World News

sure but this is for people that were born after 2009. If enough 14yos have smoked to justify your argument humanity is doomed anyway

Yes, if prohibition has taught us anything it’s that it doesn’t work.

My country, the UK, is attempting to follow in New Zealand’s footsteps and recently announced its own “generation ban” on tobacco smoking. Despite the fact that tobacco usage has been declining here for many years and seems likely to all but cease naturally anyway.

I’m no fan of tobacco smoking, but prohibition does not seem the right approach to take. It doesn’t seem helpful or necessary from a public health standpoint, and is also an impediment of individual liberty.

Revoking such a ban for tax reasons isn’t a great angle either though in New Zealand’s case. However, from what I remember of USA history tax was a motivation to repeal alcohol prohibition in the 1930s, so maybe that’s an unpleasant taste we should be willing to swallow in this case.

If that was their reasoning: fine, but it isn't.

They actually, out loud, said they need the tax revenue to fund top bracket tax cuts.

It's for money, so it's OK.

Bans work better on tobacco because unlike alcohol or drugs, they’re used habitually but generally not recreationally. That is, the role of cigarettes in society and individually is different from those of alcohol, cannabis, and the like.

I am going to hazard a guess that tobacco industry lobbying is responsible for this. They went into Eastern European nations and pitched the idea that tobacco control was bad for the country’s economy because without smokers they’d have to deal with more people who live to retirement age, and killing them earlier makes things cheaper.

Banning cigarettes removes them from convenience stores, making them much harder to buy. The work they’ve done so far has pulled the smoking population down to 8% from over 16% ten years ago, although it’s still 20% among Māori.

I would not be surprised if the ban cut that in half or more.

I guess the difference is you have a right to smoke, the 6 people sitting next to you have 6 rights not to. Maybe that was the consideration at the time?

2nd hand smoke isn’t someone’s choice and the difference between banning cigarettes and banning a full class of a drug is that people aren’t going to turn to the black market for cigarettes (barring poverty) when vaping is still legal

Even when you consider the differences in addiction/habit forming? Do you feel the same way about morphine and heroin and their derivatives, that we should either legalize all or nothing?

It might be useful for an inbetween period, first we legalize softdrugs and ban all extremely addictive stuff, then after a year or 5 we open all the gates.

I don't even know if I'm for a complete ban but it sounded refreshing to have a smoker free generation, is such a low quality drug as well..

Marijuana at least has medicinal use though, right? I mean, it's not 100% the same.

The article only talks about cigarettes and smoking, but doesn’t say whether that includes other uses of nicotine

Same with other drug legalization - I think we’re well past the point of knowing that intentionally inhaling burnt stuff is bad, no matter what it is. I can support legalizing cannabis while trying to ban smoking anything