Coming up with laws that pander to the masses has long been a way that lawmakers and other public officials try to grab easy votes.

Just pick something most people like or don’t like and target it.

Virginia, for example, has a law against keeping a smelly dog. In Alabama, it’s apparently illegal to wear a funny mustache in church if it makes people giggle.

State Attorney General Bob Ferguson recently came up with a law that’s much more serious but seems largely designed to please the vast majority of voters without any real chance of success.

Just about everyone in the state knows that smoking is bad and that young people shouldn’t light up.

This week Ferguson proposed a bill that would increase the legal tobacco smoking age from 18 to 21. If passed, it would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Ferguson has some compelling reasons why young people shouldn’t smoke. Research shows, he said, that the young adult brain, still developing between 18 and 21, is highly susceptible to nicotine addiction.

Problem is, the law isn’t likely to be effective. And it will create unfair situations.

There’s a lesson policy-makers seem to relearn perpetually. The best way to get people to make healthy choices isn’t to make things illegal. Prohibitionists against alcohol and marijuana taught us that.

The government has, on the other hand, had much greater success at coaxing people not to use tobacco products through education, rules about advertising and taxes. The cost of a pack of smokes nowadays is upward of $10, largely because of taxes.

In addition, we don’t need a nanny state regulating our every move.

If passed, North Whidbey would be ripe for legal problems.

Imagine a 20-year-old sailor, just home after deployment over seas. He lights a cigarette as he is driving off base — where it would presumably continue to be legal to smoke — but he’s breaking the law if he takes a drag in city limits. Will the cops be obliged to pull him over?

Eighteen-year-olds are considered to be adults, though alcohol has traditionally been the exception. They can fight and die for our country, get tattoos and vote. But they can’t light up a cigarette on their wedding night?

The better way is for the state to come up with creative ways to spread the truth about the harmful effects of cigarette smoking, particularly for people in that age group.