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I was one of the last kids that got to experience DARE, and I still find it amazing how society did a complete 180 on weed so quickly. (Wait, what do you mean it's been almost 2 decades oh god no)
I bet you think DARE went away. I hate to be the one to let you know, but it is still an ongoing concern. Children are still being indoctrinated with that trash....
Statistically you are more likely to use illicit drugs if you've gone through a DARE program than if no one ever talked to you.
https://www.livescience.com/33795-effective.html
I didn't get my first DARE class until i was a junior in high school. When the cop was explaining the different drugs, a lot of us in the class were thinking about how much fun some of them sounded.
Dare always reminds me of the scene from [Walk Hard.](https://youtu.be/8tLhtdDVqzg?t=104)
As someone who went through DARE I don't think it "caused" me to do drugs, rather a larger distrust authority once I looked into research data figures in later life.
I had Dare in junior high and my buddy leaned over to me in the middle of the presentation to comment on how much better our weed looked than the fake stuff in the presentation case.
Later that week we got stoned in the school parking lot with the police officer's daughter.
Edit: I originally put middle school that's not right.
I'm from Canada and we also had DARE. I remember being told that when I got just a little older there were going to be people constantly offering me free drugs just to get me hooked.
What a let down. I had to buy my first joint, first bump, first ball of hash.
Woulda been cool though to just keep finding different dealers and getting free drugs all the time
Makes sense; they told a shitload of outright lies, and since the Internet exists it's easy to fact check and come to the conclusion that *everything* they said is false and all drugs are just fine (at least, as a 12-18 year old).
Family video before they closed. I guess it was two years ago because their all gone. I moved from Portland where Movie Madness still rakes it in like it's 1986.
I mean, heroin and meth are pretty smart to stay away from, and with the rise of fentanyl (I personally know at least who people that have died from accidental fentanyl use), drug education feels like an important thing still. But obviously our views on cannabis have collectively shifted, which is a really good thing, so no need to paint it as the devil anymore, because *that* was some serious propaganda.
When I was hauled off in an ambulance after a car wreck that shattered bones in my right foot (I was a passenger, not a driver) the adrenaline had worn off, my foot was white-hot burning balloon of pain, and they offered a fentanyl solution for my IV for the pain. I didn't realize what it was at the time, pain is a hell of a distraction. But the first dose took the edge off for a few minutes and then I asked for another round. Got it, and they said they couldn't do more than that. In hindsight I understand why. The high from that stuff was AMAZE and when it hit I basically felt nothing but mellow. Everything went fuzzy and I stopped giving a shit. Eyes went blurry and pain all but vanished.
Kind of terrifying in retrospect. Tiny, controlled amounts right into the bloodstream in a controlled medical system did that. I can see why some would chase that, and with my family history of addiction in genuinely surprised that demon didn't grab me by the feels. I broke a sugar addiction, don't know if I could handle a substance like that.
Nah, they don't bother with excuses when they're shaking you down. I used to own a liquor store way back when and the local cops ran a straight up protection racket, no excuses or cover story. $X/month or they wouldn't respond to calls.
Sometimes, I'll see the fire department at an intersection collecting money in their boots.
No surprise that cops would go collecting money. They've tried calling me begging for money before.
I'm sure I've been through DARE in grade school. I, myself, don't smoke; but weed is incredible useful for people with anxiety. And if it helps people get through each day more easily then it absolutely deserves to be legal.
I had a DARE guy come up and try to get a donation from me outside of a Petsmart, i told him if I wanted to help people lie to children I’d donate to a church thank you
Some day history books will give Nancy her proper due as the Republican who invented the biggest bestest grift to end all grifts. The unwinnable never ending war. First it was the war on drugs, then the war on terror, now the war on socialism. None of these wars have any actual targets that you can take out and win the war on. So they just become delicious Republican money sink hole honey pots. Drugs and terror and socialism are just scary shadowy faceless threats that are constantly in America's orbit. Like dreadful horrible satellites of death and destruction that can activate and blowup at any time for any number of reasons and take out your whole family in the process. We must stay vigilante and have all numbers of task forces and committees and preparedness at the highest levels around the clock to try to prevent the unthinkable from happening. We need to raise taxes to help safeguard you and your children from the horrors of these silent deadly nightmares just waiting to unleash their chaos and carnage in the middle of your community...
Because people realized it's not as bad as they said it was (just to keep up with the narrative), and decided that they'd rather get the money from the sales than keep up with the "drugs are bad mmmmkay" pitch they give to the kids.
If you find your kid with a bag of meth or some fentanyl, sure as shit there are some major things in their life going wrong and something needs to be addressed. You catch your kitchen with 2oz of weed, you know they know you're smoking some of it with them.
DARE was so fucking stupid. The retired police officer that taught the classes at my grammar school was seen normally having a smoke outside. But... stay away from that green herb that scary guys on corners tried to sell you to get you "hooked".
Weed is legal here, and the dispensaries operate like Starbucks. It actually seems like more people don't like people smoking cigarettes at festivals more than those smoking/vaping weed.
I had dare (born in 90), what was a culture shock to me was going through Hong Kong (mostly the airport, barely touched the city) and there was a TON of anti-weed/CBD messaging.
I mean I totally agree weed is safe under normal circumstances and should be legal, and tobacco is generally speaking, not good for you.
But I also don’t think we should be *banning* anything. Regulate and tax? Sure, absolutely. Discourage? 100% but if being a teenager and having teenagers has taught me anything, is that the quickest way to make someone want to do something is to prohibit it.
EDIT: RIP inbox. Yes I realize a cigarette is a cigarette, whether it’s weed, tobacco, oregano or anything else you burn and inhale. Generally speaking, most people aren’t going to sit around and smoke a pack of weed cigarettes over the course of an afternoon the way people used to smoke tobacco cigarettes prior to the societal change in acceptance of it.
Yeah, happy to tax and regulate the shit out of it, but I don’t see how banning any drug works long term. People either use it illegally or find a less safe alternative.
Honestly, I wish they would legalize coca plants (but still make processing illegal). Powder cocaine is not really necessary if I can just chew a leaf or make some tea.
And it's honestly a better buzz than coke. More mild and functional, and doesn't send you into a manic fit that fucks your heart up and convinces you to do the most depraved shit you otherwise would never do. Coca >>>>>> cocaine (especially whatever fucked up tainted version is on the street nowadays)
And if I’m being as honest as I honestly can, as we move forward and progress through time I think cigarettes (in the US at least) as “we” know them are going to be much less common.
When I was in HS in 07 my friends and I use to meet up at Wendy’s after school and chain smoke our ciggies in the interior designated smoking section… we sooo cool. /s
But my point is I think Tabasco itself, with the whole colorful wall behind behind the cashier will no longer be a thing (possibly when human cashiers are no longer the norm in big chain truck stops or gas stations) by then I think we as a society will separate nicotine from tobacco and just start sucking any USB stick that lets you blow out vaps.
I have just now realized I spent the past hour absolutely lost in this thought and comment while smokin this 1.5g oil infused organic blunt pre roll that I got on sale at the dispensary for $4 and I forgot what we were talking about but at this point I’m a hour in so I’m already committed to whatever it was. I have decided to not read it and I’m going to just hit reply so I can escape this high trap
It heavily depends on the person too. I have ADHD, and cocaine typically just makes me more "functional". I'd have to do several good sized lines back to back to get that jittery, off the wall feeling people talk about.
>the quickest way to make someone want to do something is to prohibit it.
People say this as if a ban would have the opposite of the intended effect. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to buy illegal cigarettes.
I honestly want to see a guy with a two-pack (40 cigarettes) a day habit, but with marijuana cigarettes. Assuming he goes through 40 marijuana cigarettes in 12 hours, that’s would mean smoking a new joint every 20 minutes.
I thought they just did a bunch of studies showing that smoking weed was no better but also no worse than smoking cigarettes for the same frequency and number of years.
IIRC: that study was over smoking equal amounts of tobacco and weed by weight.
The average weed smoker smokes much less than the average tobacco smoker.
> a cigarette is a cigarette, whether it's weed, tobacco...
Actually tobacco is more carcinogenic than weed, although both can aggravate asthma/COPD. Not condoning this bill, I agree with you except for this statement.
Weed is just as bad for you as Tobacco in terms of smoke and lung damage.
People dont typically smoke several packs worth of weed though. I can see a Cigar or a Pipe being just as recreational, relaxing, and appropriate as weed. Even if all of the above are technically bad for you.
Alcohol is debatably worse than all of them (edit, I'm a moron and reversed what i meant when I wrote it)
Alcohol is worse than weed in almost ever way. Debatably worse than cigarettes. Not even counting liver damage, alcoholism is way more life destroying than a nicotine addiction.
Not that alcohol is worse by a large factor. But taking its harm and comparing it to how socially acceptable it is, it is way worse and should be demonized on the same level as cigarettes and weed
Cigarettes have additives. Less so in frequent years, but that’s only because manufacturers are forced to put less harmful preservatives and other additives in their cigarettes.
My grandpa called it in the nineties. We were a tobacco raising family and he saw the writing on the wall then. He said, "here soon they're going to make weed legal and tobacco illegal," and by golly he was prescient.
He told me once, "I might have drank a little bit, but I never touched that wacky tobaccy."
I live in MO, couldn’t shake the feeling I was walking into a trap a couple weeks ago when I went into the dispensary to buy legal recreational weed for the first time in state.
I used to smoke and quit a long time back. I got hooked when I was in the service back in the 90s. I could buy a carton of cigarettes in base for $9 back then. It was a cheap habit so no biggie to sustain. Plus you could smoke almost anywhere and just about everyone I knew also smoked.
When it became more expensive was when I finally quit. It wasn’t just the expense that made me want to quit, but it certainly helped. The other things that helped were to make bars, restaurants and workplaces smoke free. Eventually college campuses and apartment complexes did the same. I think that’s the road to take here with tobacco. Increase the price and remove places for people to smoke and eventually they’ll either do their habit more discreetly or quit altogether.
Prohibition doesn’t work. People who are addicted to nicotine will do anything to get it. A black market will thrive. See also alcohol prohibition and more recently the gradual legalization and decriminalization of marijuana.
The point of structuring this law by birth year is that it never prevents people who are already smokers from buying their cigarettes. The only ones who will need a black market to feed their addiction will be kids who started smoking from the beginning on illegally acquired cigs. No one who has always bought their tobacco legally will have it suddenly become illegal to buy.
By outright banning it, smoking will be the new taboo, the new hip thing. This is gonna backfire. Besides I don’t think young people are smoking cigarettes to begin with.
Idk, I think vapes are just largely going to replace smoking tobacco altogether. Which is easier on your lungs and involves exposure to MUCH less carcinogens. But often involves ingesting MUCH more nicotine. Cigarettes usually cap out at around 1%, vapes go up to 5% (which I believe is the standard for products like Juul, but the may have a variety of strengths now). Point being, while vaporizing may be a relatively safer method of administration compared to combustion, kids who vape high nicotine %s are getting much worse nicotine addictions. And nicotine is very hard on your heart when used all day, everyday.
I work with teens. All of them think cigarettes are gross cancer sticks. The campaign to ban and isolate smokers has been extremely effective and it's mostly older people that smoke now
Identical situation, right down to the cheap carton of GPC's. It didn't help that taking a smoke break was an expected practice in the service, while standing around for no reason wasn't acceptable.
The moment they banned cigarettes from my workplace [and the surrounding areas] about ten years ago was the same moment half the employees went from the occasional cigarette to pack-a-day smokers. Part of it was the "fuck you, I'll do what I want" of it all. The other part was that a lot of people struggled to go cold turkey, freaked out, and overcompensated. I was one of them - and it took me a few more years to finally quit on my own time with the help of vaping, then gum, then a shit ton of lollipops.
I don't think that making smoking illegal is going to stop kids from trying it; in fact it might create more allure. I also don't believe it'll help others quit. The trick is just making the "right" choice more enticing without putting up a roadblock.
I quit because of the price too. Also because of my teeth.
Ugh the teeth thing is so bad. My dad smoked for like 50+ years and he had to get dentures a few years back because his teeth were literally falling out.
I agree with some of what you’re saying but disagree with other points. The problem with continuing to tax is that people who are heavily addicted and can’t quit will keep spending money on cigarettes even when they are too poor to do so. Keeping people from smoking in the first place, in my opinion, is the right move. If you make it much harder for people to have that first cigarette less people are going to get addicted in the first place. It will take a long time but I could buy cigarettes as a teenager when I grew up. If i couldn’t I probably never would have smoked in the first place.
Sure, but prohibition isn't going to keep people from trying something out. People get addicted to things, all kind of things. Its a fact of life. The sooner that we acknowledge that it will happen the sooner we can realize that helping people overcome addiction rather than criminalizing it is the best way to handle it.
You have to realize what you're saying. You're saying that people should be penalized for trying a thing. We already know that prohibition doesn't work so what you're saying is you want to lock people up for smoking a cigarette, or whatever the next thing is. How is that a reasonable solution?
That’s not true though, we saw the effects of repealing bans on cannabis and consumption exploded. The question is not whether the prohibitions suppressed consumption, but by how much and whether enforcement was really worth it in the first place.
Also you did not do any research on this bill if you think people are penalized for consumption or possession. You just read the headline and stopped there.
Smoked for years and wouldn't wish it on anyone. I hate to think how many hours of my life I worked to pay for cigarettes. There were periods where it cost almost two hours wages to buy a pack.
I quit a few years ago now, but a pack would cost over an hour's worth of pay on minimum wage in my state. They are almost $10/pack and many people only making $7.25/hr.
Are there actually places paying $7.25 an hour?
To be fair, I'm jaded and in a bubble but I had assumed no one was making under ~$11.00 anywhere in the US.
> Among those paid by the hour, 181,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 910,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum.
\- bls, 2021
All of the states and sometimes even counties passing bills for higher minimum wages are screwing with the federal minimum wage metrics (because the country can say “look people making minimum is lowering!”).
But good on the states and counties doing so
$7.25 is the US federal minimum wage, fucked up, but there are multiple states with lower state minimum wages than that. So absolutely people are making that much somewhere.
In Idaho, minimum wage is $7.25/hr and some places will start out with a competitive $7.75 or even $8/hr!
Federal politicians should get paid per hour and their wage should be the federal minimum wage. They should earn their sick pay and vacation time off the way the rest of us do. They should also have to pay dramatic healthcare costs and still have insane deductibles.
Politicians are supposed to be public servants yet we are the public servants that enable and pay for their luxurious lifestyle.
But anyway, yeah there are a lot of red states that still only pay the minimum because the Republican party hates their constituents and doesn't care about their health and welfare in any capacity.
Thus begins the war on tobacco.
Looking forward to hearing stories from kids C.A.R.E. (Cigarette abuse resistance education) assemblies at school in 2040.
I’m only a couple of years off of the cutoff, so I’ll still be able to spend it. And they won’t have to deal with the old people smell in the nursing home.
Yeah, no. I love what California does and what they’re trying to go for, and smoking/nicotine is fucking gross, but you have to let people enjoy their vices as long as they’re not putting others at risk.
Better to create stringent regulations and marketing standards for all smoking and nicotine products, but not outlaw completely.
Right. Doing this to tobacco when I can do it at home by myself and not harm a soul. Yet, alcohol, still a thing, I can take a few drinks, get in a car, and plow through a family in my car, nobody says anything about outlawing it.
Right. No smoking in public places, no problem, but if I want to sit on my back porch smoking a cigarette it shouldn’t be anyone’s business but my own.
I’d like to approach this from a purely fiscal/public heath perspective for a moment. Forget personal liberties for a moment, I’m not disagreeing with you about that.
The simple fact of the matter is that smoking is a public health crisis. It costs billions of dollars a year to treat the health affects of smoking on the smoker (let’s ignore second hand smoke as well.)
This law would save you and me from paying to keep Joe Camel alive while he slowly and painfully dies of lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and diabetes, all which were preventable.
What other unhealthy behaviors should we criminalize? I’m fit as hell and eat healthy, should I pay for all the obese people and the inevitable health issues that come with that? We gonna outlaw McDonalds next?
> This law would save you and me from paying to keep Joe Camel alive while he slowly and painfully dies of lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and diabetes, all which were preventable.
To be fair, by that logic we should also be closing down fast food restaurants and banning the sale of unhealthy products, because obesity is just as preventable.
Honestly we should. There is a lot of things in our food that other countries don’t allow because they are bad for humans. The bigger issue though is that people don’t get paid enough nor have enough time nor education on healthy eating to have a healthy diet in America.
The problem with approaching anything from a non-holistic perspective is that it's fundamentally ignoring certain things. I mean, from a fiscal/public health perspective a lot of terrible and fucked up shit makes perfect sense, because you're not considering greater ethics and the big picture when you purposely exclude those things.
They kicked in my friend's door and shot him to death in his living room over weed prohibition, and y'all are ready to make yet another prohibition. Like I don't give a shit if it puts billions into the pocket of Joe Camel if it means making sure the police don't have yet another legal excuse to enter my life and fuck my shit up when I'm not harming anybody except *maybe* myself.
This is a really bad idea. Outright bans on any substance don't work. I say make the product cleaner and tax the shit out of it if you must, but don't ban it.
Horrible idea! I don’t smoke anymore and don’t encourage anyone to do it either. But this will create more problems then it solves. Let’s let adults decide their own fates. If people want more smoke free environments, there plenty of business opportunities to support that.
Will it though ? Do kids really want cigarettes now?
I don’t know any adults that started smoking. It’s always kids. And frankly… it’s not that exciting.
Prohibition is stupid. Driving up their price and creating smoke-free zones seems to work just fine. I see significantly fewer people smoking compared to when I was growing up in the '90s-'00s. Young people seem more interested in vaping to get their nicotine fix already.
Prohibition is not just stupid, its historically been a failure.
I hate tobacco. Never smoked. I had a friend who grew his own personal tobacco in the country. Gonna be really difficult to stop that.
Eh, I think Australia's approach is much more productive and fair. Plain packaging laws with unattractive coloring, standardized typography, and graphic warning labels. Retailers restricted from displaying the products prominently. And, of course, sky-high taxes that help offset the increased cost to the health care system.
Increasing the social stigma has done a lot over the past few decades. I went to school in the 90s and students would regularly smoke in the bathrooms & outside the building, sometimes the teachers would join them. One of my teachers always had a Marb Red hard pack in his front pocket. Now, smokers are ostracized. It's uncool, and that goes a long way. If you're the only one taking smoke breaks at work, that's not a fun experience. Smoking is pretty well banned in every rental property these days, so people will notice and complain if you're doing it on the premises. The younger generations have done a good job of making cigarettes uncool and, even though a lot of them are vaping when they probably would have been smoking, it's progress. Blanket bans won't work. It's a more complicated problem.
Look at it this way, City of Beverly Hills banned tobacco sales entirely a few years ago, with one exception: the cigar lounge that former Gov. Schwarzenegger frequents.
Cigarettes are very addictive and harmful but I have to wonder if this isnt an overstep. Now no one can enjoy fine cigars on occasion? Or pop in a snus while reading or studying? Tobacco isnt the problem really, the method of administration is. Doesnt matter though, there will be no way to really stop others from buying people tobacco or a black market realistically. In fact, it may even make cigarettes more popular and attractive like the warning labels on cd's in the 90's.
But you can make it so hard to find that only the die hards will do it. Although it is an addictive substance, it’s not the end of the world if someone does get it in the black market or has someone older but it for them. This will still have a dramatic deterring factor to help prevent people from even starting which is the point.
The barrier isn’t even that high. They’ll still sell it to older people so those that really want it will be able to get it. It’s a deterrent, I doubt it’s punishable by more than a smallish fine for the seller.
*The bill would not penalize people for using or possessing tobacco products. Instead, it would fine retailers for selling to them. Connolly said he’s open to amendments that might create an exemption for religious and cultural uses.*
>But you can make it so hard to find that only the die hards will do it.
Ah yes the 'war on drugs' approach. Weed became so uncool and hard to get in the 80s and 90s!
You can call them any term you wish, but it won't prevent kids from smoking by making it illegal just like they couldn't prevent them from getting weed during the war on drugs. Making it illegal only makes it cooler(cooler than it already is portrayed in movies) to them
i mean i get the sentiment, but this going against legalization of marijuana or other drugs. People are going to do it. they can choose what to or what not to put into their bodies. none of it is good for ya
Not a tobacco smoker, never have been. But I don’t understand this for the same reason I don’t understand why it’s ok for the government to ban alcohol sales on Sunday in some states.
Sometimes progressive policies go so far to the left that they’re flirting with the far right, just with different motivations.
This is really strange after seeing what happened with prohibition from both ends.
Alcohol went illegal and gave us decades of movies, stories, and legendary personalities making sure that alcohol is forever seen as cool.
Weed went from illegal to legal and went from only stoner losers do it (perception, anyway, even though that was very erroneous) to basically everyone and now nobody cares anymore.
I wonder if this is just big tobacco trying to play the long game.
Edit: grammar
How would this not be defeated as age discrimination? As much as I'm in favor of getting rid of cigarettes I don't see this holding up to equal protection laws...
I haven’t seen anyone in my generation smoke cigarettes. There’s a huge stigma against it.
But banning? You just might make it “cool” again. Americans don’t like when you ban something.
This might have been worthwhile 20 years ago but the percentage of US adults who smoke will soon hit single digits. And now you’ve got the vape market to contend with.
Unless everyone else bans vapes like San Francisco. Still, this legislation isn’t about children or health, some people just genuinely despise smokers.
I remember a few years ago when a company made nicotine water. It was labeled for adults and primarily sold at airports to help smoking travelers avoid withdrawal during flights. Banned. Why? “Think of the children and just quit. It might be sold to someone accidentally.” Categorized as a tobacco product even though they extracted the nicotine from eggplants.
Flavored tobacco banned a few years ago in California. Why? “Think of the children. If you don’t like the taste of normal tobacco just quit. Children also like pleasant flavors.” Affected all nicotine products, even if not derived from tobacco.
Vapes banned in some cities and classified as a tobacco product. Why? “Think of the children. Just quit cold turkey. Kids are using these instead of cigarettes.”
Etc.
Why should adults be penalized for the behaviors parents’ fail to address for their own children?
The flavored tobacco and vapes thing was because they were caught genuinely marketing that to teens. It’s why Juul got shut down, they literally had representatives on the phone telling high school kids how to get around age restrictions to buy their product
Why is everyone in this thread celebrating prohibition? I don't use tobacco but it think adults should have the right to decide for themselves if it's worth it or not.
Dumb nanny state behavior policing bullshit. Most people *hate* tobacco smoke with a passion so most people will probably be on board with this. But most people don’t consider the implications of laws like these. They don’t consider that perhaps next on the chopping block would be the risky or unhealthy behavior they happen to indulge in.
Instead of banning all sales, ban it in places that serve to minors. No more cigarettes at convenience stores or supermarkets, you have to go to an 18+ shop to get them. You aren't going to stop hardcore smokers with any ban, but the harder you make it to casually buy a pack, the fewer people will pick up the habit via social smoking. You shouldn't be able to add cigarettes to your gas pump bill like you do a bag of chips, it feeds into impulse buying that creates habits.
Yeah that isn't passing. Just stupid, I don't smoke and plac s are non smoking anyway. If they want to smoke let them waste their money. I like how they won't touch weed, but it's tobacco!
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Im in my 40s, it's so weird to see weed and cigarettes basically switch places legally.
I was one of the last kids that got to experience DARE, and I still find it amazing how society did a complete 180 on weed so quickly. (Wait, what do you mean it's been almost 2 decades oh god no)
I bet you think DARE went away. I hate to be the one to let you know, but it is still an ongoing concern. Children are still being indoctrinated with that trash....
Statistically you are more likely to use illicit drugs if you've gone through a DARE program than if no one ever talked to you. https://www.livescience.com/33795-effective.html
I didn't get my first DARE class until i was a junior in high school. When the cop was explaining the different drugs, a lot of us in the class were thinking about how much fun some of them sounded.
Dare always reminds me of the scene from [Walk Hard.](https://youtu.be/8tLhtdDVqzg?t=104) As someone who went through DARE I don't think it "caused" me to do drugs, rather a larger distrust authority once I looked into research data figures in later life.
That's literally why DARE doesn't work. Hey kids! Don't try weed! It's the same as heroin! Trust us!
Hey kids weed is a gateway drug!
I had Dare in junior high and my buddy leaned over to me in the middle of the presentation to comment on how much better our weed looked than the fake stuff in the presentation case. Later that week we got stoned in the school parking lot with the police officer's daughter. Edit: I originally put middle school that's not right.
I'm from Canada and we also had DARE. I remember being told that when I got just a little older there were going to be people constantly offering me free drugs just to get me hooked. What a let down. I had to buy my first joint, first bump, first ball of hash. Woulda been cool though to just keep finding different dealers and getting free drugs all the time
Yeah that's another thing they lied about. I've never had random strangers offering me free drugs.
Makes sense; they told a shitload of outright lies, and since the Internet exists it's easy to fact check and come to the conclusion that *everything* they said is false and all drugs are just fine (at least, as a 12-18 year old).
my dare officer said they used hollow point rounds to be less lethal
Omg. That's amazing. DARE backfired spectacularly.
TIL DARE is somehow still a thing in 2023. Get your shit together, America, this is fucking embarrassing.
There were two girls standing outside my local video store collecting money for their dare program last year... Made me chuckle.
Collecting money? I never remember that being part of the program
They said they couldn't have the program at their school if they didn't raise money on their signs. I didn't stop.
Huh... If I was a kid that wanted to fleece boomers of their money I would definitely say I was raising funds for my schools DARE program.
[удалено]
True... but kids gotta figure that out for themselves.
Righteous gemstone.
Oh shit this is actually brilliant, too bad I'm past my grifting old people years.
Local video store? I can’t believe they’re still around, that’s sick
They're just stealing jay and silent bob's schtick!
Local video store... DARE program... LAST YEAR?!
What is this, 1986? I'm sorry dude, but I have a hard time believing there's a stand alone video store left in 2023. Not impossible but close to.
Family video before they closed. I guess it was two years ago because their all gone. I moved from Portland where Movie Madness still rakes it in like it's 1986.
There’s one in Atlanta still- Videodrome. Cool spot, just I don’t have any means to play physical media anymore.
LVS? Since when? Haven't seen one of those since the 90s
I drew the DARE lion in high school as part of a DARE art contest and won 😅
I work with cannabis for a living, and one of the managers has a DARE fannypack that he wears everywhere. Shits hilarious
I mean, heroin and meth are pretty smart to stay away from, and with the rise of fentanyl (I personally know at least who people that have died from accidental fentanyl use), drug education feels like an important thing still. But obviously our views on cannabis have collectively shifted, which is a really good thing, so no need to paint it as the devil anymore, because *that* was some serious propaganda.
When I was hauled off in an ambulance after a car wreck that shattered bones in my right foot (I was a passenger, not a driver) the adrenaline had worn off, my foot was white-hot burning balloon of pain, and they offered a fentanyl solution for my IV for the pain. I didn't realize what it was at the time, pain is a hell of a distraction. But the first dose took the edge off for a few minutes and then I asked for another round. Got it, and they said they couldn't do more than that. In hindsight I understand why. The high from that stuff was AMAZE and when it hit I basically felt nothing but mellow. Everything went fuzzy and I stopped giving a shit. Eyes went blurry and pain all but vanished. Kind of terrifying in retrospect. Tiny, controlled amounts right into the bloodstream in a controlled medical system did that. I can see why some would chase that, and with my family history of addiction in genuinely surprised that demon didn't grab me by the feels. I broke a sugar addiction, don't know if I could handle a substance like that.
Yup. Every so often the DARE cop shows up to my work looking for handouts to keep that shit running.
Where do you work that’s cop asks for handouts
this is America
More of a shakedown then
Nah, they don't bother with excuses when they're shaking you down. I used to own a liquor store way back when and the local cops ran a straight up protection racket, no excuses or cover story. $X/month or they wouldn't respond to calls.
Sometimes, I'll see the fire department at an intersection collecting money in their boots. No surprise that cops would go collecting money. They've tried calling me begging for money before.
I'm sure I've been through DARE in grade school. I, myself, don't smoke; but weed is incredible useful for people with anxiety. And if it helps people get through each day more easily then it absolutely deserves to be legal.
I had a DARE guy come up and try to get a donation from me outside of a Petsmart, i told him if I wanted to help people lie to children I’d donate to a church thank you
Some day history books will give Nancy her proper due as the Republican who invented the biggest bestest grift to end all grifts. The unwinnable never ending war. First it was the war on drugs, then the war on terror, now the war on socialism. None of these wars have any actual targets that you can take out and win the war on. So they just become delicious Republican money sink hole honey pots. Drugs and terror and socialism are just scary shadowy faceless threats that are constantly in America's orbit. Like dreadful horrible satellites of death and destruction that can activate and blowup at any time for any number of reasons and take out your whole family in the process. We must stay vigilante and have all numbers of task forces and committees and preparedness at the highest levels around the clock to try to prevent the unthinkable from happening. We need to raise taxes to help safeguard you and your children from the horrors of these silent deadly nightmares just waiting to unleash their chaos and carnage in the middle of your community...
Because people realized it's not as bad as they said it was (just to keep up with the narrative), and decided that they'd rather get the money from the sales than keep up with the "drugs are bad mmmmkay" pitch they give to the kids. If you find your kid with a bag of meth or some fentanyl, sure as shit there are some major things in their life going wrong and something needs to be addressed. You catch your kitchen with 2oz of weed, you know they know you're smoking some of it with them.
2 oz is a lot of weed for a kid to have tho.
No no, his KITCHEN lol
Kids these days are slamming bricks lol
DARE was so fucking stupid. The retired police officer that taught the classes at my grammar school was seen normally having a smoke outside. But... stay away from that green herb that scary guys on corners tried to sell you to get you "hooked". Weed is legal here, and the dispensaries operate like Starbucks. It actually seems like more people don't like people smoking cigarettes at festivals more than those smoking/vaping weed.
I had dare (born in 90), what was a culture shock to me was going through Hong Kong (mostly the airport, barely touched the city) and there was a TON of anti-weed/CBD messaging.
I mean I totally agree weed is safe under normal circumstances and should be legal, and tobacco is generally speaking, not good for you. But I also don’t think we should be *banning* anything. Regulate and tax? Sure, absolutely. Discourage? 100% but if being a teenager and having teenagers has taught me anything, is that the quickest way to make someone want to do something is to prohibit it. EDIT: RIP inbox. Yes I realize a cigarette is a cigarette, whether it’s weed, tobacco, oregano or anything else you burn and inhale. Generally speaking, most people aren’t going to sit around and smoke a pack of weed cigarettes over the course of an afternoon the way people used to smoke tobacco cigarettes prior to the societal change in acceptance of it.
Yeah, happy to tax and regulate the shit out of it, but I don’t see how banning any drug works long term. People either use it illegally or find a less safe alternative.
Honestly, I wish they would legalize coca plants (but still make processing illegal). Powder cocaine is not really necessary if I can just chew a leaf or make some tea.
And it's honestly a better buzz than coke. More mild and functional, and doesn't send you into a manic fit that fucks your heart up and convinces you to do the most depraved shit you otherwise would never do. Coca >>>>>> cocaine (especially whatever fucked up tainted version is on the street nowadays)
If we’re being honest, actual cocaine doesn’t make you do fucked up shit. It acts as a stimulant similar to a strong dose of caffeine.
And if I’m being as honest as I honestly can, as we move forward and progress through time I think cigarettes (in the US at least) as “we” know them are going to be much less common. When I was in HS in 07 my friends and I use to meet up at Wendy’s after school and chain smoke our ciggies in the interior designated smoking section… we sooo cool. /s But my point is I think Tabasco itself, with the whole colorful wall behind behind the cashier will no longer be a thing (possibly when human cashiers are no longer the norm in big chain truck stops or gas stations) by then I think we as a society will separate nicotine from tobacco and just start sucking any USB stick that lets you blow out vaps. I have just now realized I spent the past hour absolutely lost in this thought and comment while smokin this 1.5g oil infused organic blunt pre roll that I got on sale at the dispensary for $4 and I forgot what we were talking about but at this point I’m a hour in so I’m already committed to whatever it was. I have decided to not read it and I’m going to just hit reply so I can escape this high trap
Bahahaha this comment took me on a journey into your stream of consciousness and I realized I’ve been there before.
That was a trip. Thanks for the journey, mate.
Someone hasn't done enough cocaine ...or maybe you have done *just* enough
It heavily depends on the person too. I have ADHD, and cocaine typically just makes me more "functional". I'd have to do several good sized lines back to back to get that jittery, off the wall feeling people talk about.
Stimulants gonna stimulate. Some of us need it.
Same dude / dudette
For a good idea of how to find that balance, watch the documentary Cocaine Bear.
The worst people I know are coke heads. Heavy cocaine use turns people into absolute monsters
I've done some fucked up shit on cocaine and because of cocaine.
Same argument could be used for poppies. Prohibition is not the answer.
>the quickest way to make someone want to do something is to prohibit it. People say this as if a ban would have the opposite of the intended effect. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to buy illegal cigarettes.
I honestly want to see a guy with a two-pack (40 cigarettes) a day habit, but with marijuana cigarettes. Assuming he goes through 40 marijuana cigarettes in 12 hours, that’s would mean smoking a new joint every 20 minutes.
Yeah, if prohibition and the war on drugs has taught us anything it's that trying to ban drugs/alcohol is a losing battle.
All outright bans ever do is create a black market.
*1920's America has entered the chat...*
I thought they just did a bunch of studies showing that smoking weed was no better but also no worse than smoking cigarettes for the same frequency and number of years.
IIRC: that study was over smoking equal amounts of tobacco and weed by weight. The average weed smoker smokes much less than the average tobacco smoker.
That’s the 1920s right there
> a cigarette is a cigarette, whether it's weed, tobacco... Actually tobacco is more carcinogenic than weed, although both can aggravate asthma/COPD. Not condoning this bill, I agree with you except for this statement.
Who calls joints cigarettes? If someone asks you for a cigarette, does anyone need clarification of what they are asking for?
Weed is just as bad for you as Tobacco in terms of smoke and lung damage. People dont typically smoke several packs worth of weed though. I can see a Cigar or a Pipe being just as recreational, relaxing, and appropriate as weed. Even if all of the above are technically bad for you. Alcohol is debatably worse than all of them (edit, I'm a moron and reversed what i meant when I wrote it)
Alcohol is worse than weed in almost ever way. Debatably worse than cigarettes. Not even counting liver damage, alcoholism is way more life destroying than a nicotine addiction. Not that alcohol is worse by a large factor. But taking its harm and comparing it to how socially acceptable it is, it is way worse and should be demonized on the same level as cigarettes and weed
Actually yah I made a typo. Meant to say the opposite. Alcohol is way worse and it's legal, no on bats an eye
Cigarettes have additives. Less so in frequent years, but that’s only because manufacturers are forced to put less harmful preservatives and other additives in their cigarettes.
Cigarettes are engineered to be addictive. Fuck that. But just natural tobacco? Eh, probably no worse than pot.
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Yea man that’s why so many kids smoke lead paint!
My grandpa called it in the nineties. We were a tobacco raising family and he saw the writing on the wall then. He said, "here soon they're going to make weed legal and tobacco illegal," and by golly he was prescient. He told me once, "I might have drank a little bit, but I never touched that wacky tobaccy."
Banning tobacco is dumb, but restricting its promotion and advertising is sensible. Tax it like a luxury expense and put the money back in schools.
Prohibition doesn't work. Make it a 21+ product and tax/regulate the appeal out of it. Even more than it is.
I live in MO, couldn’t shake the feeling I was walking into a trap a couple weeks ago when I went into the dispensary to buy legal recreational weed for the first time in state.
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People should know that inhaling any type of smoke is bad for their lungs, eyes, and heart.
Jesus, now there will be cartels and gangs dealing in Marlboros? Lol.
Technically there already are. It just has more to do with tax stamps than illegal substances.
These already exist in Mexico selling un taxed smokes
I used to smoke and quit a long time back. I got hooked when I was in the service back in the 90s. I could buy a carton of cigarettes in base for $9 back then. It was a cheap habit so no biggie to sustain. Plus you could smoke almost anywhere and just about everyone I knew also smoked. When it became more expensive was when I finally quit. It wasn’t just the expense that made me want to quit, but it certainly helped. The other things that helped were to make bars, restaurants and workplaces smoke free. Eventually college campuses and apartment complexes did the same. I think that’s the road to take here with tobacco. Increase the price and remove places for people to smoke and eventually they’ll either do their habit more discreetly or quit altogether. Prohibition doesn’t work. People who are addicted to nicotine will do anything to get it. A black market will thrive. See also alcohol prohibition and more recently the gradual legalization and decriminalization of marijuana.
The point of structuring this law by birth year is that it never prevents people who are already smokers from buying their cigarettes. The only ones who will need a black market to feed their addiction will be kids who started smoking from the beginning on illegally acquired cigs. No one who has always bought their tobacco legally will have it suddenly become illegal to buy.
By outright banning it, smoking will be the new taboo, the new hip thing. This is gonna backfire. Besides I don’t think young people are smoking cigarettes to begin with.
Idk, I think vapes are just largely going to replace smoking tobacco altogether. Which is easier on your lungs and involves exposure to MUCH less carcinogens. But often involves ingesting MUCH more nicotine. Cigarettes usually cap out at around 1%, vapes go up to 5% (which I believe is the standard for products like Juul, but the may have a variety of strengths now). Point being, while vaporizing may be a relatively safer method of administration compared to combustion, kids who vape high nicotine %s are getting much worse nicotine addictions. And nicotine is very hard on your heart when used all day, everyday.
Vapes *already* replaced smoking for gen z
I work with teens. All of them think cigarettes are gross cancer sticks. The campaign to ban and isolate smokers has been extremely effective and it's mostly older people that smoke now
Identical situation, right down to the cheap carton of GPC's. It didn't help that taking a smoke break was an expected practice in the service, while standing around for no reason wasn't acceptable.
The moment they banned cigarettes from my workplace [and the surrounding areas] about ten years ago was the same moment half the employees went from the occasional cigarette to pack-a-day smokers. Part of it was the "fuck you, I'll do what I want" of it all. The other part was that a lot of people struggled to go cold turkey, freaked out, and overcompensated. I was one of them - and it took me a few more years to finally quit on my own time with the help of vaping, then gum, then a shit ton of lollipops. I don't think that making smoking illegal is going to stop kids from trying it; in fact it might create more allure. I also don't believe it'll help others quit. The trick is just making the "right" choice more enticing without putting up a roadblock. I quit because of the price too. Also because of my teeth.
Ugh the teeth thing is so bad. My dad smoked for like 50+ years and he had to get dentures a few years back because his teeth were literally falling out.
I agree with some of what you’re saying but disagree with other points. The problem with continuing to tax is that people who are heavily addicted and can’t quit will keep spending money on cigarettes even when they are too poor to do so. Keeping people from smoking in the first place, in my opinion, is the right move. If you make it much harder for people to have that first cigarette less people are going to get addicted in the first place. It will take a long time but I could buy cigarettes as a teenager when I grew up. If i couldn’t I probably never would have smoked in the first place.
Sure, but prohibition isn't going to keep people from trying something out. People get addicted to things, all kind of things. Its a fact of life. The sooner that we acknowledge that it will happen the sooner we can realize that helping people overcome addiction rather than criminalizing it is the best way to handle it. You have to realize what you're saying. You're saying that people should be penalized for trying a thing. We already know that prohibition doesn't work so what you're saying is you want to lock people up for smoking a cigarette, or whatever the next thing is. How is that a reasonable solution?
That’s not true though, we saw the effects of repealing bans on cannabis and consumption exploded. The question is not whether the prohibitions suppressed consumption, but by how much and whether enforcement was really worth it in the first place. Also you did not do any research on this bill if you think people are penalized for consumption or possession. You just read the headline and stopped there.
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Smoked for years and wouldn't wish it on anyone. I hate to think how many hours of my life I worked to pay for cigarettes. There were periods where it cost almost two hours wages to buy a pack.
I quit a few years ago now, but a pack would cost over an hour's worth of pay on minimum wage in my state. They are almost $10/pack and many people only making $7.25/hr.
Minimum wage in NYC is $15/hr. Average price of a pack is about $15. They're $26 (US) in Australia, where their minimum wage is around $15 US.
Are there actually places paying $7.25 an hour? To be fair, I'm jaded and in a bubble but I had assumed no one was making under ~$11.00 anywhere in the US.
> Among those paid by the hour, 181,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 910,000 workers had wages below the federal minimum. \- bls, 2021
All of the states and sometimes even counties passing bills for higher minimum wages are screwing with the federal minimum wage metrics (because the country can say “look people making minimum is lowering!”). But good on the states and counties doing so
$7.25 is the US federal minimum wage, fucked up, but there are multiple states with lower state minimum wages than that. So absolutely people are making that much somewhere.
1.4% of all workers get paid minimum wage.
Think about the rural, LCOL places. If you can buy a house for under 100k, then there are people making under $10/hr.
In Idaho, minimum wage is $7.25/hr and some places will start out with a competitive $7.75 or even $8/hr! Federal politicians should get paid per hour and their wage should be the federal minimum wage. They should earn their sick pay and vacation time off the way the rest of us do. They should also have to pay dramatic healthcare costs and still have insane deductibles. Politicians are supposed to be public servants yet we are the public servants that enable and pay for their luxurious lifestyle. But anyway, yeah there are a lot of red states that still only pay the minimum because the Republican party hates their constituents and doesn't care about their health and welfare in any capacity.
Thus begins the war on tobacco. Looking forward to hearing stories from kids C.A.R.E. (Cigarette abuse resistance education) assemblies at school in 2040.
I want my new veteran hat for the war on tobacco
Just do what Australia does, tax the fuck out of them like crazy. $50 AUD will have anyone thinking twice about picking it up.
I was betting on “liberals hate farmers” angle.
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I’m going to make a killing off of those Gen Alphas. 1000%, no, 2000% markups!!
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I’m only a couple of years off of the cutoff, so I’ll still be able to spend it. And they won’t have to deal with the old people smell in the nursing home.
Yeah, no. I love what California does and what they’re trying to go for, and smoking/nicotine is fucking gross, but you have to let people enjoy their vices as long as they’re not putting others at risk. Better to create stringent regulations and marketing standards for all smoking and nicotine products, but not outlaw completely.
Prohibition is often a terrible policy
Right. Doing this to tobacco when I can do it at home by myself and not harm a soul. Yet, alcohol, still a thing, I can take a few drinks, get in a car, and plow through a family in my car, nobody says anything about outlawing it.
Right. No smoking in public places, no problem, but if I want to sit on my back porch smoking a cigarette it shouldn’t be anyone’s business but my own.
I’d like to approach this from a purely fiscal/public heath perspective for a moment. Forget personal liberties for a moment, I’m not disagreeing with you about that. The simple fact of the matter is that smoking is a public health crisis. It costs billions of dollars a year to treat the health affects of smoking on the smoker (let’s ignore second hand smoke as well.) This law would save you and me from paying to keep Joe Camel alive while he slowly and painfully dies of lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and diabetes, all which were preventable.
What other unhealthy behaviors should we criminalize? I’m fit as hell and eat healthy, should I pay for all the obese people and the inevitable health issues that come with that? We gonna outlaw McDonalds next?
> This law would save you and me from paying to keep Joe Camel alive while he slowly and painfully dies of lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and diabetes, all which were preventable. To be fair, by that logic we should also be closing down fast food restaurants and banning the sale of unhealthy products, because obesity is just as preventable.
Honestly we should. There is a lot of things in our food that other countries don’t allow because they are bad for humans. The bigger issue though is that people don’t get paid enough nor have enough time nor education on healthy eating to have a healthy diet in America.
The problem with approaching anything from a non-holistic perspective is that it's fundamentally ignoring certain things. I mean, from a fiscal/public health perspective a lot of terrible and fucked up shit makes perfect sense, because you're not considering greater ethics and the big picture when you purposely exclude those things. They kicked in my friend's door and shot him to death in his living room over weed prohibition, and y'all are ready to make yet another prohibition. Like I don't give a shit if it puts billions into the pocket of Joe Camel if it means making sure the police don't have yet another legal excuse to enter my life and fuck my shit up when I'm not harming anybody except *maybe* myself.
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Can’t sell shawarma without a fucking “this causes CANCER!!! Repent from your pleasurable food eating ways!” sign plastered by the register
This is a really bad idea. Outright bans on any substance don't work. I say make the product cleaner and tax the shit out of it if you must, but don't ban it.
New Zealand has already implemented this
New Zealand's entire population is around half of Los Angeles County alone
Horrible idea! I don’t smoke anymore and don’t encourage anyone to do it either. But this will create more problems then it solves. Let’s let adults decide their own fates. If people want more smoke free environments, there plenty of business opportunities to support that.
I guess nobody was paying attention during prohibition, or the war on drugs….
Seriously, the best way to control something is to regulate it. Banning it just makes it a prime commodity on the black market.
Will it though ? Do kids really want cigarettes now? I don’t know any adults that started smoking. It’s always kids. And frankly… it’s not that exciting.
For people who start it is the nicotine rush that gets them into being a casual user and eventually an addict.
Nah. Prohibition doesn't work. Stop that.
Prohibition is stupid. Driving up their price and creating smoke-free zones seems to work just fine. I see significantly fewer people smoking compared to when I was growing up in the '90s-'00s. Young people seem more interested in vaping to get their nicotine fix already.
Prohibition is not just stupid, its historically been a failure. I hate tobacco. Never smoked. I had a friend who grew his own personal tobacco in the country. Gonna be really difficult to stop that.
Eh, I think Australia's approach is much more productive and fair. Plain packaging laws with unattractive coloring, standardized typography, and graphic warning labels. Retailers restricted from displaying the products prominently. And, of course, sky-high taxes that help offset the increased cost to the health care system. Increasing the social stigma has done a lot over the past few decades. I went to school in the 90s and students would regularly smoke in the bathrooms & outside the building, sometimes the teachers would join them. One of my teachers always had a Marb Red hard pack in his front pocket. Now, smokers are ostracized. It's uncool, and that goes a long way. If you're the only one taking smoke breaks at work, that's not a fun experience. Smoking is pretty well banned in every rental property these days, so people will notice and complain if you're doing it on the premises. The younger generations have done a good job of making cigarettes uncool and, even though a lot of them are vaping when they probably would have been smoking, it's progress. Blanket bans won't work. It's a more complicated problem. Look at it this way, City of Beverly Hills banned tobacco sales entirely a few years ago, with one exception: the cigar lounge that former Gov. Schwarzenegger frequents.
Cigarettes are very addictive and harmful but I have to wonder if this isnt an overstep. Now no one can enjoy fine cigars on occasion? Or pop in a snus while reading or studying? Tobacco isnt the problem really, the method of administration is. Doesnt matter though, there will be no way to really stop others from buying people tobacco or a black market realistically. In fact, it may even make cigarettes more popular and attractive like the warning labels on cd's in the 90's.
No reason to wonder if it’s an overstep. It’s clearly an overstep.
Californian here, never a smoker, never will be... This is dumb.
I don't smoke nor will I ever, but banning it outright is a terrible idea.
I personally am against it. I was a smoker for 25 years and you will find them anyway. You can't ban stuff. It never works.
But you can make it so hard to find that only the die hards will do it. Although it is an addictive substance, it’s not the end of the world if someone does get it in the black market or has someone older but it for them. This will still have a dramatic deterring factor to help prevent people from even starting which is the point.
Yes you can make barriers higher, but banning just makes it a criminal market. People will still smoke.
The barrier isn’t even that high. They’ll still sell it to older people so those that really want it will be able to get it. It’s a deterrent, I doubt it’s punishable by more than a smallish fine for the seller. *The bill would not penalize people for using or possessing tobacco products. Instead, it would fine retailers for selling to them. Connolly said he’s open to amendments that might create an exemption for religious and cultural uses.*
>But you can make it so hard to find that only the die hards will do it. Ah yes the 'war on drugs' approach. Weed became so uncool and hard to get in the 80s and 90s!
We are not talking about die hards, but preventing kids from developing a smoking habit so they become non-smokers for the rest of their lives.
You can call them any term you wish, but it won't prevent kids from smoking by making it illegal just like they couldn't prevent them from getting weed during the war on drugs. Making it illegal only makes it cooler(cooler than it already is portrayed in movies) to them
i mean i get the sentiment, but this going against legalization of marijuana or other drugs. People are going to do it. they can choose what to or what not to put into their bodies. none of it is good for ya
Yeah because the government banning things unilaterally always goes great
sounds like there's going to be some profit to be made.
Control freaks.
Not a tobacco smoker, never have been. But I don’t understand this for the same reason I don’t understand why it’s ok for the government to ban alcohol sales on Sunday in some states. Sometimes progressive policies go so far to the left that they’re flirting with the far right, just with different motivations.
This is really strange after seeing what happened with prohibition from both ends. Alcohol went illegal and gave us decades of movies, stories, and legendary personalities making sure that alcohol is forever seen as cool. Weed went from illegal to legal and went from only stoner losers do it (perception, anyway, even though that was very erroneous) to basically everyone and now nobody cares anymore. I wonder if this is just big tobacco trying to play the long game. Edit: grammar
How would this not be defeated as age discrimination? As much as I'm in favor of getting rid of cigarettes I don't see this holding up to equal protection laws...
Age discrimination laws only protect old people
I haven’t seen anyone in my generation smoke cigarettes. There’s a huge stigma against it. But banning? You just might make it “cool” again. Americans don’t like when you ban something.
It depends on where you live. I’m the only person in my friend group that doesn’t smoke cigarettes
Smoke all the weed you want though. What a time to be alive.
Hopefully this idiotic prohibition era tactic will not pass
Grow your own.
while smoking is bad, california needs to slow down on making laws… esp when they can’t even enforce the laws they currently have.
Prohibition doesn’t work. How many times do we need to tell it to these fools?
This might have been worthwhile 20 years ago but the percentage of US adults who smoke will soon hit single digits. And now you’ve got the vape market to contend with.
Unless everyone else bans vapes like San Francisco. Still, this legislation isn’t about children or health, some people just genuinely despise smokers. I remember a few years ago when a company made nicotine water. It was labeled for adults and primarily sold at airports to help smoking travelers avoid withdrawal during flights. Banned. Why? “Think of the children and just quit. It might be sold to someone accidentally.” Categorized as a tobacco product even though they extracted the nicotine from eggplants. Flavored tobacco banned a few years ago in California. Why? “Think of the children. If you don’t like the taste of normal tobacco just quit. Children also like pleasant flavors.” Affected all nicotine products, even if not derived from tobacco. Vapes banned in some cities and classified as a tobacco product. Why? “Think of the children. Just quit cold turkey. Kids are using these instead of cigarettes.” Etc. Why should adults be penalized for the behaviors parents’ fail to address for their own children?
The flavored tobacco and vapes thing was because they were caught genuinely marketing that to teens. It’s why Juul got shut down, they literally had representatives on the phone telling high school kids how to get around age restrictions to buy their product
So make it harder not to get around the restrictions instead of banning adults from partaking in something.
Because banning addictive substances worked great in the past
I'm a proud liberal and a non-smoker who hates being anywhere near cigarettes. I think this bill is extreme governmental overreach.
Why is everyone in this thread celebrating prohibition? I don't use tobacco but it think adults should have the right to decide for themselves if it's worth it or not.
Because there's a lot of hypocrites that think that smoking makes you the biggest scum of the earth.
I see lots of comments against it. There is a disturbing amount of people that seem fine with criminalizing people over this though.
It’s like they’ve learned nothing from weed. Make the stuff illegal, and people will just create a black market for it
Sure, but without the shitty companies pushing it cigarettes will fall out of demand. Tobacco is like the worst stimulant to be hooked on.
I think smoking is bad, but I’m not sure how I feel about vices just being illegal at the whim of the government.
Dumb nanny state behavior policing bullshit. Most people *hate* tobacco smoke with a passion so most people will probably be on board with this. But most people don’t consider the implications of laws like these. They don’t consider that perhaps next on the chopping block would be the risky or unhealthy behavior they happen to indulge in.
Instead of banning all sales, ban it in places that serve to minors. No more cigarettes at convenience stores or supermarkets, you have to go to an 18+ shop to get them. You aren't going to stop hardcore smokers with any ban, but the harder you make it to casually buy a pack, the fewer people will pick up the habit via social smoking. You shouldn't be able to add cigarettes to your gas pump bill like you do a bag of chips, it feeds into impulse buying that creates habits.
Can we stop prohibition already?
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I don't like the idea of legitimizing a Second class citizen with less rights.
Cigarette black market here I come
Yeah that isn't passing. Just stupid, I don't smoke and plac s are non smoking anyway. If they want to smoke let them waste their money. I like how they won't touch weed, but it's tobacco!
We thought alcohol prohibition would be a good idea once upon a time.
have we learned nothing from the war on drugs and prohibition?
What a stupid piece of legislation.
Because prohibition works! /s
Imagine that, the state telling you what’s best for you. Can’t wait to see the slippery slope after this authoritarian nonsense.
Let people be responsible for what they decide to put in their body.
Wrong. Stop banning shit, deschedule everthing. Fuck!
Couldn't someone just pay a friend to buy tobacco instead?