>The report, in an op-ed from commentator David Ignatius, cites a senior US official as saying that “the framework is agreed” and the parties are now “negotiating details of how it will be implemented.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/washington-post...
EDIT: Headlinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese
There's a general trend of trying to "optimize" society to remove all ills, and once you apply that logic, there's no clear stopping point. Once you ban sale of tobacco products, you can use that same logic to ban anything, from Cheetos to skydiving to motorcycles.
I do. I prefer people not to get lung cancer, among other afflications. And for no benefit that I can think of.
I don't live in the UK, but I say: good to them, and boo to you, for your misanthropic attitude.
bucketing ppl by birth year is literally a discrimination.
It's hard to say if smoking weed (blunts or the useless nonfiltration of a bong) is worse than smoking cigarettes because of the lack of filter, but I'd probably try filtered atomization (not necessarily vaping) rather than breathing in ash and tiny smoke particles that destroy lung capacity. To each, their own.
I think next we should ban them from eating butter, and you know, riding mountain bikes. Just protecting them you know.
What about us? Oh us, we're addicted, so... Well, you just can't take that away from us, can you? I mean there would be riots. But the kids, they wouldn't know what they're missing, right?
</sarcasm>
This is such a weird law. I doubt this would be constitutional in France. You can't just pass a law that affects some people but not others. It's against the principle of equality.
Did they just follow on from New Zealand?
"I don't want to be controlled" is a perfectly valid argument, and I prefer humans can make choices for themselves and have reasonable autonomy when it does not have a negative affect on others.
Vaccination and smoking affects people around you. Drinking does too - in certain cases, but much less directly, in most cases. For example, drinking and operating vehicles is already illegal. Drinking and punching someone is already illegal!
How far do you want to take this? Your choice of diet may have a negative effect on others by way of having to pay for additional medical care.
(No.)
But are you saying we don't care if things have negative effect on people? If we go to extremes, well then obviously everyone should have 100% autonomy? Oops that doesn't work.
So, this is the hard part - you have to find balance, compromise, a reasonable middle ground. That's always going to be the hard part. Not black or white, but the grey areas.
UK becomes the safest country in the world, peace forever
So I would ban the manufacture and sale of tobacco, but make it perfectly legal to grow your own. Smoke as much as you want. Just don't harm others.
Time to ban alcohol, marijuana, Tylenol, fatty foods, sugar, candles, campfires, fireworks, food coloring, bicycles, playgrounds, cars, cell phones, and anything else that might be harmful
You could throw in skate boards, pornography, slate roofs, criticising government policy and the policy, gluten, and chewing gum.
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/more-than-23000-canadi...
improved health outcomes?
Funding the "biggest threat the UK ever faced" according to Phil Mykytiuk, who has spent a decade mapping tobacco crime gangs in the north of England with a customer base of 10-11 million potential customers and rising every year, will surely cut heavily into their profits…
It gets tiresome to buy a new house every week because the dry wall is full with cash, again.
"Yo, psst, want to buy some Lucky Strikes? You know what will go really well with that? This white widow super cheese, and if you feel tired I also got some soap for you, first line on the house." "You’re afraid your parents might smell it? I can get you a discount on this perfume, smells like Aventus but way cheaper."
-
"Mykytiuk, though, believes the multiple layers of crime behind cheap, illegal tobacco are escaping scrutiny, allowing crime gangs – emboldened by the lack of deterrent – to expand their power base right under the noses of enforcement.
Having witnessed Kurdish tobacco gang members invest heavily in property and high street businesses here in the UK, he’s now seeing evidence of them moving into cannabis farms.
“But forget drugs,” he says. “Drugs are yesterday. The big thing is tobacco. These gangs are becoming the most capable criminals in this country. Right now it’s the biggest threat we’ve ever faced.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/criminal-gangs-are-making-bi...
Props to this Vice reporter (in 2022) for snagging an interview with a municipal staffer in a suburb of Manchester, I guess. I’m sure he’s a very busy man. But he doesn’t exactly seem notable (try Googling his name) and I’m not really sure what this is supposed to prove in the absence of any corroborating reporting.
If I got you right, you’re doubting his credibility as a source after he was vetted by a journalist, because he is talking about organised crime openly and not having a website or a Substack with half a million followers?
Maybe the BBC from November last year is a more credible source for you? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mx99ple17o
It blows my mind how no other country in the world wants to follow their example on this. Are they too proud to copy a third world country? Even when it’s doing some things better?
One of the principal jobs of government is to stand for the good of the collective against individual selfishness.
I don't think so, but if the original poster is around...
Anyway, it's the government's business to keep their population out of trouble.
> bucketing ppl by birth year is literally a discrimination.
Contrary to popular opinion, discrimination isn't illegal or even undesirable per se. In this case, it has a health benefit.
Some have bans on just diesel engines. Others ban combustion engines during some hours. Some inner-city congestion taxes have been introduced for health reasons.
Setting aside 1 and looking at 2, it seems silly to me to point out that other things (alcohol) that cause problems and are not being restricted. You take the wins where you find them, and the government isn't a magical force that can impose its will on the people arbitrarily. This is obviously the government responding to the general sense of the people (perhaps putting its thumb on the scale). The UK doesn't support cigarettes, so the law gets passed. If someone has a public opinion poll there showing less than 50% support for this, I'd love to see it.
Alcohol is heavily restricted, though. You can't sell it to minors, younger minors can't drink it in public, you can't sell/buy/make it above a certain proof, you can only resell it from authorized distributors, it is taxes, and so on.
Sure, banning cigarettes for a specific generation is a much more stringent restriction, but plenty of other restrictions exist.
What's heavily restricted is the sale and consumption in most public spaces.
A huge win for society
Cigarettes on the other hand are not so popular. If you ask most smokers if they regret starting about 90% say yes. They mostly want to quit but are addicted. Quite different from booze.
For booze it's much 'worse.' Nearly 80% have ever drunk alcohol but 50% of them still do. A much higher rate of ongoing use.
Also note a very large portion of people that have ever smoked have had a nice cigar or pipe, smoked once in a blue moon is extremely unlikely to cause cancer or addiction. This likely represents a 'quiet' large portion of the statistic that have ever used tobacco. The loudest are the pack a day smokers who loudly proclaim everyone else will be like them and therefore everyone else should suffer restrictions that presume the same.
Beyond whether something is "bad for you", the key aspect in a free society is whether the State should decide for you (we're entrusted with the right to vote, after all).
Demolition Man has turned out to be the most accurate prediction of the future regarding those issues among all the 90s movies. Quite interesting.
Take away smoking from the next generation and they move to caffeine or vapes. Take away alcohol and there are revolutions and religious extremist revivals.
The they later enacted the War on Drugs. They still pump billions into cartels and the federal forces.
You must live in a democracy. If you ever lived in a country where the government curtailed freedoms by fiat, you'd understand that it can and it will. I happened to be living in Vietnam when the government just randomly decided one day that smoking would be banned everywhere, effective immediately. You might think that's simply putting a thumb on the scale; but you also haven't tried to visit the New York Times website from there and later found yourself in a room with officials asking for all your passwords. And clearly you're not familiar with the preferred way of clearing traffic jams, which is driving a jeep through a crowd of motorbikes while a guy with a long bamboo cane whacks anyone who's in the way.
Thumb on the scale my ass. Totalitarianism is control over the little things.
I'm not going to lose sleep over the idea of a smoking ban, since it was already driven to the margins, but the implementation of it by age is really weird. Clearly a move to avoid annoying pensioners, like everything else.
Isn't the impetus on the makers of this bill to show there is more than 50% support for this.
I'm not a fan of smoking but this isn't the governments job imo. Not to mention the odd precedent of do what I say not as I do, with different laws for different generations.
>Would you support or oppose a law banning anyone born after 2008 from ever buying cigarettes or tobacco products?
>Strongly support 34% Somewhat support 23%
>Somewhat oppose 16% Strongly oppose 12% (https://yougov.com/en-gb/daily-results/20221214-abbaa-1)
I'm a non smoking Brit and figure maybe give it a go and see how it goes down?
Perhaps let young people who deeply want to smoke apply for some sort of smoking pass? You could do similar for other problem drugs too maybe. A lot of addictive drugs don't do much harm if prescribed - the NHS gave some fentanyl to help chill out which was good - but having illegal dealers causes no end of problems.
Yeah, except for alcohol all the other drugs are heavily controlled (contrary to the medical or scientific evidence). Tobacco doesn't offer any benefits*
*yeah, I struggle to find significant benefits of alcohol, but there are some. There's nothing that would be beneficial in smoking.
But putting that aside, if a citizen supports banning cigarettes for people born after a certain date, but not alcohol, that certainly seems hypocritical to me.
I think it's very rare though for a smoker to not smoke several a day. A friend of mine was that rare breed and would buy a 10 pack occasionally - usually on a Friday and it'd be gone by Monday - but that would maybe be once a month. I think every other smoker I've met though goes through that amount every day.
So it seems to me the average smoker is much more likely to become a burden on a nationalised health service than the average drinker. There's more to this of course, smoking to excess generally doesn't increase the chances of you getting into a fight like drinking does for some people, but social pressure counters that partially too.
Basically everyone who smokes/etc is addicted to nicotine.
They aren't the same at all.
Edit: just realised I posted under the wrong comment. Doh.
Why does everyone on HN seem to have a hate boner for alcohol? The main problem there is car culture, not the alcohol.
In any case, the hypocritical part is where the UK, like many US states, has legalized marijuana for medical use and is well on its way to legalizing it for recreational use. Pipe tobacco at least smelled good. Cigarettes, not so much. But marijuana smells like a mix of stale cigarettes and body odor. AND the second hand smoke isn't just harmful, it can make you high along with the dirty smelling marijuana smoker. At least with nicotine, it sharpens your concentration. THC on the other hand makes you a lazy Cheeto eating couch potato with no future.
What mechanisms do you foresee for it to fail? If stores stop selling cigarettes, the UK will have no other choice but to stop smoking them. I wonder what will come to replace them though. People have a peculiar tendency of forming addictive habits.
Regarding question 2, personally, I am uncomfortable with the idea of a nanny state.
The rules are made by politicians.
All it takes to change the rules is to rotate politicians.
Or enough public dissent that the same politicians are forced to revert the rules.
This might play right into the hands of bootleggers and gangs but also into the Swedish / American nicotine pouch industry which is basically marketing straight at kids.
Also - vapes. Most folks don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. How does this control vaping?
It just seems completely absurd to me that a government thinks it's acceptable to treat a generation unable to vote differently from the generations who can. It's really an absurd unfreedom and a kind of tyranny.
Why not just pass a law that says people born after 2008 have to pay higher taxes, and work longer hours for less pay? People should be equal under the law.
We already do this, the UK State Pension age is currently rising from 66 to 67 for those born on or after April 6, 1960.
This change affects, for example, those born between April 1960 and March 1961, who will have a pension age of 66 plus a set number of months.
When I was young, it was 65 for men and 60 for women (from the 1940s until 2010)
My point here is that this is under 18s currently have no representation, and they're passing laws that will forever treat them as a kind of underclass, "for their own good." It's genuinely ridiculous that it's allowed to happen. In doing this, the UK -- for all it's progress a creating a mostly symbolic nobility -- will now allow a new kind of class system to emerge, where the young can be overtly dominated and discriminated against by the old. It's ridiculous. People should be equal under the law.
This is one of the ways they broke the unions in the US. They offered agreements where new hires would get lower pay and fewer benefits than the old workers. Evil.
That in general is what inflation is
Cut off production so cigarettes are no longer made or imported. Don't block me from them while letting others have them. (Not in UK)
It'd be kinda funny to see an early 1900s / USA-style mafia / gangster resurgence of bootleggers over cigs in the UK. Much lower stakes, but black markets are a thing.
Edit: added "while letting others have them"
Maybe I could sit here and debate the pros and cons, supposed crap about my liberties, is the age bracket the right way to go about it. But this is a good thing, there is nothing good about cigarettes no matter which way you argue it, or compare it to anything else.
Its not just how you life your life to the state, its for your own health and those around you. Your life will be marginally better without cigarettes.
Moreover, essentially all behavior plausibly has "diffuse negative externalities". We should be very careful about adopting that ("harms others in diffuse ways") as a reasonable standard for banning some behavior.
What I do favor of is making cigarettes highly inaccessible -- i.e., restrict the sale to a very limited number of licensed locations, impose high taxes so they're very expensive. If it's still fairly widespread, raise the taxes even more. I think we should do the same with Coke /Pepsi/etc.
You still can pickup nicotine consumption, but with xx % less carcinogens :)
I could be totally wrong tho, but at least that's what it feels like. It feels like "all of them" smoke. Either vape or real cigarettes and quite a few of them using cigarettes
Just tax it very very heavily and apply education / social pressure?
Australia (and the States) tried to impose ever increasing tax and restriction on smoking and over the last few years, smoking has reached critical mass, with more people smoking, cheaper smokes, and smokes becoming more available AND less regulated.
Previously a 20 pack was around $40-60 at most smoke shops, then the illegal darts started to come in, they were priced as low as $6 or $8 for the cheapest 20 pack. They become rampant and barely anyone purchased genuine smokes. In fact, these illegal smoke stores were exactly like real smoke shops, proper business, proper storefront and everything. Excluding the prices, you couldn't tell you were buying illegal products.
The law (as proposed) restricts sales and giving to someone else, not the smoking itself.
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/60034/documents/628...
If you’re a pothead who can’t make it through your day without a smoke, then god knows you’ll find a connect - and if you’re addicted to cigarettes, I’m pretty sure you won’t have much trouble getting your fix.
Not to say lobbyists don’t have an effect in the UK, they do. But the US has a particularly egregious setup.
I assume all the ones who were young enough to have worked tobacco at its peak are now working for Meta, OpenAI or Flutter.
As we know, smoking can cause lots of problems, including for babies if the mother smokes during pregnancy.
Of course not. The only thing government and private enterprise seems good at these days is taking things away from people. Logic be damned.
But that's for another government to deal with, of course. Not our problem. Oh, and the future government will be happy to announce they are giving funding that will go to new jobs!
I propose a ban on people that use bans as a brain-less cheap way of fixing complex issues.
Given the massive cost smoking imposes on the health sector, I find it hard to believe that's remotely possible.
I find bewildering that such concepts are tried only centuries later, and wonder how it comes to be possible. Is it that we can finally enforce them, or that the lobbying have been gradually weakened, or enough data to drive decision, etc. ?
This is the world where the interests of the NHS is what counts for making the rules. Many countries implement at least some of these measures, to great success.
if this moves nicotine to the black market then the people/government will still pay the cost without receiving any taxes on it at all
I live in the USA where we are treated like crap by our system of government. I'd agree with you if we had national healthcare.
I guess that liberty was plenty abused on every non-smoker in a non-smoking area, that ended up coughing in clouds of smoke anyway. Smoking affects everyone around you whether you want it or not, and while you may smoke for 50 years and end up being perfectly healthy, some may get cancer from it, even for a very small dose.
So is banning the sale of leaded gasoline.
"Why is the government stopping me from murdering people and stealing from them? it's my right to decide how I live!"
One of the most important foundations of democracy is that the law applies to everyone equally. If smoking is banned, it should be banned for everyone, not banned for some people and allowed for a privileged class who got here first.
Unless their ancestors were already citizens beforehand.
Which I guess could be considered a more generous concession.
When I was a smoker, I used to decry places that were less liberal about where I was allowed to smoke, and places with high taxes. As a former smoker, I know that the high taxes have enabled a lot of people to stop, and the restrictions got to a point where smoking was less "cool" and more "pariah" behavior. These influences helped me stop.
If you didn't read "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking", go do so, and smoke/vape no more.
If everyone appreciated how little value they receive from tobacco/nicotine and how easy it really is to quit, there would be no market.
Its just that for one group is never becomes okay
The title is hyperbolic. It isn't a ban on smoking. It's a "ban on buying cigarettes." Commerce is being restricted, not consumption. If, presumably, you bring your own in from France, or someone bums one to you, it would appear you're free to smoke it.
That broadly seems to strike a fair balance. Banning purchases and sales, not possession or consumption.
Most of the indoor smoking bans in the U.S. have been based entirely on the fact that second hand smoke affects the employees who are forced to be there.
Further, drinking has a far deeper cultural resonance, so smoking is clearly the lower hanging fruit.
And it’s not like the UK has not been taking action against drinking. For example, they’ve imposed minimum alcohol taxes which have been directly linked to lower consumption.
I should qualify the above: it doesn't affect random strangers as often as second-hand smoke does. But drunk driving and drunk violence are a thing, and both can affect anyone.
1. Alcohol 2. Heroin 3. Crack Cocaine 4. Cocaine 5. Tobacco
I think these laws are bizarre morality rituals. Evidence doesn't conclude it has anything to do with public health when you see how vicious alcohol is.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/alcohol-duty-rates
That cuts down on drinking, except for the alcoholics of course. Scotland also imposed a minimum price per unit on alcohol, in an attempt to further cut consumption:
https://www.gov.scot/policies/alcohol-and-drugs/minimum-unit...
Whether that works is an open question, but in the UK things like "the sugar tax" have a visible affect on consumer consumption rates of "bad things".
Alcohol is very difficult to ban as you can take almost any kind of sugar feedstock and turn it into alcohol.
Drugs that are largely harmless, like MDMA, are illegal with heavy penalties.
Drug policy is largely nonsense and rampantly hypocritical.
An MDMA overdose, however, needs active, external cooling to ride out. We don't really have a natural safety valve for overconsumption.
That's not to say it should remain banned (I'm quite pro-legalization myself), but it's not entirely arbitrary to have MDMA banned versus other, less acutely dangerous drugs. Better examples of unjustifiably banned drugs are psychedelics such as LSD.
You're joking me. It costs more in Australia for a pack of cigarettes than it does for multiple beers or even a bottle of decent wine.
Alcohol is not the upper classes drug of choice, its all classes drug of choice.
Nicotine absolutely produces effects that people enjoy. Smokers don't just do it because they want to smell bad and look cool.
Alcohol is another story, we're not ready to remove that yet.
It is fine to attempt to improve public health, but not at the cost of giving people a life worth living.
If you are a smoker, you are much more likely to be a burden on this system.
Makes sense to ban these types of activities if the costs of them are socialized rather than individualized.
My question is why aren't you or the people making these policies interested? It's consequential stuff done ignorantly and recklessly.
Determine scientifically how dangerous vaping nicotine or THC is before banning it. That's call rational. Not reckless
I disagree that age-based is weird: these are people who can't (yet) already do it, so they're not having something (current) taken away from them. It's a lot harder and crueller to say you're taking away something someone likes/does, even if they're not fully addicted to it.
Which I'm arguing are disregarded most of the times by most smokers. I do encounter cigarette smoke in my day-to-day, unfortunately. And unfortunately it's always the same places, mostly bars and restaurants that have outdoor spaces. Places where I'm supposed to smell food I pay for, and I end up smelling smoke instead.
Last time governments tried to force people to do something for their own sake, you saw how it ended (COVID). If people can't start smoking cigarettes, they won't get hooked up, so gradually at least regular cigarettes will be phased out. Vapes are still controversial, but as a non-smoker with a very sensitive nose, vape smoke is 10000x better than cigarette smoke. It doesn't cause me to cough, it doesn't contain harmful chemical compounds, it doesn't soil clothes nearly as much, and I can still smell food at a restaurant.
You are not nearly jaded enough.
If the construction industry is any indication the stuff these people mandate is lucky to have 1% at best and that's with "money motivated" numbers cooked up in academic labs funded by the same industries that benefit from the rules.
Of course Alcohol and Tobacco are high up on the list because they are legal. The percentage of people drinking vs percentage of people doing heroin is not even comparable.
Apparently <0.2% of people in the UK are heroin users. [0]. Apparently above 50% of people in the UK drink once a week or more [1]
[0] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10278447/ [1] - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
What should be surprising is that 0.2% of the population results in the second highest negative impacts on society. Not that something the vast majority partake in causes the most issues, of course it does given the sheer scale of it.
Put simply, imagine if 50% of the UK did Heroin at least once a week, it would be much worse than alcohol usage.
"[..]provision prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after 1 January 2009[..]"
"I also really doubt that they will legalise weed and then say "but of course you're not allowed to smoke it, edibles only"."
I mean, there is still vaporization, so it wouldn't be edibles only?
I could argue (unsuccessfully) that it's discriminatory and unfair that I have to wait an extra 3 years to claim my pension compared to older people.
I am a fairly regular weed smoker. I used to grow my own. I used to smoke tobacco. I can go weeks, months and even years without smoking weed. Kicking my nicotine habit took many, many, many tries and I didn't even enjoy it! They are not the same.
It's like how everyone pat themselves on the back for banning child labor after the industrial revolution had rendered it obsolete outside a few niches that weren't economically important enough to put up a real fight.
Politicians "win" by pandering to voters and interests. So this is an obvious move since they can pander to all those people who grew up being told a cigarette takes a minute off your life while only pissing off some niche industry and a few smokers who are unwilling to vape.
Now, the euphoric effects that you get at first, those very rapidly go away with tolerance. With habitual use, you probably only experience a tiny shadow of that with the first hit of the day, or a respectable replay if for whatever reason you go a couple days without (which is heightened by the cessation of withdrawal). The nausea and disorientation also go away, which is nice since otherwise it would be a problem.
And freedom isn't absolute. There's no need to exaggerate 1984 style just because smoking is banned. You don't even have to stop smoking. You just can't start.
For example, some parties have a cannabis pledge and not enough people have wanted it as yet.
My son is 16, and will be impacted by this ban. He is constantly exposed to the temptation to smoke and vape. As a responsible parent, I want to do everything I possibly can to protect him and not become addicted.
We know that nearly all smoking starts before 26.
- ~90% of daily smokers first tried cigarettes by age 18
- ~95% had their first cigarette by age 20-21 (American Lung Association)
- 98% first smoked by age 26 (National Cancer Institute)
We owe our young people this protection, and I am a liberal.
But to take your point to full conclusion, Brexit was decided by the people that it impacts the least. And, "Since the Brexit referendum, 4+m voters have died (mainly Leavers), while almost 5m have reached voting age (overwhelmingly Remain), There is now a 1.6m majority for Remain - without anyone needing to change their minds". - https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/anti-brexit-britain-has-reache... - June 2023
What is proposed is something very different in kind.
It is much easier to pass new laws, then to remove old laws. Parties also tend to not get elected because of promises for law adjustments, its primarily based upon policy adjustments and most people aren't single issue voters, the want to smoke might be a consideration for some people but even the most diehard smokers probably have 20 other things more important on their mind when at the voting booth.
You can't seriously be naive enough to think that's how party politics works?
Those erratic behaviours you talk about are generally illegal in most countries as well with drink driving, public intoxication, assault laws etc.
Drinking does have some positives as well, pubs are one of the few third spaces we have remaining. I know there are alternatives, but there are people who won't socialise in a cafe or a book club, but will go to the pub to see the regulars. Considering lots of Western countries have loneliness epidemics I think there'd be a downside to removing that option.
Drinking does seem to lubricate social situations, weed can help with pain etc. The only upside from smoking for the individual as far as I can tell is that it fixes the problem it created from you being addicted to it i.e. you get calmer when you get your fix.
One could frame this as a substance regulation for anyone under 18, with the age moving one year every year henceforth.
You already can’t legally do a lot of things that appear to only be about yourself because society as a whole said it’s not good for everyone. You can’t buy cocaine. You can’t commit suicide (it’s illegal almost everywhere) . You can’t ride a motorbike without a helmet, or drive a car without a seatbelt. You can’t even build a house without a smoke detector or remove the airbags from your own car.
To some degree, if you want to, go buy 100 acres in the middle of nowhere and go nuts. Or move to a country that doesn’t care about all those things.
If you want to be part of a modern clan, it’s not helpful to do things that indirectly hurts everyone, even if on the surface it only impacts you and your body.
If you want all the benefits of a modern society, it asks you to not be a net negative. This is 10x important in countries with universal healthcare, ie all but one.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
There was never really much of any concern of "wait, Puerto Rico has no representation in the law that was essentially drafted to target specifically them." All these people claiming to not support the smoking laws on this kind of basis were nowhere to be found. The law passed like a thief in the night.
I don't really see how car culture has anything to do with stuff like domestic violence, child abuse, or various other side-effects of alcohol culture.
Would you argue we should teach empower people to be more responsible and let them all own surface to air missiles?
Surely we should empower people to be healthy and make smart choices and let companies put arsenic in food to save money. Let people build homes with asbestos insulation because it’s cheap and works and let people connect their house to the gas main because it will encourage people to be resourceful ?
I’m all for encouraging people to make good choices, but the consequences are very obvious in certain circumstances.
Crazy food additives and preservatives are banned in Europe that are common in the US.
https://foodbabe.com/food-in-america-compared-to-the-u-k-why...
There are good reasons to target smoking given how addictive and deadly it is. Nicotine is fairly unique in this regard.
Governments try to address this problem through education and regulation of food. There are drugs available now to help control obesity and they're very popular, so people obviously want to avoid the condition.
I don't know why you think people should have a right to take highly addictive drugs that result in premature death. Contrary to smoker's claims, cigarettes are pure addiction and provide no benefits whatsoever to the smoker.
I don't think any of this is unreasonable in a country that picks up the tab through both subsidised dental care and completely free-at-point-of-use healthcare.
Decent labelling could be a start. Even when shopping online there's basically next to 0 of actual data of what goes into product.
Forget trying to create a healthy shopping AI agent.
Those of us who don't smoke or vape can smell that shit a couple of hundred metres away.
But that doesn't sell nearly enough debt.
Have you considered just eating food?
Like secondhand vapor, we can't control other people's secondhand chipotle unless we ban chipotle.
And since I don't like the smell, we've got to ban both.
A legislation that isn't possible to enforce is not reasonable, no.
Banning cigarettes = easy to enforce.
Banning sugar in soft drinks = easy to enforce.
Limiting how many calories you can consume = how do you propose we do that? Do we even have the technology to track what someone eats? And do we carve out exceptions for athletes?
If there was a way to cap calories without surgically inserting trackers into everybody I'm sure you'd see a lot less opposition to your idea.
This banal, smiling, petty authoritarianism sickens me. Bodily autonomy trumps "common good" arguments, and where it somehow doesn't, injustice abides. Society's job isn't to crush individualism in order to create the safest and most financially efficient outcome. Shall we throw everyone in prison for their safety and protection next, and control their diet to ensure maximum healthspan and potential for participation in the labor market?
Rather than banning anything, point out at an early age that cigarettes stink, get you addicted, cost money forever, and cause health problems. Point out that alcohol makes you fat and causes heart problems and cancer. The accept that each person has the right to make a decision for themselves about what risks they're willing to accept to achieve a desired outcome, and that they have to own those consequences.
Don't want to pay for smokers' lung cancer treatment? Then only fund palliative care for smoking-related cancers. Man enough to smoke a pack a day, man enough to buy smokers' insurance. There, now we can live free.
It's basically taxing people for saving everybody else money.
A lot of young people don't drink anymore anyway tho. It's not as extreme as it sounds.
As someone who's been sober for only 16 months, not sure how I feel about this. It is surely unrealistic.
You do realize that this is what basically every single law in existence does, right?
That my kids, and likely yours, once they're adults, can't drive under the influence, rob a bank, impersonate a cop, lie under oath, exercise medecine without a licence, walk downtown naked, jaywalk, evade taxes, criticize the King?
Running government budgets further and further into deficit, believing that, as a result, your children will, some day, be in a stronger financial position to repay the resulting debt that, until that day, continues to grow at an ever-increasing rate?
That seems psychopathic.
Tho that creates significant black market incentive.
Other option is only serving ultra light drinks (2.5% beer, cider, sangria or cocktail).
Banning it today and expecting people to cope, or attempt to fund recovery efforts for a whole nation would completely misunderstand the addicts mind. If you don’t want to quit, you never will.
Instead we have a total ban that is timeboxed to allow the addicts the rest of their lives to quit one way or another.
There is a difference that someone smoking nearby automatically harms people around you. With alcohol, the effect is more unpredictable, but it is equally real.
Alcohol is a factor in an automobile crashes, and a factor in a significant proportion of violent crime, especially domestic violence (https://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/09/17/mark-kleiman/taxatio... edit: this source isn't as great, Kleiman has written elsewhere about the subject, but google is failing me). If we could wave a magic wand and cause drinking to cease to exist, many lives would be saved.
Note: I do in fact drink, I am not a teetotaler. But what I said above is factual. I personally believe that prohibition would be worse, and it's reasonable for individuals to make their own choices. But that does not entail denying that it goes very badly for many.
And there are some people who are more sensitive to temporary exposure to smoke (and pollution in general) than others. That is why smoking tends to be is banned around hospitals and day care centers — because those are places where you will find those people. My father was one of them, after he had got his larynx removed for throat cancer after having smoked for decades. He could not suffer being subjected to even small amounts of second-hand smoke again because then the breathing hole in his throat would get irritated, fill up with mucus and have to be cleaned with a suction device.
And if you drink alcohol next to me, it does not make my clothes and my hair stink so much afterwards that I will want to wash my hair and change my clothes before going to bed.
Still a good idea to ban cigarettes and force people to consume their nicotine in healthier ways.
Congratulations!
Having said that I don't like the nanny society which acts like it knows better. People sometimes want to do stupid things and I think they should be able to do so. They should also not burden society with the consequences of their stupid actions so smokers either pay in more for health insurance or get relegated to the bottom tier - e.g. "palliative care for smoking-induced illnesses, no life-extending treatments for smoking-related diseases". No smoking where it impacts others negatively - this includes minors living in their house - but if they want to smoke where it doesn't impact others just let them do it.
Which is something weirdly North American - it's insane how okay USians are with drinking and driving considering how Puritanical they are about drinking generally.
Second hand smoke, however, inflicts damage the moment it’s inhaled.
Brief Googling also suggests that second-hand smoke affects at least similar levels of people as drunk driving, if not more - to say nothing of e.g. domestic violence.
Not to mention, there are already various laws designed to mitigate the effects of second-hand smoke, such as not smoking indoors or in cars with children.
Overall, I am just not convinced that it's necessary to focus so much more on cigarettes over other drugs.
You know the only people who got lung cancer from secondhand smoke were people who worked in airplanes and bars and casinos for 20 years and were in condensed, extremely smoky environments day in and day out, right? I smoke. I understand that everything is a cumulative risk factor. The absolute crazy freak-out hysterical reaction people have to cigarette smoke versus all the things I just named is purely a product of decades of expensively paid-for indoctrination. No one in their right mind would argue that smoking doesn't cause cancer, but if you literally think you are being harmed by smelling smoke, you must surely have a problem living in this world without a filter on your face at all times, because there is a lot more poisonous shit you encounter every single day, everywhere you go - and that's if you're lucky enough not to work in a plastics factory or somewhere that makes microwave popcorn.
[edit] While I'm at it, I just want to give a shout-out to all the people I know who heat up teflon pans before cooking in them. Who would never let someone smoke in their kitchen!
Hah, alcoholics have done more damage to my life than a smoker could ever dream of.
In what countries? Certainly none I've heard of.
Smokers are incredibly obnoxious. Smoking at a bus stop? Why not? Under open windows? Sure. On sidewalks, so that I have to breathe that stuff in when behind them? Sure.
What's that? Smoking at bus stops is banned? No problem — just move 5m away and smoke all you want, the wind carrying the smoke towards the bus stop all the same :)
And such laws are not realistically enforceable anyway.
Sure, I dislike smoking, I really don't drink that much either.
But then it leads to questions such as; What about birth defects? What about extreme sports(risk of permanent injury)?
There was a scandal in Canada recently about veterans asking for medical care and being push to assisted suicide: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... >MacAulay walked the committee through what his department knew, thus far, saying the first case that came to light occurred last summer where the caseworker repeatedly pushed the notion of MAID to an unnamed veteran who had called seeking help with post-traumatic stress.
That's why smoking is already heavily regulated in order to limit and minimise the impact that your choice has on others.
Outcome: this will cost everyone a lot of money. Time to raise the retirement age to 80!
You can smoke as much as you want but smoking in public places, especially indoor, is banned not to impose your health choices on others.
This is how liberty works in a free society as mentioned in my previous comment.
Banning smoking altogether, on the other hand, is deciding for you and exactly what the "nanny state" refers to.
The claim that "it impacts others" is, at very minimum, exaggerated, but just as often completely fabricated out of pseudoscience and absurd movie plots.
Smoking is heavily regulated because there was a resurgence of teetotaling in the late 20th century.
Personally - aside from the smell - I have no concerns about people smoking near me outdoors or even in very well ventilated areas. I understand though that for some people (such as asthmatics) it can be a real problem that goes beyond simply being unpleasant.
Somebody probably drops a spent match, it's still smouldering and it drops inside the escalator where it finds plenty of fuel and begins a fire. From there you mostly just need bad luck - yes the staff could be better trained, but even when they do summon professionals the firefighters don't arrive in time to tackle it while it's still small, the then-unknown trench effect allows the hot gases to pool and initiate flash over suddenly, a bunch of people die.
And there are already various laws designed to prevent drunk driving and drunk domestic abuse.
I think the broader picture here is a simple one: drinking alcohol is more societally acceptable than smoking. A government is going to be reflective of its voters, “necessary” or not, a law to ban drinking would be enormously unpopular in a way a law to ban smoking would not.
Sure, and this is why I put aside the issue of whether the government is doing the "right" thing in its position and focused on the people who it supposedly reflects - because it doesn't make sense to me that one is more acceptable than the other to an individual, and thinking so doesn't seem to reflect any sort of realistic view on alcohol and its impact on society, while holding cigarettes to a much higher standard.
Look, I get that you're anti-smoking along with the rest of us but both things are bad. Drinking is bad, smoking is bad, a lot of things are bad. The question is, which of these bad things did you try out and are now stuck with? That's the real issue. Products shouldn't not be allowed to be physically addicting like that. Arguing about it on HN to a bunch of addicts is like arguing with an alcoholic on their drinking problem. It's an echo chamber or a brick wall. Someone's going to walk away with a black eye.
Is second hand smoke dangerous? Not the same way inhaling soldering fumes could be or if you ever welded, the fumes could cause damage to your lungs. It's more subtle and requires prolonged exposure.
Shows up consistently in A&E Hospital records, reportedly enough to identify weekends and phases of the moon.
No, it's because being around a smoker is deeply unpleasant.
I'm old enough to remember going out before the indoor smoking ban took effect. The next morning I'd step into the shower and the smell of smoke would fill the bathroom as I washed it out of my hair. I would have a sore throat. It was all absolutely disgusting and we're so much better off where we are today. I'm sorry that your vice of choice is such a gross one.
> No, it's because being around a smoker is deeply unpleasant.
Being around drinkers isn't exactly a picnic :)
Useful: Don't go there, or ask someone near you to be considerate.
Antisocial: Hide and wait for the government to ban people doing it, until some theoretical future day where you feel comfortable being in a public space around people who may make you uncomfortable.
I'm a very considerate smoker. I'd never smoke by someone who was bothered by it. It truly pisses me off when smokers are inconsiderate.
On the other hand, shaping other people's behavior to your liking strikes me as sociopathic. Using the government to do so strikes me as spineless. If I'm going into their happy space, to a yoga retreat or an orgy or a wedding, I have to accept that they will do lots of things I might not enjoy. The difference is that I don't have a sense of superiority because I lack their mental flaws and sociopathic addictions to whatever they believe, but they have that sense of superiority in judging mine. And only because they have safety in numbers, which makes it even more pathetic.
This is also how I feel being an all night coder. Everyone is fine with making noise during the day and waking me up, because that's "normal" and my schedule isn't. But if I feel like playing piano at 4am, that is a problem, even if the asshole next door takes out his lawnmower at 7am. This is a division between people who want to be nice to each other, and respectful, versus those who think there is a single correct way to live and that anyone deviating from it doesn't deserve equal respect.
"Live and let live" seems to have lost its currency among the hysteria of everyone who righteously disapproves of other people's behavior. Not everywhere in the world needs to be safe for someone's individual bundle of neuroses. What's unfortunate is that we can't rely on individuals respecting other individuals now, so via the government the most repressive scenario presented by the least imaginative party in each case largerly wins. Everyone who wants to ban someone else's behavior should have the opportunity to have one of their own banned as well, to understand this phenomenon. But the safety in numbers overrides this. Which is also to say that the mass of humans are conformist cowards.
I say this as someone who quite enjoys his drink–you haven't seen a hardcore drinking culture until you've dodged multiple projectile vomiters in SoHo at like 5PM on a random Tuesday.
Look at automotive insurance points systems. People have to buy it so the sellers lean on the legislatures and before you know it a ticket costs the same points and screws you out of just as much money as an actual accident.
Surely that was a satirical comment and was meant to be an illustrative example of exactly the sort of mindset that runs political cover for a system as it pivots from providing enough value to become entrenched to using that entrenched position to behave in an extractive manner.
In my state if grandma gets pulled over for an out of date inspection sticker it's the same number of points as actually causing an accident. Someone is being fleeced.
I have zero faith that letting the government choose at the behest of industry who ought to pay more for healthcare that it wouldn't devolve into the same exact sort of exercise in finding a reason to charge everyone more.
You tell them it's against the law to drink, and they'll point out that it's restrictive and controlling. You tell them it's against the law to commit tax fraud, and they'll have no objection.
Why? I think, at least with the people that I know, it's related to what they want to be able to do. They want to be able to drink alcohol, so it feels controlling to tell them they can't. They aren't interested in committing tax fraud, so they're not bothered by that being restricted.
Reminder that slavery was legal.
If you ask an addict then yeah you'll get some gibberish that enables them whether it fits into a logical paradigm or not.
Likewise, Cambridge was far too genteel for that, when I lived there.
Sheffield managed one night that would've fitted in with those pictures. When my partner and I walked past the football stadium as everyone was leaving.
And as a driver, I certainly want everyone around me to be required to properly maintain their cars.
What you're saying seems to make sense on face value but in reality letting insurance leverage safety inspections is just a politically less thorny wealth proxy. The inspections themselves don't provide all that much value (IMO this is because of how comprehensive they are, 90/10 rule and all that) and multiple states have ended their programs because they don't actually provide meaningful improvement for the money.
Regardless, even if there is somme hand wavy justification for it that some people agree with, it's flawed to the point it's probably not something we want to do with medical because it would make insurance unaffordable for so many people on flimsy at best pretexts.