NZ already did this and it is the most cowardly way to avoid political blowback.
There’s plenty of other options for minimising smoking. A more altruistic way is by lifting people out of poverty and tackling social disintegration, since smokers are overwhelmingly poor and disaffected.
So instead of reducing a clearly destructive habit now we should wait for a major social change that likely won’t happen. I don’t see how that is more altruistic for the “poor and disaffected”.
You can either try to do things the right way and cure multiple social ills, or you can do it the wrong way and end up with different rules for different adults all in an attempt to prohibition your way out of one issue.
Your right there are better ways. Both methods should be implemented. A carrot and stick approach is going to be more effective.
I don’t think we can expect the altruistic way from a Billionaire Tory. As far as policy goes, this is the best one the Tory have had in a long time. But that doesn’t say much.
aside from the issue of ‘prohibition still doesn’t work’, i don’t think giving kids or “underage” adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone
I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it’s “cool”, making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.
Please, oh dear god…
Please tell me what FFA means and how it doesn’t amount to “send poor people to prison”.
FFA just means “free for all” (it’s a term from competitive games, in case you shouldn’t know), in this context I used it as another word for ‘legal’.
Oh thank god.
Yes, I 100 percent agree with you. Your thought process is the way.
Sorry I was so adversarial in my first comment. A lot of the rest of this thread has me all sorts of triggered.
I don’t know about that, from what I remember being a kid it’s more about what their parents allow them to do than just the law. I knew a Mormon kid who thought it was badass to drink root beer and see R rated movies. If your parents tell you not to smoke that could be all it takes to make it cool. My suggestion: smokin’ Teletubbies
Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.
TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.
Incorrect.
A black market is created, kids still smoke, but poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail.
It doesn’t fix the issue and syphons poor people into prisons.
poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail
As they should
Happy you are for the siphoning of poor people to for profit prisons.
Really sounds like your plan to eradicate tobacco from existing is solid.
How is BolexForSoup incorrect? Also, why should anyone care if a person goes to jail for selling cigarettes to minors? It wouldn’t even be a valid source of income for these people if kids could buy them directly from the store so I’m not even sure what you’re suggesting we do
Prohibition laws do put people in prison.
“Noone goes to prison for underage smoking”. False. The people selling the cigarettes, poor people trying to make a buck, go to jail for the underage smoking.
I suggest we do nothing.
Prohibition doesn’t work.
Mind your own business.
deleted by creator
You’re just being purposefully obtuse now.
No. The kids aren’t the ones going to prison, but the prohibition laws do send people to prison.
No one but you is being obtuse here.
You “corrected” someone by making an entirely different point from the one they made. In fact, the person you said was “wrong” actually stated the very thing you did.
No one is saying your point is wrong. Just that it isn’t a correction.
deleted by creator
I would argue that society should reserve the right to punish individuals who harm others for their personal benefit.
And I would argue that selling a physically addictive substance that directly causes harm with no benefit to the user for personal profit is causing harm.
So while I don’t support arresting people for smoking, I 100% so support arresting people for selling.
Again, I just see mental gymnastics.
So you just outright said that people should be free to smoke, but anyone who sells what is being smoked should be incarcerated.
How is that not a complete oxymoron?
No. You have a factually flawed bias against a thing, and you want to mob up with other people to enforce your opinions and will upon people you disagree with.
As a result, you want to imprison poor people and not accomplish what you claim to want to accomplish.
There is no oxymoron.
Smoking is harming oneself.
Selling is harming another.
They are not equivalent.
deleted by creator
Works for pedophilia too.
How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.
You really have a surface-level understanding of how the world works, I take it.
General mindset of a standard prohibitionist.
They should raise the heroin age
Yes, because no one has ever smoked before they reached the legal age.
There is already a black/gray marked near many schools (for the younger, there are cigarettes and for the older there is weed.) it’s a market where there is just one person selling, it is more a fluid market where the young people sell and buy to each other, mostly there are multiple kids with connections to get the goods in any school and then it rotates through the different kids by selling, buying, stealing etc. Source: I’m 26 now, and don’t believe that has changed since I left school.
Are you fucking with me right now?
I agree that smoking is bad for you, having quit myself - but the idea of outlawing a plant / prohibiting humans who just happened to be born in one specific part of the world from burning it and inhaling the produced smoke just goes against my views on ethics.
Instead, why don’t we fix the real problems? How about getting rid of capitalism, and thus the profit incentive to sell addictive substances for a huge markup? How about we fix this broken society that keeps pushing more and more people towards drugs such as nicotine, the tiny escape, and the little bit of stress relief they provide?
Drugs, from cigarettes to meth, are not the problem…
They’re just a symptom.
The war on drugs is nothing more than an effort to sweep the real problems under the rug, and nothing less than coordinated violence targeted at people who are already suffering.
Fuck this.
Going to the doctor in mind melting pain and he says I have a broken leg and it requires an operation and I say great in the meantime can you give me something for this pain and he says no that’s just a symptom. Except here the pain is a ton of innocent kids being consigned to an early grave for the stock of tobacco companies.
How on earth is proscribing cigarettes for kids who are thankfully not yet addicted to them coordinated violence aimed at the suffering? Completely rubbish, cigarette-brained take.
The problem with your analogy though is that the doctor does have plans to actually help the problem too. It takes more time and effort to set up all the things needed to properly heal a bone, so in the mean time they try to help alleviate the symptoms in the mean time. The system’ in place has no plans to actually address the real issues, so it’s more like the doctor sent you out the door with painkillers and calls that good enough. Creating laws that attempt to curb cigarette habits might be worth pursuing if paired with actual legislation to handle the causes that drive people to their use.
Also, to me, it is worth looking at some of the other reasons people are draw to smoking. Tobacco companies pour tons of money into methods of encouraging smoking and vaping, with it being well know that some of this is targeted at young people. To be honest, and some may find this a bit of a stretch, I sometimes feel that these laws are a sort of collective societal victim blaming more then a benefit.
As another point, and I don’t know if you know this, but banning something does not necessarily curb it’s use (see alcohol prohibition in the US in the early 20th century). If anything prohibition just deregulates it, making it more dangerous for those who still continue to participate.
Yeah I completely agree, cigarettes are a symptom, but when the actual cute is a long hard road, treating symptoms is a totally reasonable course.
Also, cigarettes don’t provide an escape from reality, they only provide an escape for nicotine cravings. Literally the only reason to smoke is because you have to (or you’re dumb and curious), it doesn’t get you high or anything like that
So he’s nicking what newzeland did ok cool something that he’s not going to profit from for a change atleast
“We operate a Check-74 policy. If you are lucky enough to look younger than 70, we will ask for ID when buying cigarettes”
Maybe we will make groundbreaking leaps in cosmetic surgery. Or have Jackass-style elderly disguises become popular.
Smoking age should follow the age of boomers, age 80+
Man the fuck up and outlaw it for everyone instead of this sneaky prohibition that only affect people that can’t vote yet. It’s such a cowardly, disingenuous way of doing it.
Hmmm, where have I heard this proposal before?
The reason I used the word Prohibition is because I think it’s bullshit either way. We’re sitting here legalizing pot because Prohibition doesn’t work, but somehow doing this chickenshit year-by-year outlawing is somehow going to fix something that education is doing a fine enough job. People are going to smoke cigarettes, there’s always a group that will do it, legal or not. Whether you want a crime problem around it or not is the obvious question these chucklefucks don’t seem to understand, despite repeated examples to the contrary.
Add in the danger of having the following mentality: “what are these rights laying around that I’m not utilizing? What, that person over there enjoys having these rights? Well, I don’t like that person, so I don’t care about their rights fuck em”
This ladies and gentlemen, is how you Nazi 101 (but with rainbow flags and affirmative action this go-around)
Prohibition never works, the best bet is to keep it legal and make it as inconvenient as possible like: raising taxes on tobacco, make it illegal to smoke outside of dedicated zones (Quebec has done it I believe), fine people who litter their cigarette butts (hard to implement but, it might deter a large majority from doing it), keep helping smokers to quit and keep raising awareness for younger people.
This is the way. There are so few places to smoke in BC that I pretty much only ever see people doing it 5 metres from a bus stop.
They are so expensive that the few people that still do it smoke maybe a pack a week.
We even banned the sale of no-nic vape juice because they were becoming a gateway to nicotine addiction for teenagers.
We even banned the sale of no-nic vape juice because they were becoming a gateway to nicotine addiction for teenagers.
That’s crazy and backwards. Ecigs were a critical tool I used to kick a 2 pack a day habit. Vaping is the best smoking cessation system around.
except the ones using it don’t even smoke rn.
I just visited Canada for 4 days, was around a lot of people and I only smelled smoke twice. Both times were outside the airport (once arriving and once departing).
Nah the best bet is to remove the profit motive. And through legal means execute every cigarette company owner or employee who covered up health risks for mass manslaughter.
This method stops current smokers from being criminalised.
If you ban it like prohibition, you will instantaneously create a black market. Continually increasing the age you can buy cigarettes is easier. Everyone that this effects will not have the option to legally create a cigarette habit/addiction.
A straight up outlawing would have the maximum effect. But it would be costly to enforce, whilst increasing overall criminal activity.
They just need to outlaw the commercial production of cigarettes. I’m very anti cigarette personally, but at the end of the day, tobacco is a plant and should not be outlawed. But outlawing commercial products it makes tobacco legal and accessible to those who want it. With commercial cigarettes being less available, in guessing through either lack of convenience or lack of ability to act on an impulse, that the amount of smokers will drop.
Ok, but and believe me I’m all for this, cocaine and heroin are plants as well, or at least you can grow coca and poppies and get the drugs from them. Should cocaine and heroin be legal as well just because a) they’re plant derived, and b) people will use the drugs and get addicted to them because that’s how it works? As I said, I personally would legalize, tax, and educate people about safe recreational, therapeutic, and medical drug use for all drugs personally, but most people find that too extreme.
Unironically yes, cocaine and heroin should be legal, or at the very least decriminalized. If they were legal, regulated, and you could pop into a headshop and buy them, the black markets surrounding them would begin to evaporate.
I agree, as I said
That’ll never happen, the tobacco industry is too big and too many jobs will be lost all at once, so it becomes highly politicized and loses popular support. With the proposed law, the tobacco industry at least has time to pivot to something else.
So let’s give the companies that have lied about the harms and effects of their product a heads up? They never gave people who died of cancer when they knew it caused cancer but denied it. Moving the age will just give the time for the business owners to get more of the money out and fuck over the smaller employees anyways.
I honestly think there is no solution that doesn’t have negative effects. I’m personally very against the banning of something (especially a plant) as a solution to a problem as it creates plenty more problems (see America’s drug problems)
If this is the only effort, it’s weak. Better to also (or instead) tax each box by another 20 pounds. Kids don’t have that money. They’ll find other things to do.
I much prefer to see kids vaping.
It’s much harder to be intimidated by a gang of 10 youths in balaclavas when they smell like a pack of Fruit Salads.
Vaping is a joke, they stuck the addictive chemical (nicotine) in it and now they are hooked on vaping. Let them sell vaping goods but they shouldn’t be allowed to add nicotine to them.
Given that for most it’s a less harmful alternative to smoking that makes zero sense. Aside from it’s addictive properties nicotine is on about the same level as caffeine in terms of damage.
Caffeine? No, the science says otherwise
Taxation is a tool but it also creates inequality where rich people are able to smoke and poor people can’t. That situation risks making tobacco a signifier of wealth - an aspirational good like an expensive handbag.
good, let them smoke and DIE
If rich kids are able to get lung cancer and poor kids are priced out of it, I don’t feel bad for the poor kids.
It’s already prohibitively taxed to be around £12-15 for a 20 pack. There are 4 corner stores within a 5 minute walk of my house that do them under the counter for a fiver, and you can bet they don’t care about IDs either
Contact the HMRC fraud department. They would stop these sales very quickly.
Do you know the piece of cocaine?
If he wanted it to work he could make cigarettes more lethal. Kill you in a couple of months type of thing.
(Clearly not a serious suggestion in case you wonder)
Sounds like a reasonable proposal to me.
Minutes to seconds better, also if the cigarettes put themselves off and doesn’t cause fires
Which means somebody’s gonna have to fill the tax-hole (loss of government income) it creates…
If the best argument you can think of is “think of the taxes,” maybe it’s not a bad policy after all.
Cigarette taxes barely offset the increase in healthcare expenses lol
Still, and I mean no offense here, I still smoke because I want to and like to, knowing every danger it brings me I still have the right to do it to myself. Right of ones own body and all… And for the healthcare part, I just did my part and paid more than will probably be needed myself in advance over the passed 20+ years… The only cost I will make by death from smoking will have come from my pocket when I was alive and still glad I could smoke. 😅
Also, don’t get me wrong, I do agree you should not smoke among non-smokers, at least not physically, cause at that point a smoker is causing physical harm to someone that choses not to be harmed by it, I do get and hold myself to that. I also hate smokers that just smoke anywhere at anytime (my own mother, for example, will always eat small portions and immediately smoke at the table after, even though nobody else is finished), but that’s just terrible manners or attitude and arguably does not origin from the fact they smoke, rather the other way around,…
I’m just not a fan of more rules with more reasons to become a criminal for doing mundane things. I get that we shouldn’t endanger eachother with our behaviors, but full banning things eventually gets enforced to your home included, and you just know one day the cops will be showing up cause somebody saw a young looking person smoke through a home window, because “if it’s illegal, it must be evil and stopped.” and will also make it impossible for anyone under the rising barrier to ever be able to get help stopping when they want to, cause it’ll forever get them in trouble admitting they do…
Either way, aside from the smoking, though, I also don’t think it’s a good idea to start introducing laws with a rising age-barrier,… History has shown us plenty of times it is not a very productive thing to separate groups of people for life according to a personal trait they didn’t choose to have/be. 😕
Better than selling cancer. There’s bound to be another, better way.
Everything causes cancer.
Everything.
I mean if we are talking about a long enough span of time yes. You could go a step further and include that everything will turn to dust, everything. I have a feeling that smoking causes one of the more dangerous types of cancer, and far quicker than say, getting it due to chance or genetics, microplastics etc. One of the things that always bugged me about smokers is that it genuinely feels like a zero sum habit. Especially now. I could understand up to the 2010s the social aspect, but that’s mostly gone now too. There’s no upside to smoking.
Are you kidding? The government will dig themselves deeper into debt with or without it. Regardless, “I can’t stop giving people cancer because otherwise it would cut into my profits” is a uniquely shitty thing to say.
Assuming that I go out and smoke among other people, which I don’t. My pack is always safe at home when I’m out, only time I’d take it was when going out to parties (which I haven’t done in many years) and even then I’d go stand separate to smoke.
Not everybody of a big group of people that have a similar action are therefor the same. Never good to generalize and treat people differently for 1 thing either…
It seems to me y’all have problems with people of a bad attitude. It’s not so much that they smoke, but that they do it without respect… Doesn’t every smoker doesn’t have respect…
Sunak should start publicly smoking all the time, then it will be the lamest thing and teen smoking will crater.
should rise from 18, by one year every year
If that truly continued every year, that means someone too young to legally smoke could eventually die of old age when the legal smoking age is, say, 90 and they’re 89.
EDIT: I was just tripping out at the idea of “you must be 90 years old to buy this” signs at the supermarket. Surreal image.
deleted by creator
I was just tripping out at the idea of “you must be 90 years old to buy this” signs at the supermarket. Surreal image.
I’ve never heard of underage people drinking so I’m sure this will work too.
it is harder for underage people to drink but normally in the UK when underage people drink it’s teenagers and they’re supervised to some degree
we had a very different experience growing up lmao
by some degree I mean it’s at someone’s house
we just got wankered on white lightning in parks mostly
That’s the point.
I was just tripping out at the idea of “you must be 90 years old to buy this” signs at the supermarket. Surreal image.
Yep, the idea is to prevent new kids from getting addicted to this awful shit without hurting people who are already addicted.
I was just tripping out at the idea of “you must be 90 years old to buy this” signs at the supermarket. Surreal image.
New Zealand has done this
No no no, minimum age should increase by 360 days every year, that way people can still have hope that some day they’ll be able to smoke. Staying true to how capitalism works.
Big tobacco trying to kill big vape by making it exciting again to smoke and break the law
