> guess how that turned out?

My guess is that significantly fewer people use drugs than would have used drugs if they were not banned.

> "The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"

Are there some significant changes to policy during that time period? I don’t see how this factoid is related to whatever argument you are trying to make.

there is also a strong question as to whether smokers are actually a net cost to government or not. They draw decades less old age pension, have decades less medical visits, etc. I am extremely unconvinced that a large cancer related medical cost now has a higher net present value than a stream of government pension payouts, health costs, etc for decades ended with a large medical cost for some other reason. This is the correct comparable for smoking vs non smoking if you are contemplating limiting peoples freedoms and i dont think it holds water.

There are less harmful ways to get addicted to nicotine that will continue to be legal for people affected by this legislation.

> guess how that turned out?

Well, I don't hear colleagues at work saying they're going for a "meth break", so... pretty well, I'd say?

You think education is effective? How much educating do they need to do about meth being bad before people stop using it?

> [1] But this youngest generation also gets the privilege of never having easy access to cigarettes.

Being an island, it's probably slightly easier to control smuggling, but if there's money to be made, people will be smuggling in cartons. Anyway, getting an older person to buy cigs isn't difficult, and they're still legal for the majority of the population. I doubt smoking will become immediately attractive, but if the ban sticks around, probably in a decade or so tobacco will be a niche hipster rebellion, then become poser-cool, then totally normalized again.

It depends?

AFAIK healthcare in UK is tax funded, and smoking with its long list of damages to the body, takes a portion of that taxpayer money which could be used on something underfunded, like mental healthcare.

This is the country that legislates butter knives and naughty words.

Americans want to legislate bathrooms.

You can still get addicted to nicotine, they're just banning a very specific delivery mechanism.

Including for heroin or other hard drugs?

In the US I tend to agree (given the current pay to live system is constructed) but in the UK with single payer insurance this seems more palatable.

I’m curious if a “free society / libertarian” middle ground would be limiting access to NHS for those that choose to continue to use known harmful substances. I’d posit that many would object to that the way “death panels” were politicized when the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed though.

Do you live in the United Kingdom?

I look at it, not as legislating people's habits, more as a private company wants to sell these things in our country, but there is a clear, measurable negative effect on society as a result (and in the case of cigarettes there is no positive effect whatsoever that may offset the negative).

I would call that an easy ban. You can't sell that shit here legitimately. I'm a little surprised the attempts haven't been more widespread.

I wonder what possible gap there is for things that can be illegal to sell, but you can buy them from international sellers and use them in the privacy of your own home? (and health insurance won't cover related complications).

Why would it be difficult? ID says 2009 or later and you can't buy? I would imagine checking age for tobacco becomes easier

True, but I think most people get addicted to smoking when young, and are less likely to just decide to start smoking at 40, especially when vaping is an option.

All legit customers will be long dead by then.

What, specifically, does banning buying cigarettes have to do with “censorship”? Or are we just saying words now, because they seem emotive?

if you get caught buying/using/… you go to prison

Cigarettes don't grow out of the ground to be able to be deep fried. Some private enterprise manufactures them for sale.

Just ban the sale of them in the country. They offer no positive for society or humanity whatsoever. Chippies at least have their origins in actual food sustenance.

If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck around so long because of legacy and well funded lobbyists and PR / marketing types that have been happy to lie at the cost of millions of lives.

Nice, let's defend that.

Democracy is the problem?

> why not also bring in mandatory exercise and ban people from sugar and alcohol too

I literally said "so care needs to be taken" and you hit me with a slippery slope argument?

Life is not a balance sheet, Christie Malry.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng209/resources/impact-on-n...

> Smoking-related illness is estimated to cost the NHS £2.6 billion a year

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/01/nhs-long-term-plan-will-h...

> Alcohol-related harm is estimated to cost the NHS in England £3.5 billion every year.

If we look exclusively at numbers, prohibition would save money. If that's all we care about, try that out - oh, the Americans did, and it wrecked their country and filled it with gangsters, because no amount of trying to stop people drinking actually stopped people drinking, and normal people having to pretend they weren't going to drink, but secretly really really needing it and finding criminals to supply them with drink built out an entire parallel black economy and gave gangsters huge amounts of money and power.

If we're looking at saving money, maybe just kill the long-term disabled and elderly? Easy win for saving money! That's all that matters, after all.

It’s also cheaper to euthanize people rather than treat them. It’s just logical.

Could one make a similar argument for banning sugar?

Raise taxes until it balances!

It’s logical if you regard people as cattle

Nonsense. Did people already forget the prohibitionism? Did people already forget the war on drugs? I remember liberals were talking about drug decriminalisation 10 years ago, has everybody turned into a puritan nowadays?

Also, very hypocritical argument when alcohol (and gambling) are very accepted in British culture. I'd like to see the numbers showing that the few people that still roll their own cigs at 15 pounds a pouch cost more to the NHS than all the alcoholics in Britain.

Smoking ban is, as usual, Labour going for the low-hanging fruits to scrape the votes of the elderly that are likely to be swayed by these empty arguments, just like the Online Safety Act. One thing's for sure: Barry, 63, would not like if alcohol and gambling were regulated in any way.

I'm not a smoker any more, hate the things and can't stand the smoke, but I sure am glad to have left that island of short-sighted yet heavy-handed politics.

Alcohol was always an important cultural symbol (drinking wine as a Christian, for example). This is not the case for tobacco, especially highly artificial one.

Tobacco is inherently bad for one's surrounding as well.

Yes, the government has concocted a dastardly conspiracy to cut health system costs by reducing access to a known cause of illness.

I’m not being sarcastic. If you live in a society that chooses to force people to pay for other’s healthcare costs, you must support banning high risk behavior.

Not out of frugality. It’s a simple issue of fairness. 5% of the healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. Why is it fair that the 5% that choose to engage in high risk behavior are subsidized at the expense of the 95% that choose not to?

The 5% of high risk healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. It’s not fair for the 95% of low risk people to subsidize the remainder.

Only those who have become high cost patients due to choosing to put themselves at risk for years.

> smokers die early saving even more money.

I thought cancer care tended to be pretty expensive. Not sure that your math is so clear cut.

Wealth inequality is a nonissue. Nobody has ever been able to provide me with any evidence to the contrary.