Is it illegal to steal cigarettes from minors?

reply to post by BirdOfillOmen


That is the funniest question I have heard all week!!!

Shut up, sit down, and give me your smokes kid.

Your matches and lighter too dammit. Now get the hell out of my face.

Have a great weekend! thanks for the laugh, I needed it.

reply to post by Wildmanimal

No problem

Glad somebody didn't take it so seriously.

I smoke like a chimney and if I see young punks smoking, I will TAKE their cigarettes from them and smoke them myself. This is how it should be.

Your skateboards will break on my fists of fury.

I know, I'm a dick, but kids, take a lesson from this.....

reply to post by BirdOfillOmen


Good question but I disagree with you about it being a legal issue. If its a legal issue then you find out the answer and BAM your done.
I think exploring the morals and ethics is far more intrigueing.
For instance you see a bunch of say 13 year olds smoking, you take the pack and walk away, now is it the same if you took the pack to throw it away coz you didnt want kids to smoke or you took them to smoke yourself?

It is illegal to steal, but to confiscate from the underage... I think an adult would not be in trouble for it. Hand over (what is left of the cigs anyway) to the police if they come and ask...and the adult would not be in trouble.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff

Good point.

I think it would be a dick move for any adult to do that, but I don't think it really matters what the person does with them after confiscating them. Even if you were just throwing them away, you still took the kid's "property" against their will. Whatever lesson you're trying to teach them will supposedly be learned either way... though it realistically wouldn't stop any kid from just buying a new pack a few minutes later.

reply to post by BirdOfillOmen


Is becoming a thief worth your life?

If you come at some kid and he pulls out his dad's gun and shoots you, he's in the right. You could be probably a violent rapist/murderer who uses 'cigarettes' to get within killing range.

If I saw you robbing a kid, I would make you pay a severe penalty as I could.

Originally posted by BirdOfillOmen

Originally posted by tamenie
well i smoke and am around that age and il tell you this if they are anything like me and my friedns your gonna get hit in the back of a head bye skateboards

I doubt it. Kids that age are too timid to even approach me when I'm making stupid growling noises when messing around with friends.

not really we would just be like what the # is this nigga A animal and then get our cigs back and 20 on 1 isintgonna stand a chance fist of furry guy just sayin

Here's my thought on the legality.....

Those kids, since they're not old enough to purchase cigarettes, probably had someone get them for them.

Since they obtained them illegally, would they be considered "stolen property"?

In which case, you might be charged with "receiving stolen property" rather than the actual stealing of them?

But then the kids would probably get out of it if they just named the person who bought them.... thats corruption right? so would you be an accessory to corruption after the fact?

Legally, would the right thing to do be to confiscate their cigarettes and turn them over to the proper authority?

Very confusing...
I say save yourself the trouble, and just ask the kids can you have one

Originally posted by Forevever
Here's my thought on the legality.....

Those kids, since they're not old enough to purchase cigarettes, probably had someone get them for them.

Since they obtained them illegally, would they be considered "stolen property"?

No.

And in many places, kids aren't allowed to buy them, but there is often no law saying they cannot possess them.

It is not worth it to risk your life just to become a thief who steals from children. You might end up in jail for stealing their cigarettes and have that on your record forever.

Also: Anyone would be justified in using lethal force to defend themselves from an attacker who they think is threatening their life, especially a fully-grown one when they are just a kid. You cannot attack someone whilst proclaiming "I'm only taking your smokes" (or a variation thereof) and expect them to not defend themselves. It just isn't worth it.

reply to post by Exuberant1




Save yourself the trouble man - just bum a cigarette

reply to post by Forevever


I don't get your meaning.

That is often the case with one-liners and for that reason one-line posts are not allowed on this site, especially if they add nothing to the discussion/make no sense. Yours makes no sense.

Originally posted by Exuberant1
reply to post by Forevever

 

I don't get your meaning.

That is often the case with one-liners and for that reason one-line posts are not allowed on this site, especially if they add nothing to the discussion/make no sense. Yours makes no sense.

Seriously?

At this point I think you're arguing for the sake of arguing for lack of anything better to do but let me clarify.

The OP wonders is it legal to steal from children if they shouldn't have cigarettes in the first place - the majority of my post was just to elaborate on the legality - since I'm not a lawyer or anything related to law, I don't know what the technical crimes would be, so it was easy to make up hypothetical questions, I'm sorry you took them so seriously - but I didn't want to post the ONE LINE at the end which was my overall POINT (hence it did not end with a question mark)

I subsume the OP smokes and wants a cigarette REAL BAD otherwise why would he even consider doing something he already knows is illegal and questioning if circumstances would change the legality.

Since we all KNOW that stealing is illegal - PERIOD - from anyone, at any time, in any place...

save yourself the trouble and just ask the kid if you can have one

good enough for you?

Originally posted by Forevever

I subsume the OP smokes and wants a cigarette REAL BAD otherwise why would he even consider doing something he already knows is illegal and questioning if circumstances would change the legality.

The OP didn't say he was a smoker. He said the opposite.

"This is just hypothetical. I don't even smoke."

reply to post by Exuberant1


as expected, arguing for the sake of arguing
why would anyone steal cigarettes if they don't smoke?
the OP's hypothesis subsumed a smoker
he also said he didn't steal them
THE ENTIRE THREAD IS HYPOTHETICAL
what is your personal problem with me?

all I was trying to do was keeping it a legal context rather than a moral one
and by the way, can I bum a smoke?

Let's say I, as a legal adult, was walking around town and needed a smoke.

it's illegal for kids to buy cigarettes not smoke them. if you tried to claim that you stealing from kids is being a good samaritan, then id say your an *ahem* as well as a thief.

i udnerstand your question and normally its a good question to think about...

but fakt is..you doing a crime...to prevent others from doing a crime...

im a smoker and i should love your idea but well...its a crime ^^

Oh good. A philosophical discussion!

This is an excellent topic.

Putting aside the question of actual law enforcement and the courthouse circus and getting to the real issue of the underlying spirit of the laws and ethics, you've sketched out an excellent scene that philosophers have always loved to debate about.

There's the issue of means and ends-- Your intent was to steal something for your own personal use (unethical motive), but the result had a certain virtue (a few less cigarettes the little darlings would damage their health with). So, is a bad motive sanctified by an unintentional good result? Some pragmatists would maintain that it is, on the argument that 1) human motives are never entirely pure in the first place and 2) actions that tend to support good results promote a better world that would then tend to encourage better motives as we'd all be happier.

And then there are the purists who would say that stealing is stealing and nothing makes it right.

If you took the smokes from the kids, destroyed them and gave them a lecture, you could make an argument that your action is motivated by the ethical position that in a good society, it is the individuals' responsibility to enforce the "right action" instead of shirking that responsibility off onto the cops all the time. This is also the argument for any sort of "vigilante" action- it's an entirely defensible ethical position (but, like any ethical position, it can run into trouble when it brushes up against all the real-life scenarios that make our world imperfect.)

But here, if you took the smokes because you wanted them yourself, you can't hide behind the "doing the kids a favor" argument because that wasn't actually your motive. You could, at best, say that it was one of those fortuitous situations where your self-interest happened to coincide neatly with saving the health of the younger generation.

But your action would certainly not be setting a good moral example for those kids, so even if they actually ended up living a couple of minutes longer than they would've had they smoked those smokes, they'd probably have spent their entire adult lives behaving immorally themselves- believing that it's okay to steal, etc. so long as they could prop up a weak moral justification that it was somehow for their victims' own good.

This is a truly good subject for a thread, and I hope it continues!

Its illegal for them to 'BUY' them but not to smoke them.

Also stealing is just plain wrong. As another adult if I saw you stealing from a child id be placing my boot in your #