Maybe there were teenagers who would have given you enough cigarettes to feed a habit. Maybe the first 5 you asked would have told you to get lost and you would have given up.
We’ll never know because you didn’t try it. But again even if you had, the evidence shows that minimum ages laws substantially reduce the number of cigar smoked by kids, and the rate of kids who smoke.
If you want to make the argument that the price of making people show ID isn’t worth that benefit then fine make that argument. But you can’t make the argument that minimum ages laws don’t have their intended effect.