Officers often catch students and young adults smoking. It’s illegal to smoke on campus even with adults. Students secretly smoke in bathrooms parking lots, and or hidden spaces around the school. Shawnee Mission South officers can determine this by the smell or look of smoke.

Some cities in Kansas and Missouri are raising the legal age of buying tobacco from 18 to 21, including cigarettes and e cigarettes. This new law has been spreading all over the United States. More than 100 municipalities, including New York City, and the state of Hawaii have raised their tobacco purchase age to 21. Citizens said if the Tobacco Kansas City campaign succeeded the Kansas City area would become the second largest metro area in the United States to raise the age, and it did.  

The first metro area to raise the minimum tobacco age to 21 was New York City.  Many are voting for this law to pass in other states as well, this was determined by a poll from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They found support among 75 percent of adults nationwide for raising the age to 21. People of the United States are debating how this will benefit underage tobacco users. Some might say that this will prevent people from becoming addicted.
Angie York, the school nurse, was informed of this law.

“I think there is a lot of less use of tobacco nowadays,” York said.

York refers to smoking not being a big issue back when she was younger but also she wants to make students and others aware of the consequences of underage smoking. She explains how smoking can and will affect your babies. She’s had patients who have had cancer from secondhand smoke. Also underage smoking can affect students bodies and health.

“People are going smoke anyways but I think it would help a little bit because some people are going to obey the law to prevent trouble,” sophomore Tracy Wambui said.  

  Wambui thinks the underage smoking of teens come from peer pressure. Peer pressure can come from students or families. Just like York said, student’s parents might have been smoking all their life and they don’t see the harm in doing it themselves. Wambui said this law  might influence more teens rather than adults and adult smokers should set an example for the younger smokers. She said this will prevent young smokers from having heart and lung problems. School security officer Greg Merchant has his own opinion.

“If you can be drafted for war at 18 you should be allowed to smoke at 18,” said Merchant said, “At 18 you’re considered an adult, so you should be able to make adult decisions.”

Officer Merchant thinks that the younger crowd only smokes to make them cool and they see other movie stars and idols doing it so why not themselves. Although it might make you look cool he pointed out that smoking also causes cancer.