Youth + Novelty Lighters = Social Chaos!

LAST WEEK, while the rest of the city was concerning itself with the latest brat-chomping helper monkey, NY1 uncovered a true threat to our safety and well-being, something we all need to ramp up our vigilance against, and quick: novelty cigarette lighters.

Specifically, novelty lighters designed to look and act like little toy cars. The little police car even has flashing lights and a siren, so you can, like, warn people when you're about to flip the lid and light another smoke.

See, these things are out there right now, right as we speak, being sold in variety stores and gas stations. By law they can only be sold to adults, but still-those adults could turn right around and give them to children, see? Children who would then, if they could figure out how to work the damn things, set their friends and pets and homes on fire.

What annoys us about all this isn't that it's another shrill and pointless attempt on the part of some tv news show or parents group to protect The Children by compulsively seeking bans on something no one had ever heard of, but which might pose any kind of danger. No, what annoys us are these damned mollycoddled kids of today. Why, back when we were young, if we wanted to start a fire, we had to settle for plain old boring matches and a tank of gasoline.