Will teen smoking law be enforced?
I drove by the theater at the Gadsden Mall on a Saturday about 8:30 p.m. I thought about when I was a teenager and we would continuously drive around the mall.
I remember articles in The Gadsden Times about merchants looking to law enforcement to do something about it, as it was affecting business. Rightly so, the city all but put a stop to the problem.
As I drove around the mall, I saw another problem that not only affects the merchants, but our teenagers. I saw teenagers outside the movie theater smoking cigarettes.
At first I thought about what a shame it was that so many teens were smoking and what it was going to do to their health. I wondered how many of those teens might one day have lung cancer and possibly orphan their children.
Then I began to wonder how they could so boldly smoke out in the open and not try to hide what they’re doing when adults drive by. After all, it’s against the law.
Then I realized that their boldness to smoke in public could only be a result of the city not expecting local law enforcement to enforce that law.
How can we be so apathetic to such a grave problem? Maybe it’s because the city feels this is an issue it can’t fix. Maybe it doesn’t want to arrest teenagers and ruin their futures with such charges.
Only the city can answer such questions. But one must ask, how easy is it for young people to purchase cigarettes? And at the very least, couldn’t it get the teens to bargain their testimony of how they got the cigarettes to put a dent in the problem?
I am by no means an expert on this issue, nor do I have the solution. However, one question stands out: Will our city show it cares about this problem, or will it continue to turn a blind eye? Will it enforce the law? Will it take action, or will our teens simply become part of the statistics?
Honestly… how gravely does this affect you? As a “well-rounded” teenager who chooses not to partake in any of these sort of actions, how is it harming you? While your concern is valid, teenagers are typically well-aware of what it is they are doing and putting into their bodies. The knowledge they carry can be directly attributed to powerful PSAs, classes, released facts, et cetera. Regardless, teens still have the craving to rebel. They will make mistakes, or experiment, statistics or not.
Unless your health is being directly harmed by the secondhand smoke of teenagers only, I truly do not see the problem. Police officers have far more grave and dire situations to tend to as authorities.