Smoking age – unintended consequences

Sir, – With any piece of legislation, one should always consider the law of unintended consequences.

By raising the smoking age to 21, the Government would at a stroke make it technically illegal for virtually the entire student body to smoke.

Laudable from a health perspective, perhaps, but how many people going through university won’t at some stage have an experimental drag of a cigarette or rollie? The unintended consequence will be that the vast majority of our university attendees will have broken the law by the time they graduate. Any civics teacher would tell you that if even society’s elites don’t obey the law of the land then the whole structure could end up in dire trouble. – Yours, etc,

JOHN COTTER,