Senators McBroom, LaSata and Theis, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No. 576.
Senator McBroom moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the bill be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”
The motion prevailed.
Senator McBroom’s statement, in which Senators LaSata and Theis concurred, is as follows:
Mr. President, I think that this is a difficult issue and there’s a lot of passions about smoking. I’m not a smoker myself and I find the practice to be dangerous to people’s health—both those who are smoking and those around them. It’s good to see society moving away from smoking dominating it the way it did years ago. So, I can understand the passion to move the age to make it more difficult, but I think we are treading dangerously on people’s constitutional rights, particularly on the rights of adults.
The Constitution very specifically delineates a few specific cases where age is something other than the accepted age of adult behavior. Alcohol is one of those; election to the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, or the presidency are the others. Our laws state very specifically that 18 is when we become an adult. Even the Constitution in prescribing how old someone has to be to vote, our criminal laws, our sentencing guidelines, all of these things focus on turning 18. To arbitrarily take a legal substance and simply say that, Well, we’ve decided that we can move this age for when you can make an adult decision to some other place without an exception provided from the Constitution, I think sets a bad precedent for the future—for property ownership, ownership of other materials, consumption of other legal goods.
So therefore, I will be voting “no” and don’t recommend the passage of this bill.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 577, entitled
A bill to amend 1971 PA 79, entitled “Age of majority act of 1971,” by amending section 3 (MCL 722.53).
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: