Brace yourself, student smokers. You soon might not be able to light one up until 21 candles appear on your birthday cake.

That is, if West Hollywood Assemblyman Paul Koretz gets his way. Koretz is sponsoring AB 221, a bill that increases the age for the purchase and use of tobacco if it makes its way through the Legislature this session and gets a green light from Gov. Gray Davis.

The bill attempts to reduce smoking among 18- to 24-year-olds, which continues to increase despite the state’s aggressive anti-tobacco media campaigns and school and community programs that started in 1989. Koretz hopes a new smoking age regulation would hinder the 90 percent of smokers who develop a severe addiction before they hit 21.

Those under 21 who’ve already taken a liking to cigarettes won’t have to nix the habit just yet; the bill gradually increases the minimum buying age to 19 in January 2004, 20 in 2005 and finally 21 in 2006.

Enforcement of the new age regulation would remain pretty much like it is now, but it would make it harder for teenagers to purchase tobacco, Koretz said.

Koretz isn’t concerned that his efforts might eliminate a source of state revenue during California’s budget crisis, claiming that California’s health care system will fare better in the long run when it doesn’t have to treat as many tobacco-related diseases, which now cost the state $16 billion a year, according to a report by the UCSF School of Nursing Institute for Health and Aging.

Koretz also doesn’t seem to mind limiting the legal rights of Californian adults through imposing the highest smoking age behind Alabama, Alaska and Utah, which allow smoking at 19.

“You can’t assume that once someone is 18, they can make better choices,” Koretz said. “I’d choose for (college students) to have a longer life over more rights to smoke. That’s not a tough call for me.”

The bill sounds like a good idea. Prevent millions of young teens and young adults from uselessly destroying their lungs with tar and smoke, until they’re a bit older to realize that smoking isn’t the wisest decision.

But then come the underlying questions: How old is old enough to smoke? When can somebody rationally make those decisions? Though the legal age of adulthood is 18, many lawmakers seem to differ.

The term “legal age,” defined by the Law.com Dictionary, is “the age at which a person is responsible for his/her own actions…for damages for negligence or intentional wrongs without a parent being liable and for punishment as an adult for the crime.” Almost all states declare their legal age to be 18, with all states regulating the purchasing of alcohol to 21.

It’s a bit confusing when our state and nation can’t decide when someone’s old enough to take responsibility for their actions – whether they harm themselves or others.

Girls under 18 in this state can obtain an abortion, an invasive surgical procedure on their own initiative, yet can’t get their belly buttons pierced without parental consent.

An 18-year-old has the chance to win millions of dollars in the California Lottery, yet can’t pull the lever on a slot machine for chump change at a gaming resort.

Children like 15-year-old Andy Williams, though still a minor, can get tried and convicted as an adult for two murders and 13 attempted murders for his shooting rampage at Santana High School- yet he isn’t even old enough to buy a copy of Playboy.

The federal government believes that an 18-year-old can make a conscious, mature decision to vote for the Leader of the Free World–yet the states believe that they don’t have the capacity to control themselves when they pop a cold one.

If the smoking age is raised to 21, the concept of the “legal age” becomes more blurred than before. If our lawmakers can’t define who’s a mature citizen and who’s not, how can we?

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