this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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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
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.
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.
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. I am pointing out that you are making two conflicting statements.
You are doing mental gymnastics.
Back to the point "Noone goes to prison for underage smoking". Yes they do. When you make prohibition laws creating the concept of "underage smoking" you ARE sending SOMEONE to prison.
If you genuinely couldn't piece together that he meant "smoking while underage" when he said "underage smoking" then I'm seriously concerned for you.
If you genuinely don't understand how the English language works and you want to create your own form of doublespeak where you say "Noone goes to prison" but you really mean "let's imprison poor people and still not solve the issue" them I'm seriously concerned for you.
No one goes to prison for smoking while underage. That's a fact.
Mhm.
Wtf, why do you want to imprison poor people?
What's wrong with you, dude?
So the magnanimous mr "null" has now gone full "I'm rubber you're glue".
Which about describes a prohibitionist.
Nice doublespeak.
You literally said "let's imprison poor people". You understand how the English language works, don't you?
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.
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.
Again. Stunning mental gymnastics.
I'll note that you have nothing to refute with.
Should outlaw knife-selling cause those harm people!
Also should probably outlaw cars. And concerts, those are harmingly loud. Also alcohol I guess.
Okay, in all seriousness, I agree with you, but prohibition doesn't work. Drugs won the war on drugs.
My first gut response was 'We should outlaw murder, I bet that'd stop murder from happening!'.
But as hilarious as it is, lets ignore the hyperbole.
The fact is that laws never stop all the activity they are intended to prevent. If they did we wouldn't need a court system.
No, the question is does the law do more good than bad for society?
Smoking causes 480,000 extra deaths yearly according to the CDC.
And smoking related illness costs around $300 billion annually in the US.
As we both agree, outlawing the sale will not prevent 100% of usage. But it will almost certainly prevent some usage.
And I agree that a black market will form and that black market will cause some societal damage.
So the question is, will the affects of the black market created by prohibition do more damage to society than the reduction in existing societal damage that we should see from prohibition?
Considering the above statistics, it may be worth the gamble.
But there's the other part of the picture: black market drugs kill more people than legal drugs. Who knows what'd happen to the quality of tobacco!
Sure, like I said, there is going to be harm the black market creates.
I still feel there is a good chance for a net positive here.
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.
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.
Yes, because no one has ever smoked before they reached the legal age.
They should raise the heroin age
Are you fucking with me right now?
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.
You really have a surface-level understanding of how the world works, I take it.
General mindset of a standard prohibitionist.
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.
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
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.