Legal Lighters

Originally published November 1, 2017

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I was shopping with my sister the other day, looking for her ball gowns for her year 11 ball next year, when I remembered I needed a new lighter for the stove. I told Skye I’d just skip in, and she pointed out that you need ID to buy a lighter. I laughed, saying surely not. Lighters are necessary for a lot of people and their stoves.

But when I got in the store, grabbed the lighter and went to pay the lady looked at me and said “you will need ID for that”, almost as if she’d heard our conversation from across the shop. So ignoring my sister’s pointed look, I took out my driver’s license in shock.

If anyone has insight, please share. Why can’t you buy lighters? Their semi-necessary. Do you have to get ID and be a certain age to buy matches? I’ve never bothered buying matches, so I don’t even know. But I’ve kept a lighter in my car for as long as I can remember (so, when I got my car at 16ish), and I don’t remember being asked for ID before. And I’ve bought a lot of matches. I have a strange tendency to break them.

I need matches or a lighter, preferably a lighter, just to cook my dinner at night. The over lights itself, thankfully, but the stove top doesn’t. And what if the power goes out? What then? And sure, most people would be a certain age before moving somewhere out of home on their own, where an adult can’t buy a lighter for the household stove, but what about candles? Or essence? Anything you need to light. Candles are getting popular recently, with all the fancy scented ones, but there’s still ALWAYS been a lighter and some candles around the house for when the power goes out unexpectedly.

My instant thought was to discourage smoking. Obviously, if kids can’t buy a lighter then they will have slightly more trouble lighting their cigarette. But then, how would they even get the cigarette in the first place? Surely finding some matches lying around, just about ANYWHERE (again, a LOT more necessary then a cigarette) would certainly be easier than tracking down a smoke. And if you have someone 18+ buying smokes for you, surely they’d get a lighter for you as well.

So, once again, I’m stuck. Why do we require ID to buy a lighter? It’s it to stamp out arson? And how does that even work? I’ve ALWAYS known where the lighters and matches are in any house I’ve lived in, it’s the same as knowing where the fire blanket or first aid kit is. When the house suddenly gets plunged in darkness, you need to be able to stumble your way through the dark and palpate that box of matches. Even children are capable of that act. Power cuts are just about the only time younger kids can play with fire, at least it was when I was little.

It just doesn’t make all that much sense.

Anyone care to enlighten me???