Every day, approx 4,000 young adults light their first cigarette.

A study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University indicates that those who begin smoking by the age of twelve are:

   • sixteen times likelier to abuse marijuana,

   • five times likelier to abuse alcohol,

   • three times as likely to binge drink and;

   • seven times likelier to use other drugs like cocaine and heroin.

I guess that would qualify cigarettes as a gateway drug, right?

Obviously there is going to be a rousing chorus of indignant parents demanding that cigarettes be made illegal with stiff, decades-long minimum federal sentencing penalties for those who would peddle this kind of poison to our children.

Any second now. I'm sure of it.