[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33970717
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967454
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/new-zealand-sm...
Also, as some point out this is "liberty" - well, I don't see how a restriction can be about "liberty" at all. It is the opposite of it; having a use case that seems logical still does not make a strategy about it good.
"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"
I believe limiting people's liberty is an ineffective option opposed to education.
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.
This law will attempt to ban cigarettes. Estimate how many people will buy them and smoke them illegally. The number will not be zero.
And then, even as for strictly the damage he does to himself, cancer is far from the only risk.
Well, I don't hear colleagues at work saying they're going for a "meth break", so... pretty well, I'd say?
Also criminalization of something always leads to its romanticization to some extent. Look at the rap scene. There is always a rebound effect.
But whatever could that be? Twenty-year 5% discount on vegetables?
[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.
Adding another globally common and less regulated substance to the list of extrajudicial desireables simply equals a performance bonus and being low aquisition risk (already shipping other goods from places that grow tobacco and make cigs) as an incentive for the already very profitable and active operators of these networks.
From my perspective this would simply make being a smuggler easier and more profitable and be a value uplift for corrupt enforcement and a net reduction in collectable taxes... moving the revenue from comsumption tax books to black market coffers.
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.
You can still get addicted to nicotine, they're just banning a very specific delivery mechanism.
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.
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).
Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed (172 points, 413 comments)
Guys, that's all well and good as a philosophy, but you need to integrate your views into the world around you too. When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs, and assume responsibility for everyone's health, you also may need some ground rules. I know it sucks, because _you_ may have just been born there and you don't really have a choice in what society you live, so that means care needs to be taken, but it doesn't mean there can never be any cost-of-entry.
Also, you normally dont go to jail by using drugs... what a clueless comment
If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.
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.
Guys, it's all well and good as a philosophy, but maybe you should take a second look and reconsider that the state just keeps creeping more and more into your private affairs and is very glad when you believe them when they say things are "for the children" and "for the public good". One day you might find yourself in jail for sharing a meme that is critical of the government in any way.
Look, I found the problem!
I actually quite like your comment, it'd be interesting to have the stats on whether the downvoter objected to your tone or if they made the logical inference that this argument undermines universal healthcare and didn't like that.
I literally said "so care needs to be taken" and you hit me with a slippery slope argument?
No twist needed, it's really fucking logical.
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.
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.
Tobacco is inherently bad for one's surrounding as well.
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?
I can both support healthcare that’s free at the point of access (this distinction is important, because the NHS is not strictly speaking a “single payer” system, as both National Insurance and tax revenues from e.g. alcohol and cigarette sales are used to fund it) and individual liberty, even if that increases the cost of healthcare delivery. The NHS is not evidence of an authoritarian regime, it is evidence of the state playing a role in maintaining baseline standards of health, largely for the purposes of maintaining a healthy workforce.
Americans have such a wildly warped worldview in my experience.
I thought cancer care tended to be pretty expensive. Not sure that your math is so clear cut.
Though judging by the amount milords in the article I suspect that is far ways off.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-promo...
I mean, sure, that's true, but is it more difficult to smuggle by walking or driving over an imaginary line or getting a boat and crew and crossing the water? I don't see water as being the low-effort option.
> Nice, let's defend that.
Many discussions about freedom are just marketing and corporate interests in a trench coat.
I guess this is my favorite bug bear now.
Let's hope it recedes back to the US sooner rather than later. Let this be the first domino.
Sarcasm aside, if the goal is to reduce consumption, criminalization does work. Repression, though, does come with its own can of worm (an euphemism, yes). It's up to the citizenry and its representatives to decide if the trade-off is worth it.
You know what would really solve crime and drug abuse issues? If we just gave people lobotomies at the age of 16. They will all be nice and complacent and due what they're told by the state.
Also, Singapore seems to have conclusively won the war on drugs. I would not mind those policies in San Francisco.
It’s a foul product that belongs in the past.
I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's reasonable for the less financially well off to die.
Exercise is maybe a slippery slope because it requires enforcing a positive action, but if we're going to force people to be healthy anyway, why not? In a practical sense, not a theoretical one? If you've got theoretical concerns, why doesn't that apply to cigarettes?
Literally nothing in the world would be less fun or good or enjoyable if cigarettes simply no longer existed (unless you're already addicted, and the day that cigarettes disappear will be the first day of the rest of your longer life).
Although I will say a minimum possible harm argument is weird on practical grounds. Members of my family have smoked in the past, its done them some theoretical tiny amount of damage that is so close to 0 as to be the same thing. That doesn't require the police to get involved. The harm done by the amount of work to earn the taxes and pay the police was probably greater than the damage done by the smoking.
> Literally nothing in the world would be less fun or good or enjoyable if cigarettes simply no longer existed
That seems ridiculous. Obviously there are people who smoke for pleasure. I know several. You can't just tell them that they aren't having fun and pretend that counts.
Good luck, Canada.
We wear helmets and seatbelts?
Insurance is entirely about paying a small amount so that the costs of being on the wrong side of bad luck doesn’t pauper your citizenry. A single payer system wildly reduces the amount that has to be paid, while increasing service outcomes since now you can negotiate with drug companies.
I would happily pay for that kind of system as well, because I am happy to ensure that the rest of the nation is better off.
The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage is one that distributes costs across the largest pool of individuals. Which is a single payer system.
If you pay for home insurance (you kind of have to unless you own your home outright or are renting), you're paying for other people's fire or water damage. And one day they might pay for yours.
If there's a lot of fires or water damage, everyone's costs go up.
> The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage
It would be even more effective to just enslave a bunch of people and force them to pay for my healthcare, but I don’t advocate for that because it’s immoral and unfair.
https://theweek.com/health/britains-cocaine-habit-use-of-the...
Notice how in both of the above, there is no third party forcing me to pay for anybody’s bad choices.
You are paying for it with your rent, just like you're paying property taxes.