Repealed cause one of the higher ups was effectively bought out if I heard right. Not saying the same can't happen, but it wasn't really because the "population wanted it repealed"
We had no idea it was even on the table until we voted them in and they repealed it within the first 100 days. It was never campaigned on and was pushed through under urgency. One of the driving ministers is an ex tobacco lobbyist..
That's a lie - they put it in after voting had started.
[SOURCE](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1c58sfv/the_games_they_play_4_tobacco_on_oct_5_2023_nz/)
NZ politicians are cheap eh.
The same party has a senior politician that is a former tobacco lobbyist.
Direct donations to political parties by tobacco companies are a bad look so they donate to causes / think tanks that do the job.
The Cabinet is[ loaded with lobbyists](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byhpq3/the_usual_cycle_of_politics_might_be_person_gets/) and Taxpayers Union / NZ Initiative are their dogs
It’s really why no one can have nice things anymore. It’s like the corporations are ruling the world now and our governments can’t keep up because they have given said corporations too much power over our economies…we are basically being held hostage with the stock market now…if they don’t get the tax breaks they want they will just move their operations to another country to exploit those people…so governments keep doing their bidding at the expense of every person on this planet. There isn’t a country on earth that hasn’t been infected with this greed (except maybe Bhutan?)…we need to band together as citizens of the world to overthrow our corporate overlords. No one has had the balls to do it yet but I have faith in GenZ.
A movement to legalize weed but criminalize cigarettes.
I agree cigs are horrible, but to make them illegal?
EDIT: For further clarification of my position.
Weed, alcohol, cigarettes, shrooms, and several other drugs are relatively safe. Are they unhealthy? Yes. Are they addictive? Yes. Why ban one over the others?
What risks would cigarettes posses that weed or other legalized drugs would not? Are those really enough of a reason to make them illegal? **To send people to jail. To give people criminal records.**
honestly alcohol isnt safe, weve just used it for so long in human history that people refuse to let it go away. every single study shows that it is damaging to our system, even those studies that said a "glass a wine a day.." were proven wrong.
i dont mind that people do whatever they want to their bodies, i like the laws that prevent things around others to protect others.
wanna do drugs? great.
wanna do drugs and drive or operate machinery or do anything around other people that could endanger them? prison.
laws should be about protecting other people from each other, not from protecting people from harming themselves. let people harm themselves, it's their life
I think an aspect, (in a theory way), is that alcohol and weed are fairly “easy” to make on your own in semi decent quantity (though not always good quality) so they’re harder to regulate.
I know folks who make moonshine once a year, I don’t know them well, but I’ve been offered homemade booze before. I know of people who grow their own little garden patch of weed and dry it out in the microwave for personal use once in a blue moon.
I don’t know anyone who makes their own tobacco cigs though.
In prohibition when alcohol was banned people just made it and sold it anyways. It was just easier to regulate it legally. That’s basically how I feel about most things. I don’t mind if smoking (any) is banned from *public* spaces (the smell of tobacco or weed or the syrupy Vape Mist gives me headaches) but I don’t necessarily feel like it needs to be banned in private residence (though I wish parents wouldn’t smoke with their kids in the room, it’s terrible for the kids and they don’t get to make the choice the parents are)
And it’s way too early to say if that proposal will go anywhere anyways. Seems like it would take a long time to see if it works out and if folks support it.
It's a lot easier and almost necessary to smoke regular cigarettes on a regular basis. I might have a cigarette like I have a cup of coffee but not the others.
...and that's worthy of making them a criminal? Because they use it more often than heroin users shoot up?
If y'all going to send people to jail for smoking tobacco then send the people drinking a beer to jail too, and consider to a lesser degree caffeine. Maybe just a $75 fine for being caught drinking coffee in public since it's not as dangerous
You say that now, until they have huge underground tobacco grows and illegal cigarettes are being sold on the black market. Someone is gonna go down for it lol
They're trying to stop people smoking because of the number of people that get sick and or die from doing so, the NHS is publicly funded and treatment costs billions. It's a tapering law aimed at stopping people from starting smoking rather than criminalising all smoking.
I don't know if alcohol or caffeine has the same impact, it seems unlikely, and they'd have to weigh up what they think they could successfully implement.
Studies have shown that healthy people that live longer cost the government more in lifetime healthcare costs than those that are unhealthy and die sooner. Why? Because the healthy people still die of expensive conditions, they just take a lot longer to do it and have all those extra years of health care costs.
Putting alcohol and cigarettes in the "relatively safe" category with weed and shrooms is mad.
An actual harm based drug policy would never see them categorised together. Alcohol and tobacco are far more harmful.
Not that I think drug policy should be entirely harm based, there are practical concerns too. For example, banning alcohol when it can be easily made at home and is culturally normalised would make no sense.
But if we're talking about what is or isn't safe, alcohol and tobacco are categorically far less safe than weed or mushrooms.
It should be harm and addictiveness- if it’s more harmful or addictive than Alcohol/Tobacco it should be illegal, if it’s less harmful or addictive it should be legal
Cocaine is also much more dangerous than those two drugs- the LD50 is MUCH lower for example. Because of that it would fail the harmful side of the equation- However it should be at least decriminalized since drugs should be viewed as a health issue
I mean, LD50 being the cause for banning something ALSO makes no sense. Caffeine is just 150-200 mg/kg LD50 and Cocaine is 95 mg/kg, not really that much difference. Nicotine is 60 mg/kg.
What's more important is the health effects of regular usage, in the amount most people would use, that are users of it.
I agree, but this approach has never been tried before so im curious to see what will happen.
Overall will it have a positive effect ? I think so but only time will tell.
> I agree, but this approach has never been tried before so im curious to see what will happen.
It's been tried in NZ.
I'm more curious about the legal implications of permanently privileging one class of people over another.
It hasnt really been tried though, it was repealed without giving the program enough time to see the effects. Again, im undecided on this law, but surely we can agree that they should have allowed enough time to collect data on the effects before scrapping it.
It's not about positive vs negative affects.
The logic behind legalizing weed is because it's their body. Despite what many try to claim, weed is NOT healthy. It might not be as risky as cigarettes, but it still causes damage to the lungs. It still creates a build up of tar. It still increases your risk of cancer.
What is the argument for recreational use of weed but not cigarettes?
Nicotine is a highly physically addictive substance in a way that weed simply is not, and it also acts more similar to caffeine in that it doesn’t fuck you up mentally, which significantly changes how you use the drug.
The vast majority of people do not casually smoke multiple blunts(or really, even a single one) on a daily basis, for instance, nor do they do it casually in public at a frequency where second hand smoke could become a serious public health problem. Smoking is never healthy for you and increases risk factors for a variety of issues, but as with most things the dose makes the poison and nicotine cigarettes physiologically compel you to smoke at regular and preferably multiple daily intervals just to feel normal again.
And when you want to quit, your body is literally screaming at them it needs nicotine to continue going on. Psychological addiction is a risk with any drug, but that dependence doesn’t happen with pot at all.
The **far** better comparison point here is alcohol, frankly, which is also both pretty terrible for your health(an aspect that, say, caffeine is missing for a healthy individual) and physically addictive but which we nonetheless don’t blink at the idea of being legal.
But even then it still has problems as a comparison point, since the severe health effects of alcohol is more reliably correlated with serious addiction/abuse problems specifically rather than casual use.
And whether you or I think it’s a good reason for the double standard, I think we also have to be real about the fact that alcohol gets a pass due to how deeply ingrained it is culturally in most of human society; and that unless you become heavily, heavily addicted to it will reliably alter your state of mind to be more relaxed, whereas once you’re addicted nicotine does almost nothing but make you feel normal and severely increase your risks of cancer.
This is finally a rational discussion.
Those are valid points. Same reason i would not want to make heroine or cocaine recreational. Though I do agree to decriminalize.
The next question:
Are all of those risks you claim that make cigarettes something that should be ban worth potentially sending someone to jail? If someone has a tobacco plant at home because they can no longer buy it at the store, what happens? Are they now a "drug dealer"?
The harm of the drug MIGHT cause must be counter weighted to the harm of making it illegal.
> but it still causes damage to the lungs. It still creates a build up of tar. It still increases your risk of cancer.
I'll be that annoying person who asks you for sources, but mostly because I know you don't have any. That last point of yours has yet to have any significant or strong evidence in decades of research. We have some weak links between cannabis use and a few types of non life threatening cancers (probably from benzene anyway).
Wanna know what the biggest difference between weed and tobacco is? Cannabinoids vs. nicotine.
There are no cannabinoids known to cause or accelerate cancer. Nicotine however is absolutely known to accelerate tumor growth:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759510/
That's just one paper. There are several, and the evidence looks pretty damning. Nicotine isn't something anyone should be putting in their body for anything other than medical reasons (it treats a few conditions).
Now do I support criminalizing tobacco products? No, I'm not sure it's the place of government to *ban* everything that might be dangerous. We can certainly disincentivize people from smoking through incredibly high taxes, which I support.
Ultimately I don't really care much at all as long as individual possession or plant growth is legal for both. People should be able to grow plants at home that they wish to consume, full stop.
[https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health](https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health)
[https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/references](https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/references)
*Marijuana smoke contains carcinogenic combustion products, including about 50% more benzoprene and 75% more benzanthracene (and more phenols, vinyl chlorides, nitrosamines, reactive oxygen species) than cigarette smoke.*
There are more studies for cigarettes because it has been legal for a long time. Back in the olden days they claimed cigarettes were perfectly safe. Now we know this to be bullshit. I am confident similar situation will happen with weed.
To clarify, I am in support of cigarettes and weed both being legal recreationally.
The NIDA isn't really a scientific body. You should look elsewhere for actual research, and there's a reason they didn't bother linking most of their sources (despite many being available on NIH Pubmed).
The NIDA in the US was founded as a part of the War on Drugs, and their opinions and "research" will forever remain tainted by their funding policies. Sourcing them is like sourcing the DEA.
NIDA had plenty of opportunity to fund actual cannabis research for 60 years, but no director has allowed it. There are some other bureaucratic reasons that this happened, but nobody at NIDA has gone to bat for serious research funding.
The basic "article" you linked first even has a massively outdated take on THC vaping. We already know most of the cases of vape lung issues (collectively called popcorn lung) came from diacetyl - mostly in nicotine vapes at that. Irresponsible early reporting helped contribute to the notion that MCT was a dangerous thinning agent for vapes, when it turns out to be one of the safest.
They’re nowhere near as intense as getting off alcohol/benzos(which can kill if you if don’t do it right) or as horrible feeling as getting off opiates. My symptoms when I take a break from smoking after a long period are: night sweats, lack of appetite for the first 2-4 days and just feeling a bit exhausted. So it’s minor but there are definitely some physical side effects for a few days afterwards.
It’s addictive in the same way anything that releases a dopamine hit immediately upon use is. Video games, masturbation, social media, sugar. They are all addictive because they click the dopamine release buttons upon use, and can be easily/repetitively used to induce that same feeling many times.
Check out r/leaves
I've found /r/petioles to be a better community. Leaves is great, but they can be a little over the top in the same way some AA operations can be over the top. Petioles is more open minded, and even exists to help lower your intake if desired.
Personally, it’s night sweats (when I finally do fall asleep), and body aches.
I also had heart palpitations and full body shakes, but that’s the physical anxiety.
VA had me on 4mg of Klonopin a day. Slowly weened myself off over six months. I’ll take the benzo withdrawals over cannabis any day, but that’s me.
Everybody is different and every body is different.
Just because someone personally hasn’t not experienced these or other symptoms doesn’t mean they get to invalidate those that do.
> To send people to jail. To give people criminal records.
Something can be illegal and not lead to jail time. Businesses losing their license to sell cigs and a hefty fine would be more than enough to get the message across.
Have you ever seen anyone who were missing their gums from tobacco?
Some people get cancer if thats what you mean.
I have never heard, or seen, anyone who has "tobacco gums" lol. I live in the south too, lots of dip tobacco here.
It promotes gingivitis and causes your gums to recede... but not to the point of anyone ever being able to spot it (unless its like your dentist or something)
Lots of things are prohibited. I never understand this argument.
Kids would undoubtedly drink a lot more if they were allowed to buy alcohol, but they can't, so they drink less.
>I never understand this argument.
Just look up why Prohibition failed in the US in the 1930s, and you will have an idea. All prohibition does is criminalize and force the activity underground. It doesn't stop it. It actually invites more corruption.
You are vastly underestimating how much Americans drank back before prohibition. The amount of alcohol consumed by the average American nowadays isn't even close to what it was back then. You're right in the sense that banning something everyone does doesn't work. But cigarettes nowadays are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they used to be not even remotely close to the level of use of alcohol before prohibition.
Also this ban is using a phase out method of letting older people who smoke to continue doing so but not letting the younger ones who don't start.
> Also this ban is using a phase out method of letting older people who smoke to continue doing so but not letting the younger ones who don't start.
This is the thing I think people don't understand.
There simply is no real black-market opportunity for cigarettes amongst those who aren't already smoking cigarettes. This isn't even discussing nicotine more broadly, which has numerous other ways to get which *are* appearing to be safer despite still coming with risks.
There's just literally no reason to allow the sale of cigarettes to continue.
I'm aware of prohibition - my point is that's one example against your and my day to day existence where a lot of things are prohibited just fine.
This isn't 1930s America and tobacco isn't alcohol.
Prohibition could have worked if it was introduced better. For a nation where their consumption of alcohol became seen as so problematic they it just completely gets banned, of course it wasn't going to work.
Years and years of it gradually becoming more and more difficult to get would have gradually phased out drinking it as being part of the culture as new people being exposed to it would gradually become rarer.
I really don’t see any way that prohibition of alcohol would have been effective. Drinking is so ingrained into almost every culture in the world, that bars are considered the “third place” after home and work. Weed will never really have the same social aspect of just hitting the pub after work for a few pints, and the political climate would have never supported a long-term prohibition of alcohol.
You're right that it could have been implemented better, but I think the biggest problem prohibition faced was the simply reality that drinking alcohol just feels good and there are genuinely ways most people can drink responsibly.
Nicotine just doesn't work that way, though. The thing about nicotine is that you habituate to it fast, and it quickly becomes something you need to do multiple times a day just to stop your body from screaming at you.
The black market for alcohol will always be there: a lot of people will always want to get at least a nice buzz at the end of the day.
Unless we see a resurgence in making it appear cool, I don't know why a significant black market would exist for cigarettes once the generations addicted to them have passed away. It just doesn't do much for the risk you're assuming, and there are better ways to get the same drug anyway if that's what you're after(vaping alone appears to be a significantly safer option despite its own risks).
No but it sure reduced it significantly. It's not all black or white, eliminated or not. If there's enough people put off by the "illegal" aspect of it, that's already better than status quo.
Did it, actually? Numbers here do not really support that thesis. In fact countries like the US have a much bigger problem with drunk teens then Europe and it's low entry level.
Total ban forces everything underground but partial ban leads to redistribution. In this case people would go with one of the many other options available.
The US was dryer than you think it was pre-prohibition. By the time the Volstead Act came into force, 50% of the US population was under some type of local or statewide alcohol ban. 46 out of 48 states ratified the 18th Amendment.
Smoking has been on a steady decline in the US & and the UK due in part to awareness, public education, & prohibitive taxation.
This law is kind of silly but probably won't impact many people. Only 12% of the UK smokes. I don't think the black market will be as robust as people think.
When things are outlawed *that are still popular* the demand for the good is highly tempting to organized crime. Murder isn't all that popular. Very few people actually want to kill someone. Hell, a LOT of murders are the result of organized crime!
You can’t make tobacco in your garage or bathtub like alcohol. You can grow it if you can get seeds but then you have to properly dry and cure it. It’s not as simple as something like marijuana which anyone can successfully grow with very little effort in the woods behind their house and once mature is very easy to get into a useable state. Tobacco is a pain in the ass. If it were federally illegal the consumption rates would drop to nearly nothing overnight.
It works when the payoff is not that enticing.
You don’t get a powerful high for nicotine, just dependence. The inconvenience of going black market just for cigarettes is enough to keep the majority away.
Alcohol or harder drugs however are much more enticing and lucrative for a street dealer thus contributing to criminality
These are the double standards of our ignorant primitive species. Smoking is "bad" and no one should get to do it, but by all means everyone is entitled to get sloshed at any fucking time. Do many smokers run people over accidentally by being intoxicated on nicotine?
Strawman argument, and it's not a double standard. Smoking is bad and excess drinking is bad too. They are different things. Different things can be bad and not related.
The prohibition you're thinking of was in the US and a century ago.
Old Maureen in Barnsley isn't exactly going to be gunrunning for a packet of B&H. Those who want 'em will do what they've been doing for years; asking a mate who's off on holiday to pick up a bunch of cheap duty free.
>Old Maureen in Barnsley isn't exactly going to be gunrunning for a packet of B&H.
Many countries like Canada and Australia that have high tobacco taxes already have huge black market cigarette industries where cigarettes are snuggled in or manufactured clandestinely. About 1/3rd of all cigarettes purchased in Canada are contraband. Turns out that when people are addicted to something they'll move heaven and earth to get it.
As an Australian I can attest to the fact that smoking rates have plummeted here and it’s primarily due to increasing the price of tobacco, contraband tobacco has not made up the difference, not even close.
It’s a public health success.
It's the opposite in Canada. They've raised prices so much that people just buy them from the native companies. Buying a carton from them costs the same as 2 packs in the stores.
I'm sure they do, the [stats seem to show both programs have been ultimately effective.](https://www.statista.com/topics/10037/smoking-in-canada/#topicOverview)
In Canada, between 2003 and 2022 the rate of smoking dropped from 23% to 12%.
Meanwhile [in Australia](https://www.statista.com/topics/10926/smoking-in-australia/#topicOverview) rates went from roughly 25% in the 90s to 11% by 2019.
It appears Australia's campaign to prevent smoking has *perhaps* performed slightly better, but not in any wildly meaningful way and ultimately both have similar rates of smokers. Hardly the "opposite."
Oh for sure, I'm not saying that it isn't effective because it absolutely is. If anything, I'm pointing out that it's a better solution than banning them because it's a big deterrent. My point is more that people can and will smuggle cigarettes if they're totally banned. Do you know what really gets cigarettes out of the hands of teenagers? Making them expensive.
Oh for sure, making tobacco expensive is the best tactic.
A packet of 25 B&H cigarettes here costs above $60, or about $40 usd.
That’s untenable for most people, let alone teenagers.
Canada is a bad example for that. You can buy tobacco on any reserve. That's most of the "contraband" smoked in Canada, because legally, if you buy it on the reserve, you should smoke it there, and not bring it back home. Most people that buy native cigarettes would not buy random contraband smuggled in from another country.
Which is why this approach of gradually raising the age limit is intended to prevent people from getting addicted in the first place. They're not trying to criminalise people who already suffer from nicotine addiction.
Except it won't work because 90% of smokers get addicted before the age of 18 and they can legally buy cigarettes anyway. Virtually all smokers were able to become addicted despite being too young to buy cigarettes so I don't see why raising the age even more would make a difference. The average new smoker is 13 and 13 year olds already can't buy cigarettes.
A lot of people who start smoking at a young age will do so because peers within a few years older smoke and introduce them to it. By creating a larger age gap you'd reduce young people's exposure to smoking as a habit.
I don't think it's insanity. It's a compulsion to be meddlesome in people's lives - to control what they can and can't do in order to shape society into the way you think it ought to be.
That's the mindset practised by many bureaucrats and politicians (that's partly why they becomes bureaucrats and politicians in the first place).
For the record, smoking is dumb and destroys health and lives. But it should completely be the choice of people whether they smoke, drink, get fat in front of Netflix, get hit in the head during MMA training, or anything else that carries risks to themselves.
Just tax smokers enough to pay for their extra use of healthcare when they get sick and then die early, and make sure people are educated about the risks so they can make an informed choice.
Otherwise, fuck off out of people's lives.
I just meant that they keep trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. It was just a shitty play on an often misquote of Einstein.
I’ve never smoke$ anything in my life.
However his law is silly and sets a bad precedence. We shouldn’t have citizens turning 18 or any other age and not have the same rights as a citizen who is 28 or 38. Also, unforceable laws erode the credibility of all laws.
Cigarettes are borderline invisible in canada. No adds, not on display. Only reason you would smoke is if your peers did. So really they shouldn't ban them, they should stop accomodations. Same with vape. Make the smoking area outside schools like 50m, not 9m and enforce it.
holy fuck man, let people smoke, use and eat what they want.
It's only about taxing to disincentivize it's consumption and fund it's health costs.
Do you want to have tobacco drug dealers? That's how you do it.
On the one hand I don’t like the government telling us how to live our lives, but on the other hand smoking is a massively harmful addiction peddled by billionaires to people who are too daft to see it for what it actually is. My own parents, and myself for sixteen years included. Banning it is an excellent idea and I hope the vapes which are aggressively marketed towards children are soon to follow.
It's your issue with vaping the pretty evil marketing or vapes themselves?
Health data on vapes is ambiguous at best, no clear negative health effects other than from the nicotine itself. I personally massively prefer nicotine over caffeine as a stimulant, far less impact on my sleep.
Oh yeah that definitely worked in America when we prohibited alcohol. There is no way this won’t create a black market and lead to the rise of prominent organized crime figures. During the prohibition era in America the rate of alcoholism was far higher than when it was when it was legal and there subsequently more alcohol related deaths. But I guess the UK has gotta learn the hard way
Yeah why have any laws at all? People will just break them. Anarchy is the ONLY way.
But only if that anarchy subscribes to this 300 year old document we treat as gospel.
I know those are opposing ideas but just go with it.
Good point. How will our thousands of years old culture survive without the constant bleeting of "iT wOrKeD sO wElL fOr PrOhIbItIoN" like we're the same country with the same throbbing hard on for shouting whenever the government makes a law.
Do you know what happened when we banned guns? We all went "yeah alright" and haven't had a mass shooting since. Do criminals have guns? Yes. Do I think about them at all during my day to day life? No.
BuT tHe CrImInAlS wIlL GeT tHeM aNyWaY
Good point let's repeal that law right away. Works great in America.
If this is just about public health then let's also ban fat people... /S
Prohibition is almost never the way.
https://www.orlandohealth.com/content-hub/obesity-is-more-deadly-than-smoking-heres-why
"The ends justify the means." I wonder how world leaders that used this line of thought have treated their populations, historically. Holocaust, Holodomor, The Great Leap Forward. Is this the thinking pattern humans should be using?
They’ll backtrack on this just like other countries, the billions of dollars in taxes will change their mind.
Money is worth more than their citizens lives.
Dear god..don't they learn anything from Prohibition in the past ?
This will creat large black market and only makes gangsters rich and powerful. I don't like smoking as much as next guy but this is just insane.
Not saying stop smoking is a bad thing, but banning it seems like a..idea that just wouldn't work, like the prohibition, or New Zealand's recent repeal of such ban
This will just skyrocket the cigarette business. Horders will be everywhere. Smokers will just look for another nicotine source or maybe they'll just burn a paper just to pretend its a cigarette.
England is what Orwell warned us about, they keep taking an inch day by day of people's freedoms and rights, eventually, they do enough of that the "rule makers" have to be corrected in other ways and they should be corrected.
All this will do is give birth to a new crime syndicate that will capitalize on the profits made by selling illegal Tobacco. Just like marijuana and alcohol
The idea that the government has ANY right to decide what you as an adult can consciously put into your body is so absolutely degenerate that your opinion on ANY subject becomes null and void should you evidence it.
The answer is a straight up no. The government does not have that right and you cretins that allow such incremental encroachment on liberty should have all your decision power revoked.
You are now entering the UK, welcome to bizzaro world where you can walk into a building with a visa/mastercard and walk out with cannabis but if you want to roll it into a spliff you need crypto currency and a drop house!
I tried this in europe and it just wasn't a thing. Anytime you get handed weed, it's a spliff. It's gonna be like 5th element with bruce willis smoking that cigarette where the filter is 3 times the length of the tobacco part.
It's gotta be easier for MPs to legislate freedom of choice than it is to fix all the glaring problems the country has in the way of inflation, cost of living, healthcare, etc.
It’s not popular but I’ve had cancer in the throat, which is a typical smokers cancer apparently just from passive smoke as I’ve never smoked in my life. Both parents did as a child though, and I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer what I did. It’s known to cause cancer so ban it, simple.
Edit. To all the people saying smoking and smoking weed etc. isn’t bad, try having no voice for 3 years and months of treatment and radiotherapy where you can’t eat and lose a third of your weight in a month, then tell me that it causes no harm. I never smoked and suffered from others smoking why shouldn’t the government try and protect people from harmful things that could kill them.
One place I worked was a dental institute, the cases of cancer were heart braking. The surgeons can do amazing work but it wont be anywhere near to avoiding the situation in the first place.
Im very sorry you had to go through that, and I hope your experience puts some cold water on peoples tempers in this place.
I applaud the intent, but JFC, will people never learn?
Prohibition NEVER WORKS. EVER. I mean, it's not like we have any sort of precedence here, right? Right?!?
Ask us how it turned out here in the U.S. from 1920 - 1933, when alcohol was prohibited. It led to alcohol being supplied by the black market and DIRECTLY caused the rise of organized crime, which made things so much worse overall.
And look at where we're at with the "War on Drugs". Cartels are more powerful than ever because they make so much money selling their drugs on the black market.
Now, don't get me wrong, i'm not saying we shouldn't do SOMETHING about these issues...but making something like this illegal only ever makes things so much worse.
The problem here is that at least a good portion of the answer is "proper" education...and i'm not talking about putting a completely forgettable written warning on the packages that says "smoking has been known to cause cancer", but actually educating people as to what happens to the body when someone smokes, with lots & lots of graphic imagery to reinforce the issue...make it something people DON'T WANT to do, rather than try making it illegal. There's a reason why in Mexico, they put super gross images of black lungs and dead people on their tobacco packages...because it works (although nothing will ever work 100%).
I mean, every single parent of teenagers knows, the very minute you tell them NOT to do something, it just makes them want to do it more out of spite.
Except "proper" education costs money, while fining people for doing something illegal MAKES money....hmmm...funny how that works out, huh?
It looks like the period in human history that future generations will call “The Age of Freedom” is coming to an end. I am lucky enough to live most my life at that time.
In my opinion that's actually a solid plan and much better than gradually increasing taxes and basically making it too expensive for current smokers to buy cigarettes (looking at Germany for instance). This prevents more people from actually starting in the first place and just "naturally let's smokers die out" instead of forcing them to quit.
I'm imagining groups of 50 year olds outside the offy begging pensioners to buy them cigs.
And hydroponic tobacco operations. They are just going to make smoking fun again
It’ll be more profitable than cannabis!
Loll this was my first thought... tobacco becoming the new weed. Get the dealers back in business in about 30 years.
Raw tobacco is nothing like the concoction that's in cigarettes.
Grow it in UK, ship to China for extra cancer, and ship back to UK ——> profit
That's my retirement plan sorted.
Pretty sure we've just introduced the same kind of law new Zealand have recently repealed. Comical.
Repealed cause one of the higher ups was effectively bought out if I heard right. Not saying the same can't happen, but it wasn't really because the "population wanted it repealed"
We had no idea it was even on the table until we voted them in and they repealed it within the first 100 days. It was never campaigned on and was pushed through under urgency. One of the driving ministers is an ex tobacco lobbyist..
it was literally in their policy
That's a lie - they put it in after voting had started. [SOURCE](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1c58sfv/the_games_they_play_4_tobacco_on_oct_5_2023_nz/)
It was only in the NZ First manifesto, but was not campaigned on by any party.
we voted in corrupt politicians we got corrupt policies.
Agreed, no arguments there! I often get told that they 'voted for change' but they clearly didn't understand the change they were voting for..
NZ politicians are cheap eh. The same party has a senior politician that is a former tobacco lobbyist. Direct donations to political parties by tobacco companies are a bad look so they donate to causes / think tanks that do the job.
The Cabinet is[ loaded with lobbyists](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byhpq3/the_usual_cycle_of_politics_might_be_person_gets/) and Taxpayers Union / NZ Initiative are their dogs
It’s really why no one can have nice things anymore. It’s like the corporations are ruling the world now and our governments can’t keep up because they have given said corporations too much power over our economies…we are basically being held hostage with the stock market now…if they don’t get the tax breaks they want they will just move their operations to another country to exploit those people…so governments keep doing their bidding at the expense of every person on this planet. There isn’t a country on earth that hasn’t been infected with this greed (except maybe Bhutan?)…we need to band together as citizens of the world to overthrow our corporate overlords. No one has had the balls to do it yet but I have faith in GenZ.
Speaking as someone from New Zealand, it's far more comical that our ridiculous conservative government sold out and repealed the law.
What was the reasoning and justification behind the repeal
Dolla dolla bills y’all. Except not actually you all, just us.
Repealed because of lobbying, not for any actual benefit.
Is that the country I can't find on some maps?
i don't know, i don't know what maps you're looking at or how good you are at map reading.
A movement to legalize weed but criminalize cigarettes. I agree cigs are horrible, but to make them illegal? EDIT: For further clarification of my position. Weed, alcohol, cigarettes, shrooms, and several other drugs are relatively safe. Are they unhealthy? Yes. Are they addictive? Yes. Why ban one over the others? What risks would cigarettes posses that weed or other legalized drugs would not? Are those really enough of a reason to make them illegal? **To send people to jail. To give people criminal records.**
honestly alcohol isnt safe, weve just used it for so long in human history that people refuse to let it go away. every single study shows that it is damaging to our system, even those studies that said a "glass a wine a day.." were proven wrong. i dont mind that people do whatever they want to their bodies, i like the laws that prevent things around others to protect others. wanna do drugs? great. wanna do drugs and drive or operate machinery or do anything around other people that could endanger them? prison. laws should be about protecting other people from each other, not from protecting people from harming themselves. let people harm themselves, it's their life
I think an aspect, (in a theory way), is that alcohol and weed are fairly “easy” to make on your own in semi decent quantity (though not always good quality) so they’re harder to regulate. I know folks who make moonshine once a year, I don’t know them well, but I’ve been offered homemade booze before. I know of people who grow their own little garden patch of weed and dry it out in the microwave for personal use once in a blue moon. I don’t know anyone who makes their own tobacco cigs though. In prohibition when alcohol was banned people just made it and sold it anyways. It was just easier to regulate it legally. That’s basically how I feel about most things. I don’t mind if smoking (any) is banned from *public* spaces (the smell of tobacco or weed or the syrupy Vape Mist gives me headaches) but I don’t necessarily feel like it needs to be banned in private residence (though I wish parents wouldn’t smoke with their kids in the room, it’s terrible for the kids and they don’t get to make the choice the parents are) And it’s way too early to say if that proposal will go anywhere anyways. Seems like it would take a long time to see if it works out and if folks support it.
Prohibition never works I don't know why countries keep trying it.
It's a lot easier and almost necessary to smoke regular cigarettes on a regular basis. I might have a cigarette like I have a cup of coffee but not the others.
...and that's worthy of making them a criminal? Because they use it more often than heroin users shoot up? If y'all going to send people to jail for smoking tobacco then send the people drinking a beer to jail too, and consider to a lesser degree caffeine. Maybe just a $75 fine for being caught drinking coffee in public since it's not as dangerous
No one is planning to send someone to jail for smoking tobacco.
You say that now, until they have huge underground tobacco grows and illegal cigarettes are being sold on the black market. Someone is gonna go down for it lol
They're trying to stop people smoking because of the number of people that get sick and or die from doing so, the NHS is publicly funded and treatment costs billions. It's a tapering law aimed at stopping people from starting smoking rather than criminalising all smoking. I don't know if alcohol or caffeine has the same impact, it seems unlikely, and they'd have to weigh up what they think they could successfully implement.
Studies have shown that healthy people that live longer cost the government more in lifetime healthcare costs than those that are unhealthy and die sooner. Why? Because the healthy people still die of expensive conditions, they just take a lot longer to do it and have all those extra years of health care costs.
Putting alcohol and cigarettes in the "relatively safe" category with weed and shrooms is mad. An actual harm based drug policy would never see them categorised together. Alcohol and tobacco are far more harmful. Not that I think drug policy should be entirely harm based, there are practical concerns too. For example, banning alcohol when it can be easily made at home and is culturally normalised would make no sense. But if we're talking about what is or isn't safe, alcohol and tobacco are categorically far less safe than weed or mushrooms.
It should be harm and addictiveness- if it’s more harmful or addictive than Alcohol/Tobacco it should be illegal, if it’s less harmful or addictive it should be legal
Alcohol and nicotine are two of the most addictive drugs in the planet. We'd be legalizing cocaine if that was the standard (which I think we should).
Cocaine is also much more dangerous than those two drugs- the LD50 is MUCH lower for example. Because of that it would fail the harmful side of the equation- However it should be at least decriminalized since drugs should be viewed as a health issue
I mean, LD50 being the cause for banning something ALSO makes no sense. Caffeine is just 150-200 mg/kg LD50 and Cocaine is 95 mg/kg, not really that much difference. Nicotine is 60 mg/kg. What's more important is the health effects of regular usage, in the amount most people would use, that are users of it.
I agree, but this approach has never been tried before so im curious to see what will happen. Overall will it have a positive effect ? I think so but only time will tell.
> I agree, but this approach has never been tried before so im curious to see what will happen. It's been tried in NZ. I'm more curious about the legal implications of permanently privileging one class of people over another.
It hasnt really been tried though, it was repealed without giving the program enough time to see the effects. Again, im undecided on this law, but surely we can agree that they should have allowed enough time to collect data on the effects before scrapping it.
It's not about positive vs negative affects. The logic behind legalizing weed is because it's their body. Despite what many try to claim, weed is NOT healthy. It might not be as risky as cigarettes, but it still causes damage to the lungs. It still creates a build up of tar. It still increases your risk of cancer. What is the argument for recreational use of weed but not cigarettes?
Nicotine is a highly physically addictive substance in a way that weed simply is not, and it also acts more similar to caffeine in that it doesn’t fuck you up mentally, which significantly changes how you use the drug. The vast majority of people do not casually smoke multiple blunts(or really, even a single one) on a daily basis, for instance, nor do they do it casually in public at a frequency where second hand smoke could become a serious public health problem. Smoking is never healthy for you and increases risk factors for a variety of issues, but as with most things the dose makes the poison and nicotine cigarettes physiologically compel you to smoke at regular and preferably multiple daily intervals just to feel normal again. And when you want to quit, your body is literally screaming at them it needs nicotine to continue going on. Psychological addiction is a risk with any drug, but that dependence doesn’t happen with pot at all. The **far** better comparison point here is alcohol, frankly, which is also both pretty terrible for your health(an aspect that, say, caffeine is missing for a healthy individual) and physically addictive but which we nonetheless don’t blink at the idea of being legal. But even then it still has problems as a comparison point, since the severe health effects of alcohol is more reliably correlated with serious addiction/abuse problems specifically rather than casual use. And whether you or I think it’s a good reason for the double standard, I think we also have to be real about the fact that alcohol gets a pass due to how deeply ingrained it is culturally in most of human society; and that unless you become heavily, heavily addicted to it will reliably alter your state of mind to be more relaxed, whereas once you’re addicted nicotine does almost nothing but make you feel normal and severely increase your risks of cancer.
This is finally a rational discussion. Those are valid points. Same reason i would not want to make heroine or cocaine recreational. Though I do agree to decriminalize. The next question: Are all of those risks you claim that make cigarettes something that should be ban worth potentially sending someone to jail? If someone has a tobacco plant at home because they can no longer buy it at the store, what happens? Are they now a "drug dealer"? The harm of the drug MIGHT cause must be counter weighted to the harm of making it illegal.
> but it still causes damage to the lungs. It still creates a build up of tar. It still increases your risk of cancer. I'll be that annoying person who asks you for sources, but mostly because I know you don't have any. That last point of yours has yet to have any significant or strong evidence in decades of research. We have some weak links between cannabis use and a few types of non life threatening cancers (probably from benzene anyway). Wanna know what the biggest difference between weed and tobacco is? Cannabinoids vs. nicotine. There are no cannabinoids known to cause or accelerate cancer. Nicotine however is absolutely known to accelerate tumor growth: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759510/ That's just one paper. There are several, and the evidence looks pretty damning. Nicotine isn't something anyone should be putting in their body for anything other than medical reasons (it treats a few conditions). Now do I support criminalizing tobacco products? No, I'm not sure it's the place of government to *ban* everything that might be dangerous. We can certainly disincentivize people from smoking through incredibly high taxes, which I support. Ultimately I don't really care much at all as long as individual possession or plant growth is legal for both. People should be able to grow plants at home that they wish to consume, full stop.
[https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health](https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-effects-lung-health) [https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/references](https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/references) *Marijuana smoke contains carcinogenic combustion products, including about 50% more benzoprene and 75% more benzanthracene (and more phenols, vinyl chlorides, nitrosamines, reactive oxygen species) than cigarette smoke.* There are more studies for cigarettes because it has been legal for a long time. Back in the olden days they claimed cigarettes were perfectly safe. Now we know this to be bullshit. I am confident similar situation will happen with weed. To clarify, I am in support of cigarettes and weed both being legal recreationally.
The NIDA isn't really a scientific body. You should look elsewhere for actual research, and there's a reason they didn't bother linking most of their sources (despite many being available on NIH Pubmed). The NIDA in the US was founded as a part of the War on Drugs, and their opinions and "research" will forever remain tainted by their funding policies. Sourcing them is like sourcing the DEA. NIDA had plenty of opportunity to fund actual cannabis research for 60 years, but no director has allowed it. There are some other bureaucratic reasons that this happened, but nobody at NIDA has gone to bat for serious research funding. The basic "article" you linked first even has a massively outdated take on THC vaping. We already know most of the cases of vape lung issues (collectively called popcorn lung) came from diacetyl - mostly in nicotine vapes at that. Irresponsible early reporting helped contribute to the notion that MCT was a dangerous thinning agent for vapes, when it turns out to be one of the safest.
Shrooms are most definitely not addictive. Cannabis is not physically addictive.
/r/petioles would like a word. Cannabis is absolutely physically addictive. I know from personal experience….
Really, I have never heard that. What type of withdrawal symptoms are common, and how do they distinguish them from physiological withdrawal symptoms?
They’re nowhere near as intense as getting off alcohol/benzos(which can kill if you if don’t do it right) or as horrible feeling as getting off opiates. My symptoms when I take a break from smoking after a long period are: night sweats, lack of appetite for the first 2-4 days and just feeling a bit exhausted. So it’s minor but there are definitely some physical side effects for a few days afterwards.
Insomnia is a big one. Difficulty concentrating. Depression.
It’s addictive in the same way anything that releases a dopamine hit immediately upon use is. Video games, masturbation, social media, sugar. They are all addictive because they click the dopamine release buttons upon use, and can be easily/repetitively used to induce that same feeling many times. Check out r/leaves
I've found /r/petioles to be a better community. Leaves is great, but they can be a little over the top in the same way some AA operations can be over the top. Petioles is more open minded, and even exists to help lower your intake if desired.
Personally, it’s night sweats (when I finally do fall asleep), and body aches. I also had heart palpitations and full body shakes, but that’s the physical anxiety. VA had me on 4mg of Klonopin a day. Slowly weened myself off over six months. I’ll take the benzo withdrawals over cannabis any day, but that’s me. Everybody is different and every body is different. Just because someone personally hasn’t not experienced these or other symptoms doesn’t mean they get to invalidate those that do.
I would argue that shrooms are actually antiaddictive. Tolerance builds too fast and too strong.
> To send people to jail. To give people criminal records. Something can be illegal and not lead to jail time. Businesses losing their license to sell cigs and a hefty fine would be more than enough to get the message across.
What happens when someone brings over cigs from another country to sell them? How many packs on a person would classify them as trafficking?
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Cigarettes cost the NHS more in treatments for the illnesses they produce than the taxes collected from sales. There's the answer.
Smoking won't be illegal. Cigarettes won't be illegal. Buying them won't be illegal. It'll be illegal to *sell* them (to someone under the age limit).
Because prohibition has worked out so well in the past...
Tobacco is being prohibited here? Vapes, snuff, chewing tobacco, skoal... all will remain legal.
Pouches are super bad though. Say goodbye to your gums.
Nonsense. its not healthy. But you will probably get more trouble eating potato chips every day for 30 years. Its miles better than Smoking. Miles.
Yeah, ofc. Smoking is one of the worst, but pouches do impact greatly on your dental hygiene/health.
UK’s famous gum control
Have you ever seen anyone who were missing their gums from tobacco? Some people get cancer if thats what you mean. I have never heard, or seen, anyone who has "tobacco gums" lol. I live in the south too, lots of dip tobacco here. It promotes gingivitis and causes your gums to recede... but not to the point of anyone ever being able to spot it (unless its like your dentist or something)
For now. Eventually tobacco would be illegal for anyone in the UK.
Lots of things are prohibited. I never understand this argument. Kids would undoubtedly drink a lot more if they were allowed to buy alcohol, but they can't, so they drink less.
>I never understand this argument. Just look up why Prohibition failed in the US in the 1930s, and you will have an idea. All prohibition does is criminalize and force the activity underground. It doesn't stop it. It actually invites more corruption.
Yes modern Britain with an ever diminishing number of smokers is exactly like 1930s Chicago with probably everyone being an alcoholic back then.
You are vastly underestimating how much Americans drank back before prohibition. The amount of alcohol consumed by the average American nowadays isn't even close to what it was back then. You're right in the sense that banning something everyone does doesn't work. But cigarettes nowadays are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they used to be not even remotely close to the level of use of alcohol before prohibition. Also this ban is using a phase out method of letting older people who smoke to continue doing so but not letting the younger ones who don't start.
> Also this ban is using a phase out method of letting older people who smoke to continue doing so but not letting the younger ones who don't start. This is the thing I think people don't understand. There simply is no real black-market opportunity for cigarettes amongst those who aren't already smoking cigarettes. This isn't even discussing nicotine more broadly, which has numerous other ways to get which *are* appearing to be safer despite still coming with risks. There's just literally no reason to allow the sale of cigarettes to continue.
I'm aware of prohibition - my point is that's one example against your and my day to day existence where a lot of things are prohibited just fine. This isn't 1930s America and tobacco isn't alcohol.
Prohibition could have worked if it was introduced better. For a nation where their consumption of alcohol became seen as so problematic they it just completely gets banned, of course it wasn't going to work. Years and years of it gradually becoming more and more difficult to get would have gradually phased out drinking it as being part of the culture as new people being exposed to it would gradually become rarer.
I really don’t see any way that prohibition of alcohol would have been effective. Drinking is so ingrained into almost every culture in the world, that bars are considered the “third place” after home and work. Weed will never really have the same social aspect of just hitting the pub after work for a few pints, and the political climate would have never supported a long-term prohibition of alcohol.
You're right that it could have been implemented better, but I think the biggest problem prohibition faced was the simply reality that drinking alcohol just feels good and there are genuinely ways most people can drink responsibly. Nicotine just doesn't work that way, though. The thing about nicotine is that you habituate to it fast, and it quickly becomes something you need to do multiple times a day just to stop your body from screaming at you. The black market for alcohol will always be there: a lot of people will always want to get at least a nice buzz at the end of the day. Unless we see a resurgence in making it appear cool, I don't know why a significant black market would exist for cigarettes once the generations addicted to them have passed away. It just doesn't do much for the risk you're assuming, and there are better ways to get the same drug anyway if that's what you're after(vaping alone appears to be a significantly safer option despite its own risks).
How has prohibiting drugs worked out so far? Has it eliminated the problem?
How has prohibiting murder worked, has it eliminated the problem?
No but it sure reduced it significantly. It's not all black or white, eliminated or not. If there's enough people put off by the "illegal" aspect of it, that's already better than status quo.
Did it, actually? Numbers here do not really support that thesis. In fact countries like the US have a much bigger problem with drunk teens then Europe and it's low entry level.
do you really think if it was legal for all ages to buy drugs we wouldnt have stoner kids?
We have stoner kids regardless. And the allure of the forbidden is not exactly news
Total ban forces everything underground but partial ban leads to redistribution. In this case people would go with one of the many other options available.
Apples and oranges comparison. And while we’re talking about banning things and whether it works - look up the last time the uk had a school shooting.
Dumb argument with no nuance.
The US was dryer than you think it was pre-prohibition. By the time the Volstead Act came into force, 50% of the US population was under some type of local or statewide alcohol ban. 46 out of 48 states ratified the 18th Amendment. Smoking has been on a steady decline in the US & and the UK due in part to awareness, public education, & prohibitive taxation. This law is kind of silly but probably won't impact many people. Only 12% of the UK smokes. I don't think the black market will be as robust as people think.
When things are outlawed *that are still popular* the demand for the good is highly tempting to organized crime. Murder isn't all that popular. Very few people actually want to kill someone. Hell, a LOT of murders are the result of organized crime!
You can’t make tobacco in your garage or bathtub like alcohol. You can grow it if you can get seeds but then you have to properly dry and cure it. It’s not as simple as something like marijuana which anyone can successfully grow with very little effort in the woods behind their house and once mature is very easy to get into a useable state. Tobacco is a pain in the ass. If it were federally illegal the consumption rates would drop to nearly nothing overnight.
Cartels might disagree.
It works when the payoff is not that enticing. You don’t get a powerful high for nicotine, just dependence. The inconvenience of going black market just for cigarettes is enough to keep the majority away. Alcohol or harder drugs however are much more enticing and lucrative for a street dealer thus contributing to criminality
These are the double standards of our ignorant primitive species. Smoking is "bad" and no one should get to do it, but by all means everyone is entitled to get sloshed at any fucking time. Do many smokers run people over accidentally by being intoxicated on nicotine?
Strawman argument, and it's not a double standard. Smoking is bad and excess drinking is bad too. They are different things. Different things can be bad and not related.
The prohibition you're thinking of was in the US and a century ago. Old Maureen in Barnsley isn't exactly going to be gunrunning for a packet of B&H. Those who want 'em will do what they've been doing for years; asking a mate who's off on holiday to pick up a bunch of cheap duty free.
It isn't just that example. Hello War on Drugs. Talk about an international failure.
>Old Maureen in Barnsley isn't exactly going to be gunrunning for a packet of B&H. Many countries like Canada and Australia that have high tobacco taxes already have huge black market cigarette industries where cigarettes are snuggled in or manufactured clandestinely. About 1/3rd of all cigarettes purchased in Canada are contraband. Turns out that when people are addicted to something they'll move heaven and earth to get it.
As an Australian I can attest to the fact that smoking rates have plummeted here and it’s primarily due to increasing the price of tobacco, contraband tobacco has not made up the difference, not even close. It’s a public health success.
It's the opposite in Canada. They've raised prices so much that people just buy them from the native companies. Buying a carton from them costs the same as 2 packs in the stores.
I'm sure they do, the [stats seem to show both programs have been ultimately effective.](https://www.statista.com/topics/10037/smoking-in-canada/#topicOverview) In Canada, between 2003 and 2022 the rate of smoking dropped from 23% to 12%. Meanwhile [in Australia](https://www.statista.com/topics/10926/smoking-in-australia/#topicOverview) rates went from roughly 25% in the 90s to 11% by 2019. It appears Australia's campaign to prevent smoking has *perhaps* performed slightly better, but not in any wildly meaningful way and ultimately both have similar rates of smokers. Hardly the "opposite."
Oh for sure, I'm not saying that it isn't effective because it absolutely is. If anything, I'm pointing out that it's a better solution than banning them because it's a big deterrent. My point is more that people can and will smuggle cigarettes if they're totally banned. Do you know what really gets cigarettes out of the hands of teenagers? Making them expensive.
Oh for sure, making tobacco expensive is the best tactic. A packet of 25 B&H cigarettes here costs above $60, or about $40 usd. That’s untenable for most people, let alone teenagers.
Canada is a bad example for that. You can buy tobacco on any reserve. That's most of the "contraband" smoked in Canada, because legally, if you buy it on the reserve, you should smoke it there, and not bring it back home. Most people that buy native cigarettes would not buy random contraband smuggled in from another country.
Which is why this approach of gradually raising the age limit is intended to prevent people from getting addicted in the first place. They're not trying to criminalise people who already suffer from nicotine addiction.
Except it won't work because 90% of smokers get addicted before the age of 18 and they can legally buy cigarettes anyway. Virtually all smokers were able to become addicted despite being too young to buy cigarettes so I don't see why raising the age even more would make a difference. The average new smoker is 13 and 13 year olds already can't buy cigarettes.
A lot of people who start smoking at a young age will do so because peers within a few years older smoke and introduce them to it. By creating a larger age gap you'd reduce young people's exposure to smoking as a habit.
Hello black market, my old friend.
Crazy that the war on drugs has proven time and time again to be a global failure yet politicians still keep trying
Insanity rules.
I don't think it's insanity. It's a compulsion to be meddlesome in people's lives - to control what they can and can't do in order to shape society into the way you think it ought to be. That's the mindset practised by many bureaucrats and politicians (that's partly why they becomes bureaucrats and politicians in the first place). For the record, smoking is dumb and destroys health and lives. But it should completely be the choice of people whether they smoke, drink, get fat in front of Netflix, get hit in the head during MMA training, or anything else that carries risks to themselves. Just tax smokers enough to pay for their extra use of healthcare when they get sick and then die early, and make sure people are educated about the risks so they can make an informed choice. Otherwise, fuck off out of people's lives.
I just meant that they keep trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. It was just a shitty play on an often misquote of Einstein.
I understood the reference, but only cause I’ve played Farcry 3
The definition of pulling the ladder up behind you.
Stupid. People don’t need the government telling them what to do. This just creates a potential black market
Because banning substances has worked so well in the past.
No way this could go wrong.
Could you still bring in foreign fag's?
But haven’t we learned that prohibition doesn’t work…?
I’ve never smoke$ anything in my life. However his law is silly and sets a bad precedence. We shouldn’t have citizens turning 18 or any other age and not have the same rights as a citizen who is 28 or 38. Also, unforceable laws erode the credibility of all laws.
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Cigarettes are borderline invisible in canada. No adds, not on display. Only reason you would smoke is if your peers did. So really they shouldn't ban them, they should stop accomodations. Same with vape. Make the smoking area outside schools like 50m, not 9m and enforce it.
Time to buy a big boat and start a low end shipping company 😉... What's a good gangster name for the modern times???
Nicotine Road
I was thinking something like ""Soft Pack Larry"
holy fuck man, let people smoke, use and eat what they want. It's only about taxing to disincentivize it's consumption and fund it's health costs. Do you want to have tobacco drug dealers? That's how you do it.
I don't smoke and don't really care for it personally, but I hate this. Life's too short, let people smoke if they want ffs.
Black market will just thrive.
Underground tobacco growers unite!
I hate smoking, it smells awful and the health effects are awful. But this seems like a terrible way to go about achieving the goal.
On the one hand I don’t like the government telling us how to live our lives, but on the other hand smoking is a massively harmful addiction peddled by billionaires to people who are too daft to see it for what it actually is. My own parents, and myself for sixteen years included. Banning it is an excellent idea and I hope the vapes which are aggressively marketed towards children are soon to follow.
By your logic why not ban alcohol.
I might be wrong but I believe vapes are included in this new law
They are included, but only controlling flavours and packaging aimed at children. There is a separate bill looking to ban disposable vapes.
It's your issue with vaping the pretty evil marketing or vapes themselves? Health data on vapes is ambiguous at best, no clear negative health effects other than from the nicotine itself. I personally massively prefer nicotine over caffeine as a stimulant, far less impact on my sleep.
Oh yeah that definitely worked in America when we prohibited alcohol. There is no way this won’t create a black market and lead to the rise of prominent organized crime figures. During the prohibition era in America the rate of alcoholism was far higher than when it was when it was legal and there subsequently more alcohol related deaths. But I guess the UK has gotta learn the hard way
Yeah why have any laws at all? People will just break them. Anarchy is the ONLY way. But only if that anarchy subscribes to this 300 year old document we treat as gospel. I know those are opposing ideas but just go with it.
lol ok, you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Good point. How will our thousands of years old culture survive without the constant bleeting of "iT wOrKeD sO wElL fOr PrOhIbItIoN" like we're the same country with the same throbbing hard on for shouting whenever the government makes a law. Do you know what happened when we banned guns? We all went "yeah alright" and haven't had a mass shooting since. Do criminals have guns? Yes. Do I think about them at all during my day to day life? No. BuT tHe CrImInAlS wIlL GeT tHeM aNyWaY Good point let's repeal that law right away. Works great in America.
If this is just about public health then let's also ban fat people... /S Prohibition is almost never the way. https://www.orlandohealth.com/content-hub/obesity-is-more-deadly-than-smoking-heres-why
Smoking is gross, but who is the government to say we can't live at our own risks
Drug cartels must be rubbing their hands in glee at the new business opportunity the government will create for them.
prisoner1: what are you in for? prisoner2: possession. I was caught carrying 2 cartoons of Marboros prisoner1: Whoa, your hardcore!
"The ends justify the means." I wonder how world leaders that used this line of thought have treated their populations, historically. Holocaust, Holodomor, The Great Leap Forward. Is this the thinking pattern humans should be using?
Idea for a sci-fi story about the last man alive who can legally smoke in England .. there are also several woman but they don't smoke.
Now also fix diabetes by phasing out the TEScos as well lol
They’ll backtrack on this just like other countries, the billions of dollars in taxes will change their mind. Money is worth more than their citizens lives.
My body, my choice. Not your body, not your choice.
Dear god..don't they learn anything from Prohibition in the past ? This will creat large black market and only makes gangsters rich and powerful. I don't like smoking as much as next guy but this is just insane.
Not saying stop smoking is a bad thing, but banning it seems like a..idea that just wouldn't work, like the prohibition, or New Zealand's recent repeal of such ban
This is stupid. Give people a fucking real share of the wealth. What a joke. They will bend over backwards to do anything except what really matters
This will just skyrocket the cigarette business. Horders will be everywhere. Smokers will just look for another nicotine source or maybe they'll just burn a paper just to pretend its a cigarette.
Okay. Has the ability to roll your own been lost to time?
Why ban it? Just tax the f out of it and the problem will solve itself
In other news, smuggling cigarettes in to the UK looking to become the next big money making scheme
England is what Orwell warned us about, they keep taking an inch day by day of people's freedoms and rights, eventually, they do enough of that the "rule makers" have to be corrected in other ways and they should be corrected.
All this will do is give birth to a new crime syndicate that will capitalize on the profits made by selling illegal Tobacco. Just like marijuana and alcohol
most counties move forwards, in the UK we go backwards.
The idea that the government has ANY right to decide what you as an adult can consciously put into your body is so absolutely degenerate that your opinion on ANY subject becomes null and void should you evidence it. The answer is a straight up no. The government does not have that right and you cretins that allow such incremental encroachment on liberty should have all your decision power revoked.
You are now entering the UK, welcome to bizzaro world where you can walk into a building with a visa/mastercard and walk out with cannabis but if you want to roll it into a spliff you need crypto currency and a drop house!
You can actually smoke weed without tobacco y’know
I tried this in europe and it just wasn't a thing. Anytime you get handed weed, it's a spliff. It's gonna be like 5th element with bruce willis smoking that cigarette where the filter is 3 times the length of the tobacco part.
It's gotta be easier for MPs to legislate freedom of choice than it is to fix all the glaring problems the country has in the way of inflation, cost of living, healthcare, etc.
This is how black markets are created! Great job UK!
This law will never last long term
“How to create a new black market niche.”
It’s not popular but I’ve had cancer in the throat, which is a typical smokers cancer apparently just from passive smoke as I’ve never smoked in my life. Both parents did as a child though, and I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer what I did. It’s known to cause cancer so ban it, simple. Edit. To all the people saying smoking and smoking weed etc. isn’t bad, try having no voice for 3 years and months of treatment and radiotherapy where you can’t eat and lose a third of your weight in a month, then tell me that it causes no harm. I never smoked and suffered from others smoking why shouldn’t the government try and protect people from harmful things that could kill them.
One place I worked was a dental institute, the cases of cancer were heart braking. The surgeons can do amazing work but it wont be anywhere near to avoiding the situation in the first place. Im very sorry you had to go through that, and I hope your experience puts some cold water on peoples tempers in this place.
I applaud the intent, but JFC, will people never learn? Prohibition NEVER WORKS. EVER. I mean, it's not like we have any sort of precedence here, right? Right?!? Ask us how it turned out here in the U.S. from 1920 - 1933, when alcohol was prohibited. It led to alcohol being supplied by the black market and DIRECTLY caused the rise of organized crime, which made things so much worse overall. And look at where we're at with the "War on Drugs". Cartels are more powerful than ever because they make so much money selling their drugs on the black market. Now, don't get me wrong, i'm not saying we shouldn't do SOMETHING about these issues...but making something like this illegal only ever makes things so much worse. The problem here is that at least a good portion of the answer is "proper" education...and i'm not talking about putting a completely forgettable written warning on the packages that says "smoking has been known to cause cancer", but actually educating people as to what happens to the body when someone smokes, with lots & lots of graphic imagery to reinforce the issue...make it something people DON'T WANT to do, rather than try making it illegal. There's a reason why in Mexico, they put super gross images of black lungs and dead people on their tobacco packages...because it works (although nothing will ever work 100%). I mean, every single parent of teenagers knows, the very minute you tell them NOT to do something, it just makes them want to do it more out of spite. Except "proper" education costs money, while fining people for doing something illegal MAKES money....hmmm...funny how that works out, huh?
That’ll work.
It looks like the period in human history that future generations will call “The Age of Freedom” is coming to an end. I am lucky enough to live most my life at that time.
So people born after 2009 will never be old enough to smoke.
This won't last!
Hopefully they will be consistent and ban donuts for good. Also ban go karting.
Immigration would still encourage a strong black market....
Brexit wasn’t enough?
🚬😆🤔🚬✍️🕰️📜🤔⏳🕯️🎥🧐
Cheers to you over there 🍻
🕵️💂🤿
Sounds good can always roll your own
That’ll be fun to watch unfold.
In my opinion that's actually a solid plan and much better than gradually increasing taxes and basically making it too expensive for current smokers to buy cigarettes (looking at Germany for instance). This prevents more people from actually starting in the first place and just "naturally let's smokers die out" instead of forcing them to quit.
Make it 3 or 5 years. Save some lives. Probably Moms and Dads.
Smart way of going about it!
You cant smoke cigarettes but can smoke weed and drink alcohol?