Human alcohol production and consumption is literally older than cuneiform by at least 10,000 years. It is much more fundamental to our society than cigarettes, which only really took off less than 100 years ago, ever were. People forget that cigarettes are really, really new. There are people alive today who were born before actual inhalation of the smoke was a thing.
Your great great great grandparents did not smoke cigarettes. They did drink alcohol.
As the US learned, you just can’t ban alcohol, for better or worse.
Good point. I feel very skeptical about the idea that banning cigarettes for everyone will make them go away. I thought the current compromise we see in many western countries is working quite well, where people have to smoke outside pubs, for example.
I don’t know if the fact an addictive product was recently introduced means that it will more easily disappear when banned.
I’ve never been a smoker so that is something I did not have an appreciation for. Thank you for highlighting this point.
I think you misundersood me.
People born in 2008 are all turing 18 this year. The law applies to everyone born after, so 2009 and later. If you’re born in 2009 it’s currently illegal to smoke. Without this new law, someone born in 2009 will be allowed to buy cigarettes in 2027. But with it, they wouldn’t.
My point was that in 2030, people born in 2009 will be 21 and not allowed to smoke. Whereas someone born in 2008 will still be allowed to buy tobacco. Is that fair?
I think you made some excellent points. In theory, no one who is born in 2009 is a smoker because they are not allowed to smoke, which would mean that they wouldn’t miss anything by the passing of this law. But in practice, it is likely that a small percentage of people born in 2009 or later are already tobacco smokers. Most of the smokers I know started before they turned 18, and they were regular smokers before becoming adults.
That said, all the minors who are currently smokers in the UK are likely a very small minority, but they are an important sub-demographic to consider.
I used to think that was true, but after researching the topic a couple of years back, I have a more nuanced position. That said, that’s a completely different conversation.
Again, not really to the person born in 2008 who will still be able to easily poison themselves with cigarettes.
Ehh, I don’t think any doctor will tell you you will suffer any consequences directly attributable to alcohol if you have a beer with friends every once in a while. One drink certainly doesn’t do the same damage one cigarette does, which is a reduction in life expectancy by an average of 10-20 minutes each.
Is alcohol a toxic substance and carcinogen? Yeah, of course. Am I going to say drinking is a good habit? Of course not. Do I think even the WHO would say light drinking is less likely to impact you negatively or as severely as light cigarette smoking? Yeah.
I think this will encourage them to quit at a young age, which is a good thing. It is harder to quit as you get older (as I understand), which is why they are allowing people born before 2009 to continue to have access. That was probably the consideration when drafting the law too.
Tbh I would be fine with these nanny state sort of laws if we got something from it in return. Maybe have a functioning social democracy before trying to implement these more punitive European style social democratic policies
The UK at this point is a surveillance nanny state that has come off the rails. Next: prohibit more than one pint a week (unhealthy, costly for health insurance)
Yes. My question is, is it fair to the people born in 2009? The People born in 2008 will forever have the right to buy and smoke cigarettes but not people born in 2009 and later.
Any doctor who tells you that moderate alcohol consumption has no negative consequences is either misinformed, or lying. People have a hard time accepting new scientific evidence that shifts a commonly accepted paradigm. That includes doctors. I think informed doctors would tell their patients otherwise.
I hope you are right. A lot of smokers who are minors tend to come from a family of smokers.
I also hope the law applies to vaping, otherwise it is less likely to work. Some of my smoker friends have used vaping as a way to quit cigarettes, and it worked. They don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but they do vape which is still bad. Also vaping has become popular with a lot of young people who don’t smoke tobacco and never have.
It’s very likely that we would get something in return. But society often doesn’t appreciate what they get in return from policies like this unless it’s something tangible that they can touch and see, which sucks.
To be more specific I would say it depends on the drug. Is it weed or fentanyl, makes a huge difference.
You are a bit wrong here, since the consumption is still legal and allowed. The selling is restricted.
It has nothing to do with bodily autonomy rather than with social market economy.
The comparison breaks a bit apart here, since you compare two different things together.
The generational ban doesn’t take cigarettes away from anyone who currently legally smokes, doesn’t surveil anyone, and doesn’t criminalize possession or use. It restricts retail sale to people born after a certain date.
While your example with alcohol criminalize the consumption.
This is not an uncommon pattern for laws around the world if you look at the pensions reforms as one example.
But to not end this here in a whataboutism argument, one of the alternatives would be to prohibit the selling of cigarettes for everyone. Which would be a huge issue for people that are already addicted to nicotine.
While becoming nicotine free does not take long (under seven days), most people would still need the help of a professional doctor. So a prohibition of selling, puts the healthcare in extreme pressure and might even make things worse.
Another alternative would be to make smoking less attractive, but how good does this actually work? In my country every pack of cigarettes needs to have one full site printed with a picture that shows what happens if you smoke too much. Mostly pretty ugly and disturbing pictures, however it did not have a big effect on the abuse of nicotine. So if even such thing like that can not hold people away from starting with cigarettes, what can?
Another possibility would be to try to regulate the industry. This might work, however I do possess any knowledge of how strong the cigarette industry in the UK is and how much leverage power they have.
The issues I see with vaping, at least in my country, is that the ads are designed so that especially young people and potentially people under 18 are feeling addressed by them. They do not explicitly target underage people, because this would be highly illegal here, but the ads still (intentionally) attracted minors.
Besides that you also have the issue that most vapes are highly toxic for the environment. A lot of e-waste and plastic that gets used once and then thrown away.
@PurpleDime Could you maybe change the title of your OP and remove the “or smoke” part.
Because the law is, according to the BBC, not about the consumption rather than the selling.
Both the Commons and Lords have settled on a final draft of the “landmark” legislation that aims to stop anyone born after 1 January 2009 from taking up smoking by making it illegal for shops to sell them tobacco, to create a smoke-free generation.
Only a few people will smoke anymore.
(You can still grow your own tobacco afaik)
That is exactly what the end goal of this law is. It is to stop the selling of a drug with in a longer timespan.
In your argumentation everything can be reframed as control. Seatbelts, speed limits or prescription requirements,.
You do not distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate state action.
A VPN is a digital software designed to protect its users.
Cigarettes, at least that what is sold on the market, are designed to harm them.
You are comparing to different things that can not be compared with each other.
Yes. But most people are very misinformed about drugs. As someone who has never done any drugs, and doesn’t drink either, it was a shock to discover that only a minority of hard drug users are addicts. That most users are functional adults, and yet we’re making rules for everyone based on a minority who has a problem, and we use that minority as if they are representative of all users. Alcohol is the 2nd deadliest drug after only tobacco and they are both 100% legal.
I understand the dilemma.
I support this 1000%. I think there are many creative ways that can still make a positive difference. I absolutely HATE that when tobacco companies are strongly regulated in some countries, they have no problem exploiting the countries that don’t have strong laws, and lobby there. They are often poor countries.
Yes, that is a problem that needs to be addressed. I don’t think promoting vaping as a solution to quit smoking is necessarily a good thing. People need to be warned about the dangers of vaping too.
I would say it can/should be struck down by the courts. This is discrimination. You can be born on December 31 2008 and Smoke, but can’t if you are born on January 1 2009…
I actually don’t think the aim is noble. People smoke if they want. I do think we should restrict health coverage for smokers tough, you smoke if you want but the state shouldn’t pay (fully) for it.
I respectfully and very strongly disagree with this. I believe healthcare is a human right.
That means that if you have been a smoker all your life and understand the consequences, you still deserve care if you suffer those consequences. And this is from someone who doesn’t smoke, drink, or do any other drugs.
This principle alone proves too much alone. For example would this mean drunk driving should be legal, because as long as you hit no one you have no clear victim, you do not need any building codes, because before a house collapses a kills people you have no clear victim.
For “simpler” laws like murder, you always have a clear victim. If you non-consensual kill somebody, you instantly have a victim.
Besides that smoking has some form of victims:
Secondhand smokers who are getting non-consensual in the pleasure to breathe in the smoke.
Children of smokers
Also taxpayers are in some definition the victim of it. They have to pay for the treatment of the abuse if smoking.
In addition, you said stopping what people like to do, are people actually liking to smoke?
In the case of drunk driving the persons whose safety is being risked are the victims.
I don’t have any problem with prohibiting smoking in public places, in fact I am in favour because it does indeed endanger others.
I also have no problem with protecting children from smoking parents or any other kinds of abuse, I don’t think we currently do enough in this area.
The claim that the taxpayers are the victims of smoking is ridiculous since the same argument could be used for any activity whatseover. Your argument is basically against our having a public health system.
