For almost two decades, British retailers have told customers that if they were born after the current date 18 years ago, they can’t buy cigarettes. Starting next year, that date will freeze. Under a recently passed law, selling cigarettes to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, will be illegal—in perpetuity. As long as the law is in effect, no one who is 17 or younger on New Year’s Day 2027 will ever be allowed to buy tobacco legally.
For two decades, the United States and Canada have struggled with a drug epidemic. From 2003 to 2022, annual overdose deaths in the United States rose from less than 26,000 to nearly 108,000—becoming the leading nonmedical cause of death, surpassing car accidents and gun violence combined. In Canada, overdose deaths increased almost tenfold in the same period.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order today that committed the Justice Department to “rescheduling” marijuana. Although the order won’t legalize pot, it will relax a series of restrictions that the federal government has long enforced. The move has a broad coalition of supporters, including many progressives, who say that it will enable medical research and alleviate mass incarceration.