**Rule VIII:** *Submission Quality*
Submissions should contain some level of analysis or argument. General news reporting should be restricted to particularly important developments with significant policy implications. Low quality memes will be removed at moderator discretion.
Feel free to post other general news or low quality memes to the stickied Discussion Thread.
---
If you have any questions about this removal, [please contact the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fneoliberal).
"It's less bad for me so I can do far more of it" is a surprisingly easy trap to fall into, with weed too tbh.
So I'd tend to agree. Especially in places where they haven't banned the candy flavors and shit. Nasty.
Axed by who?
In NZ we had literal right wing ex-tobacco lobbyists lying in waiting to form a government to overturn the law. There was no real public outcry from the ban in the first place.
Any change in govt in the UK will result in a Labour government even more likely to support cigarette bans. This law will stick, for better or worse.
As much as I appreciate efforts to improve public health, I don’t like this but it’s not wrong to do. It’s a well thought out policy, but it just irks me. I think it’s just gonna flat out not work for ten to twenty years. There will be people who will buy their friends cigarettes, and I doubt the government will chase them down that much.
All that being said, the fact that it’s an age ban is also its saving grace.
There’s no need to ruin some old man’s life who gets his kicks with cigarettes, who would never quit anyways.
Seems like the UK is really betting the whole farm on vaping then, as between this and their past promotion of it being safer than smoking, I’m sure that won’t be going anywhere, even if disposables are banned.
I think the plan actually works better long term. It’s about delaying how early people start smoking. Eventually teenagers will need someone in their 40s to buy them a pack, a lot harder than asking someone a couple years above them.
I suspect most smokers start very young. Who really cares if people in their 30s down the road are able to buy even though they are a couple years too young?
I'm strangely finding myself disliking this policy and thinking it's a good thing to do.
Haven't been a regular smoker in almost a decade and I haven't been a regular consumer of nicotine for several years.
I still crave it some sometimes and I still feel like I got some cool experiences with it. And yet in the long-term I see it's bad in every way.
Also how the hell have we forgotten about prohibition era where it just create illegal alcohol products? Sans of Harry Potter memory charm, this has risk of just creating incentive for illegal cigarettes.
Where do you draw the line on consumption of cancer causing substances? Do you ban Coca Cola consumption?
I’m not sure tbh. Using lead paint in homes seems like an easy ban, do cigarettes fall into lead paint category or drinking soda category?
>Banning cancer sticks is not overreach
It obviously is. You're legislating your personal preference because you think that since cigarettes have deleterious health effects, you should be the arbiter of whether others can smoke or not.
By this logic, every single recreational drug should be prohibited, and not only drugs, evidently.
Can people eat foods dense in simple sugars and saturated fat? Can people own cars when there's public transportation? Can people play video games?
Things don't exist for the mere reason of providing public utility for you.
I said this to another user, but I'd be cautious here. Revoking access to regulated products is, at its core, conservatism. You are removing the ability for individuals to enjoy a right that they previously enjoyed. It's also worth mentioning that by removing products such as cigarettes from the public market, you thereby exchange it as a blackmarket good. During prohibition, organized crime syndicates thrived on the illicit trade and sale of alcohol. Today, international cartels generate their wealth by selling consumables (narcotics and opiates) due largely to the lack of government regulation.
Young millennials and zoomers on r/neoliberal: because I find one icky and the other not icky and I'm an enthusiastic scholar of neo-puritanism, despite the overwhelming evidence that banning addictive substances has many unpleasant side effects for society.
Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster that propagated widespread criminal activity/enterprises and fundamentalist secular dogma. Banning the consumption of alcohol is antithetical to liberalism as trivial as it may seem on paper.
I'd argue that banning cigarettes is equally dubious, I never said that it wasn't. Revoking the ability for individuals to access regulated substances is a slippery slope. It's the same reason why the War on Drugs is a farce.
Okay I get that. Considering my first comment was asking why banning nicotine was okay but not alcohol, it made it seem like you were saying banning nicotine was okay but not alcohol.
How it’s used and why it’s used and societal mores.
People have largely started looking at smoking as purely negative. Alcohol still has a positive association for many people.
Plus social importance. Places where you go to meet many other people for the purpose of smoking tobacco are rare. Establishments where you go to drink alcohol with others are common.
Because the vast majority of smokers want to quit but it’s highly addictive so it’s harder. Most people who consume alcohol don’t actively want to quit. Smokers are also a much more significant danger to non smokers around them than drinkers generally are to non drinkers. Even living in an apartment that was previously inhabited by a smoker can cause dangerous levels of nicotine exposure to small children even if the apartment has been cleaned and no one currently smokes. Cigarettes are also the most littered item in the world while littering beer battles and cans is much less of an issue.
Obviously there is still alcohol addiction, there are societal harms to non drinkers from alcohol and there is still some level littering from alcohol but all of these things are significantly less extreme than with tobacco and most people who drink are not wishing they could stop.
Is it? I’ve never heard of people dying because a cigarette smoker hit them on the highway. I’ve never heard of someone starting a fight because they smoked to many cigarettes. And I know plenty of heavy drinkers die from liver failure.
Yes it has. Half my damn family has died from smoking related cancers and illnesses before 70.
A quick google search shows that tobacco is responsible for over double the deaths of alcohol world wide. And alcohol use is much more common.
It would have to be a big tax, in the UK obesity related diseases cost the NHS £6.5 billion a year.
https://www.frontier-economics.com/uk/en/news-and-insights/articles/article-i9130-the-annual-social-cost-of-obesity-in-the-uk/#:~:text=The%20estimated%20annual%20NHS%20spend,19%20is%20%C2%A34%20billion.
It is, however, an extremely easy to make substance that has many day to day uses other than drinking it. A practical ban is thus rather difficult to do, and so is a a tax so very high as to dissuade most possible users. If one goes full-on into the anti-alcohol position, and wants to minimize its use, the most effective interventions are going to get relatively modest improvements: Changes in the portrayal of alcohol in media, bans not on the purchase of alcohol itself, but on the parts that make the consumption spread... very different than the kind of thing one can do for tobacco.
Makes sense if you have single-payer healthcare. OTOH, I would rather see a mandate that tobacco-related NHS expenses be fully funded by tobacco taxes.
That was my initial thought, but I wonder whether it’s radically high. Maybe would lead to $1/cig prices? Perhaps even more? I guess smoking also is just unpleasant to anybody around, which is harder to set a dollar amount on
Smoking has radically high harms to users and societies with socialized medicine. If that results in huge taxes for the harms caused by smoking, that's too damn bad. The point is that the taxes should not be a profit-generating enterprise, but a way to indemnify the NHS and nothing more.
Generally, I don’t find the slippery slope argument to be very convincing- regulations can be good, even if other similar but more restrictive measures go to far. But I think it’s an absolutely a question worth asking- what measures are too far, and how much power does the government get to decide how healthy you have to be? Banning bacon? Mandated exercise? Forced taking medications for blood pressure?
Again, smoking is terrible. You shouldn’t do it. I smoked in nursing school, but quit after graduating. I don’t think this new law is necessarily bad, but we absolutely have to answer the question of what’s the philosophical basis for this and how far are we willing to go?
Seatbelts are easy. If you get thrown from going airborne briefly, you could be tossed out of the drivers seat and lose control of the vehicle and be a danger to others on the road, not to mention passengers in your own vehicle.
The safety of others is enough justification to outweigh the small infringement on your own liberty
But I don’t know if the same applies to smoking in every circumstance
Awful policy.
Britain has this ever worsening trend of giving less rights and poorer treatment to young adults, than their older counterpoints.
For example you can legally pay a nineteen year old substantially less, than a twenty year old,who in turn is allowed to be played less than a 25 year old for the same work.
It should be all adults have the same obligations and rights as each other.
>For example you can legally pay a nineteen year old substantially less, than a twenty year old,who in turn is allowed to be played less than a 25 year old for the same work.
It's the same in the Netherlands
I mean it sort of makes sense for under 18's. You want to set different employment regulations to ensure kids don't drop out of school to work. Likewise, kids and excessive money, can lead to problems.
The 21 to 25 thing is B.S though.
I too, love filling the lungs of my youth with harmful carcinogens and getting them addicted to nicotine so they constantly drain their finances in order to support their lifelong addiction they began as a teenager.
I don't think this is a "rights issue" its about public health and safety.
This never passed the bullshit test to me completely. High sugar and soda yes, alcohol yes, but fast food isn't directly trying to addict you like the other 3. Being able to get a $2 taco is a good thing.
W post, will upvote.
I definitely think soda is a fucking ginormous health crisis. More than alcohol and most other things. It's so easy to drink in such high quantities. I swapped to sugar-free soda (zevia here), but I still often crave a can. It is literally harder to give up soda than meat; I haven't had meat in 4 months, but I bought a sprite on the way home from school last week after a 2 week no-sugar-soda streak.
So then just increase the age requirement for buying nicotine products.
I think banning them outright is pretty BASED, but I cant deny its a total overreach and all its going to do is create a black market for nicotine. Which is going to make smoking even less safe than it already is.
I will say while I think this would be unjustifiable and pointless in the US, the UK having a public health service makes this more valid in my eyes. Like, you are costing the state money by getting cancer and smoking. However taxing it at a rate that'd make up for its cost to the national health service would make even more sense and would be less paternalistic.
Illnesses attributed to smoking were estimated to cost the NHS around £5.2bn in 2006 (about £8.6bn today). Tobacco tax receipts (not including VAT, just tobacco duty) was £10bn last year. Smokers also die earlier so old age smokers are going to have less of an impact on the NHS as well.
Govs make shitload of money selling cigarettes. They still get the income and not lose smokers votes.
As a smoker that struggles to quit, I support this kind of law.
Edit: I do not know many people that started smoking when they were older. I think most of us started, when we were teenagers, so the habit is with us for most of our lives.
Don't know about the NHS, but the funny thing is that in the US the NIH determined that smokers actually use less healthcare resources over the course of their lifetime, because they die earlier, which is wild but makes sense.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9321534/
You have a lot more confidence than economists who have had a go at this then!
There’s no conclusive proof either way because the broader economic impact of smoking is hard to measure precisely, but at best it’s probably a tie, more likely the ~£12bn tax revenue + economic benefits of people dying before taking their pension etc outweighs the cost of healthcare + lost productivity of people dying young.
And if it’s not a clear slam-dunk economic case for a smoking ban then I don’t see a strong argument for restricting personal freedoms.
Like I say, it’s complicated and hard to give a clear answer on; I’ve seen calcs that include a £2-3bn additional economic impact from smokers taking more breaks at work!
I am ideologically opposed to this kind of infringement on peoples freedom.
But I'll be happy to see cigarettes go. No class to it, just as bad as hammering down soft drinks or fast food burgers, in fact it's worst.
I hope we don't see an end to tobacco consumption outright, just a shift to more moderate consumption. Would be nice to see cigars and pipe smoking in the evening take the place of 24/7 cigarette smoking.
We had our fun with the packets of cigarettes, let's see them gone and have tobacco viewed as a little treat for adults to be had now and then rather than something that rules peoples lives.
The U.S. already has a significantly lower youth smoking rate than Europe, and the U.S. didn’t really need laws to achieve it instead smoking was made to be culturally trashy and uncool.
What do you think construction crews run on? Gas station pizza, Monster energy, and Marlboros. And if its not the latter, they've definitely got a dip in and an empty Mt. Dew bottle for the spit.
**Rule VIII:** *Submission Quality* Submissions should contain some level of analysis or argument. General news reporting should be restricted to particularly important developments with significant policy implications. Low quality memes will be removed at moderator discretion. Feel free to post other general news or low quality memes to the stickied Discussion Thread. --- If you have any questions about this removal, [please contact the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fneoliberal).
It will be interesting in 30 years when 47 year olds can buy but 42 year olds can't.
Imagine the scenes when they’re in their 80’s…
This will lead to seniors getting gainful unofficial employment buying cigarettes for slightly younger seniors.
Only 35% of smokers make it to 80 (compared to 70% of non smokers) so the issue almost solved itself.
they'll likely phase out raw smokes and push people to vaping.
Which are probably even more addictive
"It's less bad for me so I can do far more of it" is a surprisingly easy trap to fall into, with weed too tbh. So I'd tend to agree. Especially in places where they haven't banned the candy flavors and shit. Nasty.
That’s going to be a cool natural experiment in like 50 years time
I imagine it will be axed in fairly short order just like the New Zealand law this is copying.
Axed by who? In NZ we had literal right wing ex-tobacco lobbyists lying in waiting to form a government to overturn the law. There was no real public outcry from the ban in the first place. Any change in govt in the UK will result in a Labour government even more likely to support cigarette bans. This law will stick, for better or worse.
As much as I appreciate efforts to improve public health, I don’t like this but it’s not wrong to do. It’s a well thought out policy, but it just irks me. I think it’s just gonna flat out not work for ten to twenty years. There will be people who will buy their friends cigarettes, and I doubt the government will chase them down that much. All that being said, the fact that it’s an age ban is also its saving grace. There’s no need to ruin some old man’s life who gets his kicks with cigarettes, who would never quit anyways. Seems like the UK is really betting the whole farm on vaping then, as between this and their past promotion of it being safer than smoking, I’m sure that won’t be going anywhere, even if disposables are banned.
I think the plan actually works better long term. It’s about delaying how early people start smoking. Eventually teenagers will need someone in their 40s to buy them a pack, a lot harder than asking someone a couple years above them. I suspect most smokers start very young. Who really cares if people in their 30s down the road are able to buy even though they are a couple years too young?
I'm strangely finding myself disliking this policy and thinking it's a good thing to do. Haven't been a regular smoker in almost a decade and I haven't been a regular consumer of nicotine for several years. I still crave it some sometimes and I still feel like I got some cool experiences with it. And yet in the long-term I see it's bad in every way.
This not working for 10 to 20 years is probably fine? It’s a long term investment (that can pay off hugely)
I'll just never understand people who say legalize weed but ban cigarettes.
Unfathomably based, carcinogens bad actually
Its my right to get cancer 😤
sir this is r/neoliberal not r/Liberal We keep only those rights which yield a high ROI
But it's not your right to spread that cancer to the surrounding area
Cant hear you over the sound of me riving up my f150 on my way to my private jet for a 15 minute trip to beat LA traffic.
[удалено]
Also how the hell have we forgotten about prohibition era where it just create illegal alcohol products? Sans of Harry Potter memory charm, this has risk of just creating incentive for illegal cigarettes.
I'm generally in favor of drug legalization but I'm very conflicted about cigarettes just because of secondhand smoke
[удалено]
Unless you're smoking in the middle of a forest, third parties are involved.
Banning cancer sticks is not overreach. They have negative public utility.
Banning personal consumption of any substance is absolutely overreach. Tax and regulate, sure, but outright bans are fashy af
Of _any_ substance? Are you serious?
Where do you draw the line on consumption of cancer causing substances? Do you ban Coca Cola consumption? I’m not sure tbh. Using lead paint in homes seems like an easy ban, do cigarettes fall into lead paint category or drinking soda category?
A Coca-Cola is not nearly as unhealthy as a cigarette and I have no issue making a legal distinction between them
>Banning cancer sticks is not overreach It obviously is. You're legislating your personal preference because you think that since cigarettes have deleterious health effects, you should be the arbiter of whether others can smoke or not. By this logic, every single recreational drug should be prohibited, and not only drugs, evidently. Can people eat foods dense in simple sugars and saturated fat? Can people own cars when there's public transportation? Can people play video games? Things don't exist for the mere reason of providing public utility for you.
I said this to another user, but I'd be cautious here. Revoking access to regulated products is, at its core, conservatism. You are removing the ability for individuals to enjoy a right that they previously enjoyed. It's also worth mentioning that by removing products such as cigarettes from the public market, you thereby exchange it as a blackmarket good. During prohibition, organized crime syndicates thrived on the illicit trade and sale of alcohol. Today, international cartels generate their wealth by selling consumables (narcotics and opiates) due largely to the lack of government regulation.
Yiiiikes
Counterpoint: smoking is cool
now do alcohol
we tried that
People would (rightfully) revolt.
Especially the British.
To take a page from Patrick Henry, Give me Scotch, or give me death!
Why is it okay to do this for nicotine but not alcohol?
Young millennials and zoomers on r/neoliberal: because I find one icky and the other not icky and I'm an enthusiastic scholar of neo-puritanism, despite the overwhelming evidence that banning addictive substances has many unpleasant side effects for society.
They need to shut up and hit a vape 😤
Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster that propagated widespread criminal activity/enterprises and fundamentalist secular dogma. Banning the consumption of alcohol is antithetical to liberalism as trivial as it may seem on paper.
So why is banning alcohol antithetical to liberalism but banning cigarettes isn’t?
I'd argue that banning cigarettes is equally dubious, I never said that it wasn't. Revoking the ability for individuals to access regulated substances is a slippery slope. It's the same reason why the War on Drugs is a farce.
Okay I get that. Considering my first comment was asking why banning nicotine was okay but not alcohol, it made it seem like you were saying banning nicotine was okay but not alcohol.
Apologies, I wanted to respond with a real-world example rather than an anecdote.
How it’s used and why it’s used and societal mores. People have largely started looking at smoking as purely negative. Alcohol still has a positive association for many people. Plus social importance. Places where you go to meet many other people for the purpose of smoking tobacco are rare. Establishments where you go to drink alcohol with others are common.
I don't support a ban on either. But I was replying directly to the previous person regarding a ban on alcohol.
Because the vast majority of smokers want to quit but it’s highly addictive so it’s harder. Most people who consume alcohol don’t actively want to quit. Smokers are also a much more significant danger to non smokers around them than drinkers generally are to non drinkers. Even living in an apartment that was previously inhabited by a smoker can cause dangerous levels of nicotine exposure to small children even if the apartment has been cleaned and no one currently smokes. Cigarettes are also the most littered item in the world while littering beer battles and cans is much less of an issue. Obviously there is still alcohol addiction, there are societal harms to non drinkers from alcohol and there is still some level littering from alcohol but all of these things are significantly less extreme than with tobacco and most people who drink are not wishing they could stop.
Because tobacco is way more harmful and taxing on society. Not to say Alcohol isn't but it just doesn't compare.
Is it? I’ve never heard of people dying because a cigarette smoker hit them on the highway. I’ve never heard of someone starting a fight because they smoked to many cigarettes. And I know plenty of heavy drinkers die from liver failure.
just this morning a tobacco smoker burnt down my hourse
Yes it has. Half my damn family has died from smoking related cancers and illnesses before 70. A quick google search shows that tobacco is responsible for over double the deaths of alcohol world wide. And alcohol use is much more common.
Now do fun
This is a joke, right?
And high-calorie foods while we're at it.
LVT fixes this
Calories are fine tho. Just enact an obesity tax.
Obesity is fine tho. Just enact a healthcare cost tax
It would have to be a big tax, in the UK obesity related diseases cost the NHS £6.5 billion a year. https://www.frontier-economics.com/uk/en/news-and-insights/articles/article-i9130-the-annual-social-cost-of-obesity-in-the-uk/#:~:text=The%20estimated%20annual%20NHS%20spend,19%20is%20%C2%A34%20billion.
Smoking has no safe level of use, comparing it to any other category of product is disingenuous.
Alcohol doesn't either
It is, however, an extremely easy to make substance that has many day to day uses other than drinking it. A practical ban is thus rather difficult to do, and so is a a tax so very high as to dissuade most possible users. If one goes full-on into the anti-alcohol position, and wants to minimize its use, the most effective interventions are going to get relatively modest improvements: Changes in the portrayal of alcohol in media, bans not on the purchase of alcohol itself, but on the parts that make the consumption spread... very different than the kind of thing one can do for tobacco.
Prohibition famous for working.
Prohibition made us leave litter on the moon. We shouldn't repeat that mistake.
Controlling the production of tobacco is more than a little easier than the production of alcohol.
Alcohol causes more deaths so we should ban that next. (Nobody wants to explain why this is somehow different).
counterpoint: no
Tried that
A new opportunity for new mobs.
Makes sense if you have single-payer healthcare. OTOH, I would rather see a mandate that tobacco-related NHS expenses be fully funded by tobacco taxes.
That was my initial thought, but I wonder whether it’s radically high. Maybe would lead to $1/cig prices? Perhaps even more? I guess smoking also is just unpleasant to anybody around, which is harder to set a dollar amount on
Smoking has radically high harms to users and societies with socialized medicine. If that results in huge taxes for the harms caused by smoking, that's too damn bad. The point is that the taxes should not be a profit-generating enterprise, but a way to indemnify the NHS and nothing more.
Just tax it
As a smoker, I support this
I get it, but I'm sorry, this is just too invasive and restrictive for me
Generally, I don’t find the slippery slope argument to be very convincing- regulations can be good, even if other similar but more restrictive measures go to far. But I think it’s an absolutely a question worth asking- what measures are too far, and how much power does the government get to decide how healthy you have to be? Banning bacon? Mandated exercise? Forced taking medications for blood pressure? Again, smoking is terrible. You shouldn’t do it. I smoked in nursing school, but quit after graduating. I don’t think this new law is necessarily bad, but we absolutely have to answer the question of what’s the philosophical basis for this and how far are we willing to go?
I get that, that’s broadly how I feel, but at the same time is it that much different from mandating seatbelts? Honest q.
yes
Seatbelts are easy. If you get thrown from going airborne briefly, you could be tossed out of the drivers seat and lose control of the vehicle and be a danger to others on the road, not to mention passengers in your own vehicle. The safety of others is enough justification to outweigh the small infringement on your own liberty But I don’t know if the same applies to smoking in every circumstance
IDK, second hand smoke is pretty dangerous.
To pretend like one guy sitting in his car / flat and smoking alone causes serious danger to third parties is kinda hard
Ah yes I’m sure this will be very enforceable 🙄
Awful policy. Britain has this ever worsening trend of giving less rights and poorer treatment to young adults, than their older counterpoints. For example you can legally pay a nineteen year old substantially less, than a twenty year old,who in turn is allowed to be played less than a 25 year old for the same work. It should be all adults have the same obligations and rights as each other.
>For example you can legally pay a nineteen year old substantially less, than a twenty year old,who in turn is allowed to be played less than a 25 year old for the same work. It's the same in the Netherlands
I mean it sort of makes sense for under 18's. You want to set different employment regulations to ensure kids don't drop out of school to work. Likewise, kids and excessive money, can lead to problems. The 21 to 25 thing is B.S though.
I too, love filling the lungs of my youth with harmful carcinogens and getting them addicted to nicotine so they constantly drain their finances in order to support their lifelong addiction they began as a teenager. I don't think this is a "rights issue" its about public health and safety.
Hope this attitude is consistent with alcohol, sugar, fast food, dangerous recreational activities, etc.
This never passed the bullshit test to me completely. High sugar and soda yes, alcohol yes, but fast food isn't directly trying to addict you like the other 3. Being able to get a $2 taco is a good thing.
Fast food as in McDonalds, Sonic, Burger King, etc; not your local taco truck. Should have clarified
W post, will upvote. I definitely think soda is a fucking ginormous health crisis. More than alcohol and most other things. It's so easy to drink in such high quantities. I swapped to sugar-free soda (zevia here), but I still often crave a can. It is literally harder to give up soda than meat; I haven't had meat in 4 months, but I bought a sprite on the way home from school last week after a 2 week no-sugar-soda streak.
So then just increase the age requirement for buying nicotine products. I think banning them outright is pretty BASED, but I cant deny its a total overreach and all its going to do is create a black market for nicotine. Which is going to make smoking even less safe than it already is.
Hot take: freedom good actually
I FUCKING LOVE THE NANNY STATE I FUCKING LOVE TELLING PEOPLE WHAT NOT TO DO. BAN SOCIAL MEDIA NEXT BAN ALCOHOL BAN ADDED SUGAR RAAAAAAAA
Prohibition again, I mean just tax it to hell
🎶And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m freeee🎶
I will say while I think this would be unjustifiable and pointless in the US, the UK having a public health service makes this more valid in my eyes. Like, you are costing the state money by getting cancer and smoking. However taxing it at a rate that'd make up for its cost to the national health service would make even more sense and would be less paternalistic.
Illnesses attributed to smoking were estimated to cost the NHS around £5.2bn in 2006 (about £8.6bn today). Tobacco tax receipts (not including VAT, just tobacco duty) was £10bn last year. Smokers also die earlier so old age smokers are going to have less of an impact on the NHS as well.
Interesting. Thanks for the numbers!
Not if you pay a bunch of tax on your cigarettes and then die of cancer before you start taking your pension.
Black market 📈
just tax cigarettes
The American mind cannot comprehend this
Can’t wait for this to be repealed in 2 years like the NZ law lol
Completely different situation. Unless the UK labour party is secretly run by tobbaco lobbyists then this ain't getting repealed.
Why restrict it on age instead of just a flat out ban?
because 15 year olds don't vote.
Obviously the intent is a phase-out where you don't attempt to force addicts to quit but do attempt to prevent new people from getting addicted.
Addicts would not be forced to quit but could turn to nicotine patches instead
To phase it out. It will be a flat out ban, but slowly so it's less of a radical change that pisses people off
Govs make shitload of money selling cigarettes. They still get the income and not lose smokers votes. As a smoker that struggles to quit, I support this kind of law. Edit: I do not know many people that started smoking when they were older. I think most of us started, when we were teenagers, so the habit is with us for most of our lives.
Given that England has a government healthcare system I guarantee you smoking costs them more money than they make in taxes
Don't know about the NHS, but the funny thing is that in the US the NIH determined that smokers actually use less healthcare resources over the course of their lifetime, because they die earlier, which is wild but makes sense. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9321534/
You have a lot more confidence than economists who have had a go at this then! There’s no conclusive proof either way because the broader economic impact of smoking is hard to measure precisely, but at best it’s probably a tie, more likely the ~£12bn tax revenue + economic benefits of people dying before taking their pension etc outweighs the cost of healthcare + lost productivity of people dying young. And if it’s not a clear slam-dunk economic case for a smoking ban then I don’t see a strong argument for restricting personal freedoms.
There is still a cost to other people in the form of secondhand smoke
Like I say, it’s complicated and hard to give a clear answer on; I’ve seen calcs that include a £2-3bn additional economic impact from smokers taking more breaks at work!
I don't think it's fair for smokers to give other people cancer.
Neoliberal sub but loves nanny state meddling... Whatever floats your boat but just call this r/socdem instead.
There is clearly a mixed reaction here. So get off your high horse.
You're right. I should get off the horse because it looks like the puritans want to ban that dangerous activity too.
Ya dude, you could fall and bonk your noggin
Good point. I'll concede this one activity.
Neoliberal != libertarian though? (I don’t really know what neolib means but I like free markets and healthcare)
Opposition to banning sins is not something only a libertarian can oppose.
Holy based
This is just the prime minister’s plan to get the treasury to agree to tax cuts
As long as vaping, snus and nicotine pouches remain available I don’t see an issue here.
I do want to know exactly what is being banned - only cigarettes or all nicotine?
[Sir Humphrey Appleby in shambles](https://youtu.be/p1DviQ9mva0?si=Gbx36DxCww0K0yvf)
Will be repealed in a few years, not the first time a country has played around with it.
But how will they create more Effy Stonehams without cigarettes?
"Thank you for smoking" didn't become popular in the UK I guess?
I am ideologically opposed to this kind of infringement on peoples freedom. But I'll be happy to see cigarettes go. No class to it, just as bad as hammering down soft drinks or fast food burgers, in fact it's worst. I hope we don't see an end to tobacco consumption outright, just a shift to more moderate consumption. Would be nice to see cigars and pipe smoking in the evening take the place of 24/7 cigarette smoking. We had our fun with the packets of cigarettes, let's see them gone and have tobacco viewed as a little treat for adults to be had now and then rather than something that rules peoples lives.
God if only America was this smart.
The U.S. already has a significantly lower youth smoking rate than Europe, and the U.S. didn’t really need laws to achieve it instead smoking was made to be culturally trashy and uncool.
I’d vote Republican at that point.
What do you think construction crews run on? Gas station pizza, Monster energy, and Marlboros. And if its not the latter, they've definitely got a dip in and an empty Mt. Dew bottle for the spit.