by America

About the author: America is a weekly Catholic magazine of opinion on social, political, and religious issues.

“Got a light"” Older Americans might associate this question with sophisticated adults in a movie from the 1940’s or 1950’s. Nowadays, however, it is frequently being asked by children under 18. Health officials estimate that each day 3,000 children start smoking, most of them between the ages of 10 and 18; they account for 90 percent of all new smokers. A third will die of smoking-related diseases.

New Regulations

In an effort to curb tobacco use among youth, the Department of Health and Human Services issued regulations in January 1996, aimed at enforcing the ban on selling tobacco to anyone under 18 by penalizing states that do not monitor tobacco sales in stores. But the very fact that...