Senators Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) and Todd Young (R., Ind.) have laid out their case for raising the legal age for smoking or vaping to 21. At Bloomberg Opinion, I argue that they haven’t justified restricting the freedom of adults and have hardly even tried to justify it.

Part of the problem is that at no point do they ever concede the premise that adults should generally be allowed to engage in whatever activity they want, regardless of its risks to them: that we should have a presumption, even a rebuttable one, for freedom. The principal drawback to their legislation thus disappears from view.