Smoking age should rise from 18, by one year every year - Rishi Sunak
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-67008051Open linkView original on lemmy.ml377
Comments174https://www.bbc.com/news/health-67008051Open linkView original on lemmy.mlhttps://www.bbc.com/news/health-67008051Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
aside from the issue of 'prohibition still doesn't work', i don't think giving kids or "underage" adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone
Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.
TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.
Incorrect.
A black market is created, kids still smoke, but poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail.
It doesn't fix the issue and syphons poor people into prisons.
Prohibition laws do put people in prison.
"Noone goes to prison for underage smoking". False. The people selling the cigarettes, poor people trying to make a buck, go to jail for the underage smoking.
I suggest we do nothing.
Prohibition doesn't work.
Mind your own business.
You're just being purposefully obtuse now.
No. The kids aren't the ones going to prison, but the prohibition laws do send people to prison.
No one but you is being obtuse here.
You "corrected" someone by making an entirely different point from the one they made. In fact, the person you said was "wrong" actually stated the very thing you did.
No one is saying your point is wrong. Just that it isn't a correction.
I would argue that society should reserve the right to punish individuals who harm others for their personal benefit.
And I would argue that selling a physically addictive substance that directly causes harm with no benefit to the user for personal profit is causing harm.
So while I don't support arresting people for smoking, I 100% so support arresting people for selling.
Again, I just see mental gymnastics.
So you just outright said that people should be free to smoke, but anyone who sells what is being smoked should be incarcerated.
How is that not a complete oxymoron?
No. You have a factually flawed bias against a thing, and you want to mob up with other people to enforce your opinions and will upon people you disagree with.
As a result, you want to imprison poor people and not accomplish what you claim to want to accomplish.
There is no oxymoron.
Smoking is harming oneself.
Selling is harming another.
They are not equivalent.
As they should
Happy you are for the siphoning of poor people to for profit prisons.
Really sounds like your plan to eradicate tobacco from existing is solid.
Works for pedophilia too.
How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.
They should raise the heroin age
Yes, because no one has ever smoked before they reached the legal age.
Are you fucking with me right now?
There is already a black/gray marked near many schools (for the younger, there are cigarettes and for the older there is weed.) it’s a market where there is just one person selling, it is more a fluid market where the young people sell and buy to each other, mostly there are multiple kids with connections to get the goods in any school and then it rotates through the different kids by selling, buying, stealing etc. Source: I’m 26 now, and don’t believe that has changed since I left school.
You really have a surface-level understanding of how the world works, I take it.
General mindset of a standard prohibitionist.
I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it's "cool", making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.
Please, oh dear god...
Please tell me what FFA means and how it doesn't amount to "send poor people to prison".
FFA just means "free for all" (it's a term from competitive games, in case you shouldn't know), in this context I used it as another word for 'legal'.
Oh thank god.
Yes, I 100 percent agree with you. Your thought process is the way.
Sorry I was so adversarial in my first comment. A lot of the rest of this thread has me all sorts of triggered.
how to create a blackmarket with health issues
I'd prefer they start at 60 and raise it every year, but I'll take what I can get.
Sunak should start publicly smoking all the time, then it will be the lamest thing and teen smoking will crater.
....how do 14 year olds get smokes now?
Making it illegal to buy at certain ages has never worked...banning them outright also won't work. You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
Has the war on drugs not been a thought to these people? It is useless and does nothing.
I agree that prohibition doesn't really prevent a thing from being consumed. However, I don't think an age limit really counts as prohibition. Selling substances to those who are underage is bad and there should be potential consequences for doing so.
Underage in this scenario could be 40, 50, 60. They will just drive to an Indian reserve and buy cigarettes.
I assume you're talking about teens though..I'm fine with the current age limits, but increasing the age by 1 year ever year won't do anything.
Um, you do realize that Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the UK? It's a long and arduous drive to the nearest Indian reservation.
This is on world news, so I took it as world change. But no, I didn't know that
On balance I think it's a good thing. A gradual ban like this will help break the smoking culture and save some lives. Maybe it will help gen-z get laid too.
Why have laws against drunk driving or speeding? You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
It's true, you can't stop people from doing what they want to do with laws, but smoking doesn't smear a child down the street for everyone to see. What a terrible comparison
Fine, why have laws against littering, or smoking in public buildings, or jaywalking, or embezzlement? People are just going to do those things anyway, no matter what is written on paper.
We have laws to provide an enforcement mechanism for behavior that is unacceptable in our society. You're right, in that laws written on paper can be ignored, but you do so at a risk of the penalties laid out in the law. Your argument essentially invalidates the purpose and effectiveness of every law. Clearly, we have laws and they work, so your argument is frivolous and empty.
Why not just ban Marijuana again...
Because the social perception of marijuana use has changed? You're not really keeping up with the conversation here...
I am, but it will always go back to the same. You want big daddy to protect you from others doing harm to themselves, whereas I see people being able to police themselves and if they screw up it's their problem.
If only smoking harmed just the user, but secondhand smoke kills children daily in the US. https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effects/secondhand-smoke
It's also been found that 3rd-hand smoke can be just as dangerous a secondhand smoke. Not to mention that smoking smells awful and makes indoor and outdoor public places unpleasant. Smokers also routinely fail to dispose of cigarettes properly, leading to unsightly and unhealthy toxic litter, and causes multiple uncontrolled forest/wildfires every year.
You need to throw out your preconceived notions about smoking and the purpose of laws, they are not compatible with reality.
Probably because the vast majority of adults are also non smokers.
The war on drugs can't work because the CIA uses illicit drug running to fund off-the-books projects.
Maybe if they stopped fucking doing that?
Sure on a global scale, but on a more macro level, the war on drugs failed because people want to buy and consume drugs.... if there is no legal, regulated, safe method to buy them then the black market will fill that gap... same under rationing, same under prohibition, same with drugs and in the future cigarettes....!
The war on drugs succeeded, because it was actually a war on black people. It was never meant to stop drug abuse.
Don't leave out hippies and hispanics. Cannabis is called 'marijuana' in the US because it stoked anti-hispanic racism. It was also a convenient way to attack liberals in general.
I would like to congratulate drugs, for winning the War on Drugs.
True, but the want of cigarettes is much lower than recreational drugs. One of the reasons they're still so popular is because they're legal and easy to get.
I don't smoke and never have, but I can't imagine anyone starting smoking in order to get some effect like with marijuana.
Yet, the addiction of cigarettes is much more powerful than non narcotic drugs & every day new people are starting smoking.
There is a legal, regulated, mostly safe method to buy cigarettes. It is inaccessible if you are under a certain age, but only the seller/provider is punished for violating regulations. It's okay to have restrictions on what children can consume.
While current laws on illegal drugs do not work, arguing against any regulation whatsoever is similarly silly, the laws obviously work. Smoking rates have dramatically declined since those laws and public education campaigns began.
I think you're wrong. The market isn't magic, it needs supply to meet demand and there is a steady supply of drugs to fulfill the demands because of state intervention in the market. The CIA isn't the only government entity that uses the drug trade to raise illicit funds for off-the-books jobs, it's just the biggest. If it weren't for bad state actors, the war on drugs probably would have worked to a large extent; maybe not eliminate the drug trade completely, but at least reduce the volume of trade substantially.
It's not the 1980's. Reagan's long dead. What makes you think they still do that?
The war on drugs can't work because people want drugs. Has literally fuck-all to do with anything or anyone else.
Drug smuggling could never be totally eliminated but I'm sure the government could do a better job if the goal was actually to stop the drug trade.
But that is not and never was the goal.
Man the fuck up and outlaw it for everyone instead of this sneaky prohibition that only affect people that can't vote yet. It's such a cowardly, disingenuous way of doing it.
Prohibition never works, the best bet is to keep it legal and make it as inconvenient as possible like: raising taxes on tobacco, make it illegal to smoke outside of dedicated zones (Quebec has done it I believe), fine people who litter their cigarette butts (hard to implement but, it might deter a large majority from doing it), keep helping smokers to quit and keep raising awareness for younger people.
This is the way. There are so few places to smoke in BC that I pretty much only ever see people doing it 5 metres from a bus stop.
They are so expensive that the few people that still do it smoke maybe a pack a week.
We even banned the sale of no-nic vape juice because they were becoming a gateway to nicotine addiction for teenagers.
I just visited Canada for 4 days, was around a lot of people and I only smelled smoke twice. Both times were outside the airport (once arriving and once departing).
That's crazy and backwards. Ecigs were a critical tool I used to kick a 2 pack a day habit. Vaping is the best smoking cessation system around.
except the ones using it don't even smoke rn.
Nah the best bet is to remove the profit motive. And through legal means execute every cigarette company owner or employee who covered up health risks for mass manslaughter.
This method stops current smokers from being criminalised.
If you ban it like prohibition, you will instantaneously create a black market. Continually increasing the age you can buy cigarettes is easier. Everyone that this effects will not have the option to legally create a cigarette habit/addiction.
A straight up outlawing would have the maximum effect. But it would be costly to enforce, whilst increasing overall criminal activity.
They just need to outlaw the commercial production of cigarettes. I'm very anti cigarette personally, but at the end of the day, tobacco is a plant and should not be outlawed. But outlawing commercial products it makes tobacco legal and accessible to those who want it. With commercial cigarettes being less available, in guessing through either lack of convenience or lack of ability to act on an impulse, that the amount of smokers will drop.
That'll never happen, the tobacco industry is too big and too many jobs will be lost all at once, so it becomes highly politicized and loses popular support. With the proposed law, the tobacco industry at least has time to pivot to something else.
So let's give the companies that have lied about the harms and effects of their product a heads up? They never gave people who died of cancer when they knew it caused cancer but denied it. Moving the age will just give the time for the business owners to get more of the money out and fuck over the smaller employees anyways.
I honestly think there is no solution that doesn't have negative effects. I'm personally very against the banning of something (especially a plant) as a solution to a problem as it creates plenty more problems (see America's drug problems)
Ok, but and believe me I'm all for this, cocaine and heroin are plants as well, or at least you can grow coca and poppies and get the drugs from them. Should cocaine and heroin be legal as well just because a) they're plant derived, and b) people will use the drugs and get addicted to them because that's how it works? As I said, I personally would legalize, tax, and educate people about safe recreational, therapeutic, and medical drug use for all drugs personally, but most people find that too extreme.
Unironically yes, cocaine and heroin should be legal, or at the very least decriminalized. If they were legal, regulated, and you could pop into a headshop and buy them, the black markets surrounding them would begin to evaporate.
I agree, as I said
Hmmm, where have I heard this proposal before?
The reason I used the word Prohibition is because I think it's bullshit either way. We're sitting here legalizing pot because Prohibition doesn't work, but somehow doing this chickenshit year-by-year outlawing is somehow going to fix something that education is doing a fine enough job. People are going to smoke cigarettes, there's always a group that will do it, legal or not. Whether you want a crime problem around it or not is the obvious question these chucklefucks don't seem to understand, despite repeated examples to the contrary.
Add in the danger of having the following mentality: "what are these rights laying around that I'm not utilizing? What, that person over there enjoys having these rights? Well, I don't like that person, so I don't care about their rights fuck em"
This ladies and gentlemen, is how you Nazi 101 (but with rainbow flags and affirmative action this go-around)
No no no, minimum age should increase by 360 days every year, that way people can still have hope that some day they'll be able to smoke. Staying true to how capitalism works.
NZ already did this and it is the most cowardly way to avoid political blowback.
There's plenty of other options for minimising smoking. A more altruistic way is by lifting people out of poverty and tackling social disintegration, since smokers are overwhelmingly poor and disaffected.
Your right there are better ways. Both methods should be implemented. A carrot and stick approach is going to be more effective.
I don't think we can expect the altruistic way from a Billionaire Tory. As far as policy goes, this is the best one the Tory have had in a long time. But that doesn't say much.
So instead of reducing a clearly destructive habit now we should wait for a major social change that likely won't happen. I don't see how that is more altruistic for the "poor and disaffected".
You can either try to do things the right way and cure multiple social ills, or you can do it the wrong way and end up with different rules for different adults all in an attempt to prohibition your way out of one issue.
This is an amazing, for the sole reason that everyone who is 17 and change now will turn 18, be able to smoke, the law will bump to 19, they won't be allowed to smoke any more, but then they'll turn 19 and they'll be able to smoke again until the law raises to 20...
Why adjust the law annually? Why not just write it as “no person born after Jan 1, 2005”?
This is the better way to write the law of course, but the ham-fisted way it's proposed by Rishi would look more like what I wrote, because he said specifically that the age should rise one year every year.
So the age is going to get risen to 19, then the Tories are going to lose the next election (basically the only reason to have the election at this point is to find out by how much they're going to lose so we know how much to laugh at them), and then the law stops getting updated because it's a dumb and badly written, and then Labour don't implement it any more.
If anything they will probably just rewrite the law to the above version.
I believe they passed a similar law like this in New Zealand. You could be 50 and still too young to smoke lol.
Smokefree action plan: Cigarette sales to be banned for younger generations
Cool, when does the minimum age for joining the military start to raise by one year every year?
What's with the whataboutism?
It's directly related. Why are 18 year olds able to lock themselves into a 6 year contract that they might be killed before they see the end of, when they are, legally, too dumb to make their own decisions regarding a chemical they put in their bodies?
It's really simple. The ruling class of society benefits more sending the little shit into the military than it costs. The ruling class doesn't benefit as much when this little shit costs more than the little shit produces. It has nothing to do with protecting the little shit, it has to do with protecting the people in power.
They can choose to take hormone blockers at 12, but they can't choose to have sex until they're 18 (depending on local statutes). The laws are filled with hypocrisy.
They're right, there shouldn't be recruiters in school that's predatory as shit.
Do they do that in the UK? I didn't think they were quite so gung-ho about their military.
I didn't know people still used that racist phrase.
I didn't know gung ho was a racist term and now I look it up I see that it is clearly not.
I'm not sure who your authority is that determines the offense of words, but I have friends from China that take great offense to the term.
New Zealand has done this
“We operate a Check-74 policy. If you are lucky enough to look younger than 70, we will ask for ID when buying cigarettes”
Maybe we will make groundbreaking leaps in cosmetic surgery. Or have Jackass-style elderly disguises become popular.
I much prefer to see kids vaping.
It's much harder to be intimidated by a gang of 10 youths in balaclavas when they smell like a pack of Fruit Salads.
Vaping is a joke, they stuck the addictive chemical (nicotine) in it and now they are hooked on vaping. Let them sell vaping goods but they shouldn't be allowed to add nicotine to them.
Given that for most it's a less harmful alternative to smoking that makes zero sense. Aside from it's addictive properties nicotine is on about the same level as caffeine in terms of damage.
Caffeine? No, the science says otherwise
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
It's already prohibitively taxed to be around £12-15 for a 20 pack. There are 4 corner stores within a 5 minute walk of my house that do them under the counter for a fiver, and you can bet they don't care about IDs either
Contact the HMRC fraud department. They would stop these sales very quickly.
Do you know the piece of cocaine?
Rishi is just jealous that they aren't one of the cool kids
https://www.theonion.com/secondhand-smoke-linked-to-secondhand-coolness-1819564071
Rishi it's a background character in his own life. There are more dynamic jellyfish.
Back in my day we used to smoke up hill both ways in the rain and snow.
Big tobacco trying to kill big vape by making it exciting again to smoke and break the law
So he's nicking what newzeland did ok cool something that he's not going to profit from for a change atleast
If he wanted it to work he could make cigarettes more lethal. Kill you in a couple of months type of thing.
(Clearly not a serious suggestion in case you wonder)
Sounds like a reasonable proposal to me.
Minutes to seconds better, also if the cigarettes put themselves off and doesn't cause fires
Not a smoker or wannabe one but if someone is just one year behind in their age, they'll never be able to legally smoke with this setup.
I believe that's the intention yes.
Correct, that’s the point. I’m fancy, there would be a day cutoff. Likely 1/1 of some year.
Yes, that's how both time and math works.
That's the goal.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Speaking at the Conservative party conference, Mr Sunak said he believed it was the right step to tackle the leading cause of preventable ill-health.
"Because without a significant change, thousands of children will start smoking in the coming years and have their lives cut short."
But Mr Sunak has decided to throw his backing behind it as a way of meeting the government's ambition for England to be smokefree by 2030 - defined as less than 5% of the population smoking.
The proposal on raising the age of sale of cigarettes is similar to laws being introduced in New Zealand, where buying tobacco products will remain banned for anyone born after 2008.
Mr Sunak also said the government would consider restricting the sale of disposable vapes and look at flavourings and packaging of the devices, to tackle the rising rates of children using them.
"If implemented, the prime minister will deserve great credit for putting the health of UK citizens ahead of the interests of the tobacco lobby."
The original article contains 577 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I agree that smoking is bad for you, having quit myself - but the idea of outlawing a plant / prohibiting humans who just happened to be born in one specific part of the world from burning it and inhaling the produced smoke just goes against my views on ethics.
Instead, why don't we fix the real problems? How about getting rid of capitalism, and thus the profit incentive to sell addictive substances for a huge markup? How about we fix this broken society that keeps pushing more and more people towards drugs such as nicotine, the tiny escape, and the little bit of stress relief they provide?
Drugs, from cigarettes to meth, are not the problem..
They're just a symptom.
The war on drugs is nothing more than an effort to sweep the real problems under the rug, and nothing less than coordinated violence targeted at people who are already suffering.
Fuck this.
I hate smoking stock photos. Clearly she has never smoked in her life.
Now do Australia
Omg hate to see dirty bogans everywhere smoking winni blues.
Sure are a lot of authoritarian apologists up in here today
Smoking age should follow the age of boomers, age 80+
Because people have been more and more conditioned to obey year after year. To be absolute pushovers who never fight against the grain, never question groupthink, etc. Grandfathering the criminalization (using violent enforcement) of something like smoking a cigarette is a shining example of what's to come.
Just fucking ban it already.
This better not apply to vaping.
I vaped for a few years and then stopped. Quitting was pretty damn easy imo
Agreed. I stopped smoking by switching to vaping, slowly reducing to 0mg and then realised I hadn’t used it for a week so got rid of it all.
They want to look at how vaping is being marketed to kids to reduce the number starting to vape but they’re not changing the age restrictions as far as I know.
Hopefully this will lead to them just using vapes instead of cigarettes and not them trying to illegally get cigarettes. I'm still on the fence on whether I think this law is a good idea in general or not but allowing them to still buy vapes / vape liquid is definitely the right decision IMO.
They're doing a separate crusade against disposable vapes. If they're going after smoking I'd imagine they'd be trying to encourage people to vape to quit.
It's all hypothetical because it's highly unlikely he'll still be in power to put this plan in to action come the next general election
If you are above 18 this doesn't concern you anyway
I care about people younger than me lol
Your extreme views frighten me! I thought we were just gonna let them all deal with this mess long after we’re gone.
Shit you're right, I got mine, fuck them.
Sure it does. The functions of government concern us all
Save the people from themselves. They are too ignorant to have control of their bodies.
You could just as easily day "oh, ban asbestos? I guess we gotta save everybody from themselves, what a nanny state."
This is bad logic that can be applied to any safety law. As a society we observe and mitigate known harms, because we can't expect every citizen to be up to date on every possible way to harm themselves without realizing it or understanding the true scope of the damage being done.
So yes; sometimes as a society we decide to save ourselves from ourselves. There's nothing wrong with that.
I wasn't aware people used asbestos recreationally.
And are you really arguing people are still unaware of the dangers of smoking?
I never said people use asbestos recreationally. But the logic is still the same. Why shouldn't a person be allowed to buy a new house built with asbestos if they're supposedly fully aware of the danger and risk of damage it does to their body over a long period of time? Everybody knows the dangers of asbestos, don't they? The commercials tell us about asbestos exposure leading to mesothelioma every day. Just let them make their own choices about asbestos, right? And while we're at it, lead pipes, and lead paint, and grounded electrical outlets, and the list goes on.
We don't want to have a nanny state, right? You should have to individually make all of these potentially life or death choices, all the time.
It's interesting that you are digging in on this nonsensical comparison. Comparing a personal use narcotic (which is combusted and spent in seconds causing harm to the user only - for the most part) with a hazardous material (which basically doesn't degrade, huffs out cancer causing dust if you, or anyone else in the next century, work on it in any way and persists as hazardous waste if you want to dispose of it).
Lead pipes and lead paint also bleed into the environment pretty much for eternity. Why not go all the way and compare being able to buy cigarettes with being able to buy some plutonium for around the house?
You said, "Save the people from themselves. They are too ignorant to have control of their bodies." You then said "And are you really arguing people are still unaware of the dangers of smoking?" Everything I have said has been a direct attack on that line of logic and applies perfectly. We ban asbestos to protect people from buying it and hurting themselves, despite the fact that everybody is supposedly well aware of the harms. The same goes for lead paint and lead pipes; ungrounded outlets, admittedly, most people don't actually fully understand, but the logic still largely applies. If you believe in the idea that we shouldn't need to save people from harming their own bodies, that perfectly applies to these things as well.
If you want to go back and revise what you said to explain why it's acceptable for society to save people from damaging their bodies with known harmful construction materials but not to save people from damaging their bodies with known harmful narcotics, then do that. Draw that distinction yourself if you think there is one instead of expecting me to read the wrinkles of your brain through the internet. You don't get to be mad at me for arguing against the words you used, that's all I have to go on.
So: when is it acceptable for society to save people from themselves, and when isn't it?
All you've done here is prove that you're ignorant. I suggest you look back and see that you're arguing two different points with two different people as well as attributing words to me that I didn't write.
If you actually read my post, l already answered the difference. Everything you mentioned has widespread environmental impact, particularly if people/corporations use those materials in bad faith. Personal choice to smoke a cigarette is not equivalent to implanting a hazardous object into the environment. And I think you know that. If you honestly can't see the difference, it's willful ignorance.
You're right, I didn't notice you were a different person.
There's no greater environmental impact if a person chooses to insulate their own house with asbestos. My point still stands; draw me a clear distinction why a store can sell an individual person tobacco but not asbestos despite the fact that we know both cause long term lung damage.
No he really isn't arguing that. It feels just pure bad faith from you here. You understand that pure anarchism has its problems, I am sure of it
Bad faith from me? Look inward.
There was a straight comparison banning cigarettes and asbestos. One is a recreational product, the other is a building material. You don't accidentally find tobacco in your walls when renovating and inhale a bunch of smoke.
At no point did I suggest anarchy and being anti-prohibition is not a strictly anarchist philosophy as far as I'm aware.
This is illegal. You can't make a law that discriminated based on age. This would be effective prohibition for some adults and not others.
The fuck are you talking about? There are all kinds of laws that make something legal or not based on someone's age, and they often vary by state or even locale. Hell, there's a minimum age for running for president for chryssake and it's well past any definition of adulthood.
What are you talking about? Plenty of laws discriminate based on age. Like, the minimum drinking age, the minimum voting age and the minimum age of consent
This doesn't discriminate based on age. This creates a permant class of adults who may exercise a freedom and those who mayn't.
Are there any examples that increase by one year every year?
Yes - New Zealand introduced this policy first.
New Zealand likely doesn't have an equal protection clause in their legal system.
So the only thing to compare itself to is basically itself. The NZ law that it is emulating is not even a year old, so it hasn't exactly given any data on that in between generation that hasn't yet been created. I'm not saying it won't work, I'm just pointing out that this is the only really comparable law.
Which means somebody's gonna have to fill the tax-hole (loss of government income) it creates...
If the best argument you can think of is "think of the taxes," maybe it's not a bad policy after all.
Cigarette taxes barely offset the increase in healthcare expenses lol
Still, and I mean no offense here, I still smoke because I want to and like to, knowing every danger it brings me I still have the right to do it to myself. Right of ones own body and all... And for the healthcare part, I just did my part and paid more than will probably be needed myself in advance over the passed 20+ years... The only cost I will make by death from smoking will have come from my pocket when I was alive and still glad I could smoke. 😅
Also, don't get me wrong, I do agree you should not smoke among non-smokers, at least not physically, cause at that point a smoker is causing physical harm to someone that choses not to be harmed by it, I do get and hold myself to that. I also hate smokers that just smoke anywhere at anytime (my own mother, for example, will always eat small portions and immediately smoke at the table after, even though nobody else is finished), but that's just terrible manners or attitude and arguably does not origin from the fact they smoke, rather the other way around,...
I'm just not a fan of more rules with more reasons to become a criminal for doing mundane things. I get that we shouldn't endanger eachother with our behaviors, but full banning things eventually gets enforced to your home included, and you just know one day the cops will be showing up cause somebody saw a young looking person smoke through a home window, because "if it's illegal, it must be evil and stopped." and will also make it impossible for anyone under the rising barrier to ever be able to get help stopping when they want to, cause it'll forever get them in trouble admitting they do...
Either way, aside from the smoking, though, I also don't think it's a good idea to start introducing laws with a rising age-barrier,... History has shown us plenty of times it is not a very productive thing to separate groups of people for life according to a personal trait they didn't choose to have/be. 😕
Are you kidding? The government will dig themselves deeper into debt with or without it. Regardless, "I can't stop giving people cancer because otherwise it would cut into my profits" is a uniquely shitty thing to say.
Assuming that I go out and smoke among other people, which I don't. My pack is always safe at home when I'm out, only time I'd take it was when going out to parties (which I haven't done in many years) and even then I'd go stand separate to smoke.
Not everybody of a big group of people that have a similar action are therefor the same. Never good to generalize and treat people differently for 1 thing either...
It seems to me y'all have problems with people of a bad attitude. It's not so much that they smoke, but that they do it without respect... Doesn't every smoker doesn't have respect...
Better than selling cancer. There's bound to be another, better way.
Everything causes cancer.
Everything.
I mean if we are talking about a long enough span of time yes. You could go a step further and include that everything will turn to dust, everything. I have a feeling that smoking causes one of the more dangerous types of cancer, and far quicker than say, getting it due to chance or genetics, microplastics etc. One of the things that always bugged me about smokers is that it genuinely feels like a zero sum habit. Especially now. I could understand up to the 2010s the social aspect, but that's mostly gone now too. There's no upside to smoking.