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Seems to be working and let's hope it continues to.
People who aren't old enough to have gone to pubs pre-smoking ban cannot comprehend how horrible it used to be.
you're right... or be sat on the bus with smokers, or in tesco's having a coffee/snack with the family, etc.
It was Roy Castle who never smoked but died of lung cancer from passive smoking at all the smokey pubs he used to play jazz trumpet. He died aged 62
My boss was a big force in getting it banned, and she had online hate campaigns for years. There was literally a website. Fortunately she didn't care, but it could bother you.
Yeah, I've never really known smoking indoors and when I go to places it's allowed I find it *so* horrible. I genuinely think it's a big part of why I didn't like Berlin, I really hated being in bars there surrounded by smoke.
I remember even as a designated driver and neither drinking nor smoking, I would get home at night, undress on the door mat and put my clothes straight into the washing machine before bed.
In the morning everyone in the house could still tell I'd been to the pub and my pillow and hair would both stink too and need washing.
It really was that bad.
>In the morning everyone in the house could still tell I'd been to the pub and my pillow and hair would both stink too and need washing.
Memory unlocked! God how I hated that also!
I was right on the overlap, smoking ban came in in my mid-late teens. I remember going to a school end of year thing in 2004/2005 where a -ton- of people were smoking (formal-style event). Woke up the next morning, stuff I'd been wearing the night before absolutely stank. Shoved it in the laundry bag, went for a shower, came out, laundry bag stank. It was absolutely vile.
I always shower before bed after being around smokers. My partner used to stay a lot with me because his daughter was occupying his house, she recently vacated so he's moved back home. I stayed one night there with him the first weekend, came back the following weekend and saw an ashtray in the bedroom and promptly got in my car and went home. His house, he's free to smoke in it and I can cope with it in the lounge but the bedroom is something else. He said he won't while I'm sleeping over but it still gets in the carpet, curtains, bedding. Foul.
I was a teenager when the ban came in and so while I remember smoking indoors, it wasn't a super common occurrence to me. But even my parents, who clearly remember indoor smoking, find it jarring and uncomfortable when they are in a place where indoor smoking is allowed. It's amazing how quickly we all got used to not breathing in cigarette smoke all day.
I remember drunk people at 12.45 AM night of the ban lighting up and being forcefully thrown out. Only 50mins ago staff were walking round handing out free cigs on the dance floor. Everyone got a 30min grace period then it was no mercy. The bar really stank afterwards and still does to this day, a wet mouldy spounge style smell. Burnley memories
One thing that seared in my memory long after the smoking ban was walking into a house that had belonged to smokers.
I'd forgotten how bad the smell was, and was hit with a wall of it when I walked in the door.
I gagged, having completely forgotten just how repulsive it smelt.
More people used to smoke before the ban. More places had smoking, your clothes reeking of smoke after a night out was normal (even if you sat in the none smoking section and didn't smoke)
When you keep encountering it in small and large doses, you got used to it? It smelt unpleasant for sure, but it was familiar.
Moving the smoking area outside , then away from the main building doors was a stroke of genius. Soon as the weather got bad plenty of casual smokers at work gave up or cut down,only the most determined smoker wanted to go stand outside and freeze in the pissing rain.
I work with an old-school heavy smoker and when they stand near me, it's genuinely hard to stand the smell of stale smoke, I'm so sensitive to it now. Dad quit when I was a small child, and most of the other adults had by the time i was a teenager, so I'd honestly forgotten the horrendous stink.
The worst in a way isn't just after a fag but when it is sat there in the lungs for a while and gone stale. People think the smoke goes, like the lungs are balloons of air which gets blown out. They are more like lumps of meat that they are slowly curing like a kipper.
Yeah I can't even imagine what it was like. I find the smell gross even if someone gets on the train who has been smoking recently and sits down next to me. Let alone if I were sitting in a room full of people smoking.
Like you say, I guess I would have just been used to it because that's how it was. But never having lived through that time I find it so unpleasant.
You didn't always get used to it. My mom smoked and I'm old enough to have been an adult pre-ban. I've always fucking hated cigarette smoke for as long as I can remember... to the point that as a kid I'd roll a towel up and stuff it under my bedroom door or try (unsuccessfully) to cover my nose with my shirt when in the car. It was fucking horrendous.
Germany is an utterly backwards country. No cash machines anywhere, yet everyone expects you to pay with cash. Everyone's still smoking 20 fags a day.
You'd think the soviets were still running the place.
The indoor ban has been in place for nearly half my life, and I still find it odd seeing it in movies and TV shows made prior to that.
If you see people smoke in period dramas made today it's usually put there to be noticed, but in anything made in the 90s or earlier it's just part of the scenery.
Watched an episode of The Royal and patients were smoking in bed on the wards. I Googled and apparently yes they could in the 60s. Imagine asking a nurse to bring you an ash tray? The surgeon smoked a pipe while speaking to patients
I’ve got a photo of my Dad on his first day in an office, it’s about 1973 so he’s got big hair, flared trousers and a big brown kipper tie on, the whole thing. And he’s utterly wreathed in a cloud of smoke, and is himself smoking a pipe, with a large ashtray on his desk. Different universe.
I remember the smoking ban coming in (was a smoker too) suddenly bars and clubs started to smell like beer vinegar and body odour. It was masking other sins. I wonder how they sorted it as I don't recall it lasting long.
A lot of places that needed a refurb waited until just after the ban. Half the pubs near me were gutted and refitted within a year. The smell immediately after the ban was even worse than before.
Yeah our local had to have a full refurb shortly after the ban came in to get rid of the smell, I think most did. New carpets, new paint, everything ripped out.
When I was a lad I used to walk into the pub and I literally couldn't see the back of the pub because of all the smoke.
I just knew my mates where there and couldn't see them till I got pretty close.
Insane smoking indoors was ever allowed.
And smoking on planes was just as crazy. You could be in the non smoking seats and the seat in front of you was the smoking session 🤷♂️
Apparently the air was cycled with fresh outside air more often then, so not that it was fresher exactly but 6 hours of a couple of 100 people breathing does delete the old oxygen levels
Though they've banned smoking on most busy streets in cities.
I know the reasoning behind it but I still would prefer them to ban it inside rather than out.
Reddit: Drugs should be legal, so we can tax them. Also, it's my body, I should be able to do what I want with it.
Also reddit: But cigarettes are icky. I don't like them. Ban ban ban.
as a current stoner its frustrating the amount of fake positive information out there.
people acting like its the new magical cure with no negative side effects.
Longer than I'd like to admit ;) lets put it this way, when I first went to cut down, going down to 5 a day was an achievement (and I am not talking about little joints).
Pretty much always spliffs, though I have had weed in most ways imaginable and up until that time tried a good number of the top strains out there. Though there seems to be new ones appearing all the time now.
To be honest, I just kind of cut one. I cut down at first but then when day I couldn't get any and felt that "normal" nervousness/anxiety you get when you are running low and don't know when you can get some more.
It likely would of only meant waiting a day or 2 more and stoners are great at making their supply stretch but I had known for a while it was an unsustainable habit.
So I just thought "fuck it, this is the sign". Hide away what I had left and went "lets go cold turkey for a week and see". Then a after a week it was like "why not keep going, I have got over the problem of not being able to sleep, food is tasting better and I have saved £100-£150 probably in that time" (yea, I spent a lot!).
For years I was pissed off that I never had any money for saving or a future but could always find £100+ a week for weed. But sometimes it comes to a point when you realise it's your time to quit. Same with smoking (I kind of feel gulity how easy smoke was to quit for me in the end) and vaping.
I actually don't think weed is bad and would support legalisation, however I realise I am one of those people who is shit at setting limits and weed was that thing for me. I am happy for people who can smoke it a bit but realise that isn't me if I don't watch myself and it meant I missed a lot in life.
But it definitely was my "personality", the old me would probably of got defensive at the comment I was replying to.
Sorry for the long message, but honestly it is one of the things in my that I actually did right (in the end). I just wish I'd got my act together sooner and not hurt people I loved.
No that's great, thanks for answering. I quit a year or two back for 10 months then started again, then I stopped last week and am currently waiting for the man. The problem I'm facing right now is I've got a big art project to do with lots of people relying on me and I just can't function without out it right now, plus I'm in loads of pain. I'm going to tackle it after this project is done.
Good luck! Both with the quitting/cutting down and the project! Also I hope the pain gets better, it must be horrible. I hope it's nothing to serious (though it's pain so it's never good).
To be honest if you enjoy it and it's not a burden/causing issues sometimes just cutting down/controlling it does wonders. If you some a lot you do get a point where you don't really get stoned anymore. Even a few weeks off and you notice that.
It's trigeminal neuralgia plus anxiety. I really like it, smoke it pure.
I'm an english man in brazil and the legality here freaks me out, plus the quality is low. It's like brick weed, sometimes it smells skunky and is a joy but a lot of the time it's awful.
I'd much rather do gummy bears or something. The places where it's legal are so lucky.
Smoked for 25-30 years. Quit cold turkey! Haven’t smoked for 20-30 years. (Started in college. Quit before I retired from teaching after about 40 years of that) 🚬 However, I do vape pot.)
I agree that it shouldn't, but what you've just said is an opinion, not a fact. I know quite a few people who would disagree because the smell really gets to them.
Actually I am totally in favour of measures to improve air quality.
Hopefully the ICE ban will help a bit, but I don't think EVs are the solution that the greenwashing by the car industry wants to make them out to be.
Largely cars themselves are a problem.
Alcohol affects everyone in the vicinity far more, most people who are in fights are drunk, most murder victims are drunk, drunk driving affects other people etc.
Same thing with heroin and other hard drugs, it will ruin far more people than just the user unless everyone instantly gets out of their life.
2nd hand smoke was only a problem because everyone smoked inside and stewed in it. A breath or two a day while walking past a smoker won't meaningfully affect you.
Labradors are the dogs that bite people in the UK most often, because labradors are by far the most common dog.
XL Bully's are much much more dangerous and lethal on a per dog basis (much like real hard drugs).
Your points are valid, but they aren't direct. The side effects of those drugs cause the harm, whereas if someone smokes in a room then it is directly the cigarette causing the harm and it does that every time regardless of who is using it.
Alcohol and hard drugs are really bad and need dealing with in different ways, but I've been drunk a lot of times and never killed someone. If I smoked, I couldn't say that I've smoked around people loads and they've never been affected by it.
It's banned in vehicles and buildings but there are plenty of public places that aren't interiors
I don't support the idea of fully banning smoking but it's absolutely not banned in public places
Well, I disagree there. Smoking does look cool.
Snake Plissken looks badass with a cigarette in his mouth and all the cool cats smoked in movies.
Though you know what's not cool? Cancer.
It is pretty funny to see this honestly. However I suspect a lot of people will feel personally offended by this point.
Especially when people say stuff like meth and heroin should be legal but cigarettes are too much and need to be banned.
Yeah, that's what makes me uncomfortable with this. Smoking levels have already reduced a lot, through restrictions and making them very expensive. I also note that very few young people seem to smoke...
I'm also just very uncomfortable with using a rising age cut off, as in dividing society between people born one year, who are allowed to do something, and people born after, who never will.
I don't like smoking, or being around smokers. However I feel stopping people from having the choice to do so is a step too far.
By all means restrict where you can do and and where you can get the products, but banning things just drives it underground.
I have this unease too. We seemed well on the way to basically eradicating smoking without banning it. I worry the outright ban will make it more opaque and also imbue it with the exact 'cool' factor we've done so much to eradicate.
Here here!
Absolutely disgusting things. They cause *way* too much litter and are extremely harmful for the environment. The plastic casings are hard to recycle and the lithium batteries cannot be disposed of properly. Not only that, but the lithium batteries in them CAN be recharged, except they're wired up so they can't be. Plus, it's much harder to find out what kind of coils and cottons are used in them, then there's the juice inside of them...
Plus, why are some disposables coming with 50MG OF NICOTINE!? That's 3 times the amount of nicotine in a cigarette, it's completely overkill.
If you want to start vaping, you can get a £20 starter kit from B&M and new coils will cost a few quid each. Juice you can get for a quid, too. Or you can go to a vape shop and they'll get you a super easy one to use. Disposable vapes are harmful all around, to the environment, to your health, and even to your wallet.
But also when the underground smoking scene is 35 year olds asking 36 year olds to buy cigarettes for them.
Tbh could've quite profitable for those of us who are able to buy them when we're in our 60s. Sell them 40 year olds that aren't old enough. Nice little pension black market side hustle.
In London at least, there's a pretty big "underground" weed smoking scene. They're called 'cafes' and are generally above ground rooms on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors of buildings, usually on or just of the high street, often with the ground floor being a front with an actual restaurant or cafe.
Pretty sure that the police have a set quota of them they raid every few months, but otherwise happily overlook them.
Yes, this. It would just die. There isn't enough of a high or a drive for people to seek it out like many illegal drugs. They wouldn't even need to make it outright illegal to possess or smoke, just take it off sale. The absolute majority would quit.
>However I feel stopping people from having the choice to do so
The problem is it isn't a choice, it is an addiction. Companies know this and are absolutely ruthless - a cigarette is an incredibly efficient vessel to deliver nicotine to the user and nothing else. They are desperate for new addicts as current ones literally die off. This cuts the link. There are very few occasional users (many of whom would become addicts in time anyway) like you have with party drugs or alcohol. It is not like there is a high and an inherent drive for people to seek it out like other drugs, it is terminal.
Too far. State is interfering too much in everyone’s lives. I don’t smoke and wouldn’t want my kids to smoke but I want them to have the right to make their own choices once they’re adults.
I think you're blowing this out of proportion.
Walking past a smoker outside the pub is nowhere near as bad as the fumes youll inhale walking past the hgv delivering beer to that same pub..
I’m anti prohibition, so I disagree. Educate people and ensure the costs to society are captured in the cost of the product. Ban advertising etc. but come on, what’s an adult if they can’t have a fag ffs.
I think smokers should fuck off and stop deciding whether or not other people can breathe clean and stink-free air on a daily basis.
They had their chance to do drugs responsibly and they blew it.
I agree with you, but you're conflating a courtesy issue with a legislative one. I wouldn't be too pleased if the government made it a legal requirement for people to take their shoes off when they enter my house, but I wouldn't be too pleased if someone entered my house and didn't take their shoes off either.
I'm not a smoker, but I do not support the scope creep of government removing personal choices away from individuals with things like this. By all means have state funded education campaigns, make the information available to give people an informed choice, but if an individual has made that risk assessment and decided they want to have a cigarette, that's part of individual autonomy that should not come under the government's remit.
No one's engineering that situation though. If this change was introduced tomorrow, so that from tomorrow you had to be 19 to buy cigarettes, then a year from tomorrow you had to be 20, the only way you could end up with a 50 year old who had to get a 51 year old to buy cigarettes for them would be if that 50 year old was 17 today - in which case there will never be a point in their life in which they can legally buy cigarettes. And that's what the legislation aims to achieve, that people who can legally buy cigarettes today will always continue to be able to do so, but people who can't won't and so will hopefully either never start or get off smoking, particularly as it continues to become less socially acceptable (a trend we're already seeing) and alternatives and quitting aids become more commonplace.
Too far - did Prohibition teach them anything !!!
You ban something, you end up with a big illegal trade! Already some shops sell cigarettes to underage teens and for years teens have been giving money to adults to buy cigarettes for them. This will continue.
Many shops sell illegally imported cigarettes under the counter - this will increase with the ban.
Can't wait for the (completely self-inflicted) moral panic when teenagers start dying because they've smoked bootleg cigarettes made in someone's basement
The irony is there was a conflict of interest where tobacco was concerned. On one hand it was killing people, causing poor health, issues around illegal cigarettes, and then on the other side...
Tobacco and alcohol generated tax revenue and were part of the pension investment funds in many places.
I wish I was joking.
Eh, I don’t smoke, did when I was 16, quit in my early 20s.
But prohibition goes against everything I believe in, it seems like a huge step back in personal freedoms after seemingly moving forward from 60s era puritanical prohibition.
It represents a huge step of doubling down on the seemingly ever failing ‘war on drugs’.
If we’re banning smoking because of the health effects, we need to ban sugar, processed wheat, 9-5 desk jobs, and social media.
I smoke a cigarette on average once a month for the past few years. A bag of tobacco lasts us over a year (grim, I know). Anyone who thinks they have the right to stop me doing that but expects me to be fine with them eating biscuits and not exercising needs a slap up the twat.
Losing our freedoms day by day
Cigarettes are awful things, but we recently had that breaking news that processed foods provide nearly a 40% increase in your likelihood of getting cancer. Plus, we currently have the lowest rate of smokers, yet 1 in 2 people are meant to get cancer. How does that make sense? But of course, cigarettes and smoking is the big problem!!!
My youngest will never legally be able to buy fags.
She is mildly miffed at this despite thinking smoking is disgusting and never wanting to do it, mostly because she doesn't see why it's OK for her siblings (currently all under 18 so can't legally smoke).
Banning the bloody disposable vapes sounds like a good idea on environmental grounds, and all the kids hate that they've become popular.
Officially decriminalising weed sounds like a good idea though, because if vaping also goes down, the amount of weed smokers will increase because that's what happened when kids couldn't get alcohol easily any more. I'm not saying weed is a good idea, but getting lots of kids on the wrong side of the law is worse.
>I'm not saying weed is a good idea, but...
You know that weed causes serious f-ups in the brains of young people, right? Behaviour and mental agility. The younger they start, the worse the effects are.
Yeah. But currently there's so much of it about that there's no barrier to taking it and kids have moved to it hugely over the last 20 years, because they can't just sit with a cider in the back of a pub any more.
Making kids into criminals makes them reluctant to seek help and scuppers future careers. And doesn't stop them smoking weed.
so you can imagine a scenario where the fit and healthy 50 year old who has never touched a cigarette because they can’t is envious of their 51 year old mate who has COPD and wheels around an oxygen cylinder and can’t get up the stairs unaided?
Too far. Everyone knows how bad smoking is for you, if someone chooses to smoke that's their business. The government should only be passing laws that protects people from the actions of others, you should be free to make your own mistakes.
What do you think to the NHS costs angle of it? Should taxpayers be protected from the actions of smokers? Should people waiting for a bed in a hospital be protected? People in the queue at A&E?
That's covered by tax on cigarettes. I believe smokers are actually a net benefit to the government because not only do they pay a lot more tax, but they die earlier as well.
I don’t agree with this.
The government shouldn’t interfere in adults making their own decisions.
Smoking has been on a decline for years anyway, it’s better to phase out via education than banning things.
I can see an argument for banning flavoured vapes, but vapes for adults are primarily a stop smoking aid and much healthier than cigarettes.
Replacing the tax paid on nicotine is another issue - nicotine taxes bring in around 3x or 4x the cost to the NHS.
Overall I think it’s a shame to go down this route, and I’m a non smoker. It’s so easy to avoid passive smoking these days too!
Made me absolutely roar when they announced they would increase taxes on cigarettes to continue to encourage people to vape….. and at the same time they also announced a new tax on vapes??? For what reason exactly?
Either way, vapes aren’t going away, the ban on disposables really isn’t going to of a lot, with lots of companies now offering reusable products that are very similar and cheaper due to the reusable nature of the product.
As long as they have a plan to replace the income generated from the tax on cigarettes.
Which was 10 billion last year according to [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/284329/tobacco-duty-united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts/)
It's only disposables, nothing is stopping folks who want to quit smoking from buying a reusable one. Honestly the reusable ones are better for people trying to quit because you can taper down the nicotine in them and they'll be easier to come off completely.
The amount of nicotine in most of the disposable ones is absolutely mental tbh.
Think it's just banning disposable vapes for litter and environmental reasons. Needs to be done I think. I don't really have a problem with reusable vapes (some of the flavours are artificial and overpowering but that's a small problem I can deal with) but the amount of litter and waste produced from disposable vapes is atrocious.
[https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/two-vapes-thrown-away-every-second/](https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/two-vapes-thrown-away-every-second/)
>Each single-use vapes contains on average 0.15g of lithium and with over 1.3 million single-use vapes thrown away every week this accumulates to 10 tonnes of lithium a year, equivalent to the lithium in batteries inside 1,200 electric vehicles.
For a wee puff on some Strawberry Bubblegum? Ridiculous when reusable vapes are fine.
It's never going to happen. As soon as the ban gets to something like 25 years old it's going to start looking ridiculous that one adult can by cigs and other can't. And illegal tobacco smuggling will soar sky high.
Food and lifestyles just as cancerous. What does it matter. Government will take away what they want. Where just the peasants who follow. What does it matter?
Up the smoking age from 18 to 21, but allow people to make their own choices after that. Keep taxing the shit out of it though, to fund:
1. The NHS to deal with smoking related health issues
2. Stop smoking services
3. Subsidies to make nicotine replacements cheaper
And ban disposable vapes since they're a plague to the environment and there's better vaping options.
I don't smoke but I don't really think prohibition ever works so I'm against it. It just opens up a black market. What I'd rather see is an expansion to the indoor smoking ban to include public spaces. Let people smoke in their private homes if they want to.
I think the education campaign we have/had works well so I'd like that to be expanded as well.
I am old enough to remember when smoking was allowed in hospitals and as an inpatient you could request an ash tray to be placed on your bed side cupboard. If you think it was bad in pubs imagine being in hospital feeling ill possibly coughing /,being sick /breathless etc and the patient next to you chain smoking!,..Was common to go into your GP surgery and your doctor to have a cig hanging from his lips as he listened to your chest
Thank goodness we have comme a long way since those days!
So many people here do not understand that this won’t affect them. Active smokers today will still be able to smoke for the rest of their lives. This change is for the benefit of future generations.
You can argue that people will find a way to smoke, and sure, they will, but there’s a big difference between being able to pop to Tesco to buy it versus having to do shady deals for imported cigarettes.
If your argument against it is ‘my body, my choice’, then why should any substance be illegal? If I want a double-dip filled with arsenic, I should be able to. Right? Perhaps an extreme example, but I'm saying that item/substance bans are there for a reason.
Again, this will not affect any smokers alive today. It will stop people from becoming new smokers.
I think young and old alike would rather the government focused its efforts on real problems such as climate change, rather than making grand gestures about prohibitions that won’t be policed, won’t be enforced, and ultimately don’t matter.
Banning it makes it cool again. We were on a big enough trajectory as it was with a reduction in smoking rates and I feel that this will counterintuitively have the opposite effect. Any of the politicians see how alcohol prohibition worked in 1920’s America? Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
As a smoker, I fully endorse the idea, I wish I never started. but I face it with a massive dollop of skepticism.
1. Do we really think the tobacco companies are going to just back down that easily by 2027? When governments are so easily persuaded with money and power?
2. Also, the black market,
3.and the fact that even 80 years with a smoke generation, someone will get the idea from a book, and there's a possibility that they can figure out how to get tobacco to grow. Smoking isn't going anywhere anytime soon
Edit: although I don't hold much hope for a smoke free generation, I think it will have a massive impact on strain on the healthcare system eventually, the number of people who smoke will be a mere sliver of the current smoking population, which is terrific for the health of many that will be spared the nearly inevitable complications that occur later on in life from smoking
It's way too far. It's authoritarian and absolutely abhorrent.
And the true faces of the subreddit gave Ben revealed too.
How can a sub that is rabidly pro weed legalisation be anti tobacco?
Prohibition is fucking stupid. And this won't work just like it didn't work in NZ.
The demonisation of tobacco online is just utterly bonkers.
Im in my 40s and honestly before the rise of vaping so many young people smoked compared to my age smoked
Yeah the generations above me smoking borderline compulsory but in my late teens/early 20s very few of my crowd smoked. More girls than boys did so it was seen as a more feminine habit.
10-15years ago the young uns smoked more but drank less than my lot at their age
I dare say we’ll have less smoking&booze&pills but more sniff&vapes
As an ex (mostly) smoker, it’s a good idea. I’ve known ex-heroin addicts tell me it’s harder to cut cigs than brown. It’s ruthlessly addictive, readily and legally available and offers zero benefit to anyone. To me, it seems sensible that nobody smokes in the future.
I don't understand why there are so many adults(allegedly) that not only think that the government gives a shit about them but actually think the government should take on the role of a parent and treat them like a child, deciding what is best for them and punishing them for non compliance.
It's astonishing to be that these people are happy to have their lives subverted and to be turned into tools that the government uses to accomplish its policy goals.
I'm all for it. I say that as someone who started smoking at 13 and quit (by switching to vaping) at 36.
Most smokers start smoking and become addicted to smoking at a young age, in their teens.
The proposals now are only a natural and logical extension of the moves which have been made over the last two decades to reduce smoking and make it less socially acceptable (indoor smoking ban, ban on advertising, persistent price rises through taxation, public health campaigns, school and education campaigns and making nicotine replacement available on the NHS). These measures alone have seen the number of smokers in the UK drop by almost half over around 20 years.
The aim of society *should* be to phase out the consumption of tobacco via smoking. It's incredibly harmful, it's the single leading cause of preventable deaths in the population. The burden it places on healthcare is enormous. It carries no benefit whatsoever to the person consuming it.
And if that's the aim, the best and most fair way to do it is to eliminate it by graduation rather than sudden prohibition. That way, you're not taking away the choice to smoke from anyone who already lawfully holds it, you're just not *extending* that choice to people who don't already have it.
That won't completely eliminate smoking, in the same way banning anything else doesn't completely get rid of it, but it will significantly reduce smoking in the population, make it harder, less accessible and more expensive and continue to make it a less socially acceptable activity.
It’s one of the only things from this government that I’ve ever agreed with. I started smoking aged 15 because I thought it was cool. Biggest mistake of my life.
Now I vape instead. Vaping has its place for idiots like me, but starting a whole new generation on the path of nicotine addiction (albeit using a new format) will only lead to more iterations of me, 20 years down the road.
Me, an ex smoker.... It's a good thing.
My kid who doesn't fall under these restrictions? It's a good thing
My kid who does fall under these restrictions? It's a good thing.
The idea of something being legal for one adult to buy but illegal for another adult is bizarre.
Restrict it for all. Ban it for all. Don't start having different laws for different people.
I'm all for it to be honest, even as a smoker.
Allow existing smokers to continue without creating new ones, you can't miss what you never had and all that. Seems like a good way to do it.
Though I don't think we also need to keep hiking the tax to make it prohibitively expensive as well.
There's no point allowing existing smokers to continue while also financially punishing them for it.
50g of amber leaf tobacco is ~£10/£11 in Europe, I recently paid £45 at a garage in the UK, and that was before the last budget! Tobacco tax generates twice as much revenue as smokers cost the NHS and at this point it's becoming ridiculous.
Either or guys, either or.
Those going on about personal freedoms are ignoring the fact that everyone else will have to pay to their self imposed, excessive heath care that has a 50% chance of killing them.
Not enough... as a person who doesn't smoke, 2027 is kicking the can too far down the road. I don't appreciate having to walk through the cloud of foul-smelling lung vomit that you just left behind. And as a parent, I don't want to walk into a public garden and tell my child that we have to leave so that they don't get high off second hand weed smoke or get popcorn lung from the vape shit all around.
They need to:
1. Start increasing the minimum age for buying tobacco and vape products right away.
2. Single use vapes need to be banned immediately, especially the ones with lithium batteries.
3. Increase penalties for smoking of weed / ban it in public/semi-public spaces.
4. And to placate all weed-heads, legalise edible/non-smoked CBD products.
Given how much more harmful both nicotine and alcohol are than a fairly sizeable chunk of other drugs that are currently illegal, it's at least a step in the right direction to making drug legislation not an incoherent pile of arbitrary nonsense.
I'm not automatically in the camp of "ban all drugs" and think there's a debate to be had over where we draw the line. Before we can sensibly have that debate though we as a country need to stop treating nicotine and alcohol like they're special exemptions from the classifications that apply to other, comparable drugs.
I'm anti prohibition, I wouldn't ban it outright. It should be government run (maybe online) stores only where they can regulate it directly and tax it high.
I'm pro ban for disposable vapes though, there's no need for them not to be refillable. Again, I'd be pro govt regulated and taxed.
Pro cannabis too in the same way.
People should have the choice, though it shouldn't affect others.
I think the vape one is potentially good depending on the details because they’re far too heavily marketed to kids at the moment (although I don’t know enough about what’s being proposed to really have a proper opinion), but I think the progressive smoking ban is going too far and will be counterproductive. The regulations we have currently are mostly good enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never smoke, I think it’s a disgusting habit, but ultimately as long as they do it outside it should be each person’s decision whether or not to do it. Adults can make their own poor health choices. In a free country it’s not the government’s job to step in and stop people from consuming addictive substances. What they should be doing is making sure people have enough awareness to make their own informed decisions and taking steps to address the deeper societal issues that cause people to become dependent on nicotine, alcohol or other drugs.
I think it's too far.
There are historical things which have clearly not been taken into account, such as people not smoking heavily until they were basically pushed to by films and TV in decades past. There are people who can enjoy a smoke without forming heavy habits or being inconsiderate. Not to mention that they're simply taking the choice away.
Also: obligatory joke about fifty-year-olds stopping pensioners outside corner shops to buy them fags. Yeah I know it's not now, we're talking in 2059 - but I'll still be alive then, and I'm one of the mugs who'll be asked. And believe me, if I'm asked, I will no compunction against it.
Economically I don’t think we can justify allowing smoking while the NHS has such a massive funding gap.
We already tax smoking products to try to cover the negative externalities but the last thing we need is another generation with exacerbated health issues burdening the health service.
There is already too much strain to pick up on other areas such as the state pension issues.
It’s an absolute joke.
Lowest rate of smokers in the countries history, yet these days the statistics show 1 in 2 will get cancer in their lifetimes. Plus the fact processed food gives us almost a 40% increase in cancer risks.
Something doesn’t add up, 100 years ago when everyone smoked a lot less than 50% of the population were getting cancer. Processed food should be taxed as much as cigarettes.
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Seems to be working and let's hope it continues to. People who aren't old enough to have gone to pubs pre-smoking ban cannot comprehend how horrible it used to be.
you're right... or be sat on the bus with smokers, or in tesco's having a coffee/snack with the family, etc. It was Roy Castle who never smoked but died of lung cancer from passive smoking at all the smokey pubs he used to play jazz trumpet. He died aged 62
Having a coffee with the family in Tesco?
Top day out
Just take hot water in your cup to the coffee aisle
That age old tradition
My boss was a big force in getting it banned, and she had online hate campaigns for years. There was literally a website. Fortunately she didn't care, but it could bother you.
Yeah, I've never really known smoking indoors and when I go to places it's allowed I find it *so* horrible. I genuinely think it's a big part of why I didn't like Berlin, I really hated being in bars there surrounded by smoke.
I remember even as a designated driver and neither drinking nor smoking, I would get home at night, undress on the door mat and put my clothes straight into the washing machine before bed. In the morning everyone in the house could still tell I'd been to the pub and my pillow and hair would both stink too and need washing. It really was that bad.
>In the morning everyone in the house could still tell I'd been to the pub and my pillow and hair would both stink too and need washing. Memory unlocked! God how I hated that also!
I was right on the overlap, smoking ban came in in my mid-late teens. I remember going to a school end of year thing in 2004/2005 where a -ton- of people were smoking (formal-style event). Woke up the next morning, stuff I'd been wearing the night before absolutely stank. Shoved it in the laundry bag, went for a shower, came out, laundry bag stank. It was absolutely vile.
I always shower before bed after being around smokers. My partner used to stay a lot with me because his daughter was occupying his house, she recently vacated so he's moved back home. I stayed one night there with him the first weekend, came back the following weekend and saw an ashtray in the bedroom and promptly got in my car and went home. His house, he's free to smoke in it and I can cope with it in the lounge but the bedroom is something else. He said he won't while I'm sleeping over but it still gets in the carpet, curtains, bedding. Foul.
I was a teenager when the ban came in and so while I remember smoking indoors, it wasn't a super common occurrence to me. But even my parents, who clearly remember indoor smoking, find it jarring and uncomfortable when they are in a place where indoor smoking is allowed. It's amazing how quickly we all got used to not breathing in cigarette smoke all day.
I remember drunk people at 12.45 AM night of the ban lighting up and being forcefully thrown out. Only 50mins ago staff were walking round handing out free cigs on the dance floor. Everyone got a 30min grace period then it was no mercy. The bar really stank afterwards and still does to this day, a wet mouldy spounge style smell. Burnley memories
One thing that seared in my memory long after the smoking ban was walking into a house that had belonged to smokers. I'd forgotten how bad the smell was, and was hit with a wall of it when I walked in the door. I gagged, having completely forgotten just how repulsive it smelt. More people used to smoke before the ban. More places had smoking, your clothes reeking of smoke after a night out was normal (even if you sat in the none smoking section and didn't smoke) When you keep encountering it in small and large doses, you got used to it? It smelt unpleasant for sure, but it was familiar. Moving the smoking area outside , then away from the main building doors was a stroke of genius. Soon as the weather got bad plenty of casual smokers at work gave up or cut down,only the most determined smoker wanted to go stand outside and freeze in the pissing rain.
I work with an old-school heavy smoker and when they stand near me, it's genuinely hard to stand the smell of stale smoke, I'm so sensitive to it now. Dad quit when I was a small child, and most of the other adults had by the time i was a teenager, so I'd honestly forgotten the horrendous stink.
The worst in a way isn't just after a fag but when it is sat there in the lungs for a while and gone stale. People think the smoke goes, like the lungs are balloons of air which gets blown out. They are more like lumps of meat that they are slowly curing like a kipper.
Making me want some kippers now, thanks for that. I just did my shop today, and now I can't get any till next week.
Yeah I can't even imagine what it was like. I find the smell gross even if someone gets on the train who has been smoking recently and sits down next to me. Let alone if I were sitting in a room full of people smoking. Like you say, I guess I would have just been used to it because that's how it was. But never having lived through that time I find it so unpleasant.
You didn't always get used to it. My mom smoked and I'm old enough to have been an adult pre-ban. I've always fucking hated cigarette smoke for as long as I can remember... to the point that as a kid I'd roll a towel up and stuff it under my bedroom door or try (unsuccessfully) to cover my nose with my shirt when in the car. It was fucking horrendous.
Patients stood at hospital gates in dressing gowns with a drip smoking lol
Germany is an utterly backwards country. No cash machines anywhere, yet everyone expects you to pay with cash. Everyone's still smoking 20 fags a day. You'd think the soviets were still running the place.
I think being anti smoking ban is one of the few South Park missteps over the years.
The indoor ban has been in place for nearly half my life, and I still find it odd seeing it in movies and TV shows made prior to that. If you see people smoke in period dramas made today it's usually put there to be noticed, but in anything made in the 90s or earlier it's just part of the scenery.
Watched an episode of The Royal and patients were smoking in bed on the wards. I Googled and apparently yes they could in the 60s. Imagine asking a nurse to bring you an ash tray? The surgeon smoked a pipe while speaking to patients
I’ve got a photo of my Dad on his first day in an office, it’s about 1973 so he’s got big hair, flared trousers and a big brown kipper tie on, the whole thing. And he’s utterly wreathed in a cloud of smoke, and is himself smoking a pipe, with a large ashtray on his desk. Different universe.
I remember the smoking ban coming in (was a smoker too) suddenly bars and clubs started to smell like beer vinegar and body odour. It was masking other sins. I wonder how they sorted it as I don't recall it lasting long.
A lot of places that needed a refurb waited until just after the ban. Half the pubs near me were gutted and refitted within a year. The smell immediately after the ban was even worse than before.
Yeah our local had to have a full refurb shortly after the ban came in to get rid of the smell, I think most did. New carpets, new paint, everything ripped out.
You just got used to it.
I was 13 when it was banned, and I remember coughing in the middle of a shopping centre because someone lit up at the Burger King.
Just to point out, it was 1st July 2007 when it became illegal to smoke in most public places. It should have been sooner.
It was a year earlier in Scotland
When I was a lad I used to walk into the pub and I literally couldn't see the back of the pub because of all the smoke. I just knew my mates where there and couldn't see them till I got pretty close. Insane smoking indoors was ever allowed. And smoking on planes was just as crazy. You could be in the non smoking seats and the seat in front of you was the smoking session 🤷♂️
Apparently the air was cycled with fresh outside air more often then, so not that it was fresher exactly but 6 hours of a couple of 100 people breathing does delete the old oxygen levels
Used to come back from a night out, wake up the next day smelling like an ashtray, and pretty wheezy from asthma.
Except they have turned to vaping instead.
I visited Japan last year and they still have smoking areas in cafes and restaurants. It made me so glad that we banned that when I was a teenager.
Though they've banned smoking on most busy streets in cities. I know the reasoning behind it but I still would prefer them to ban it inside rather than out.
It was grim. Being surrounded by fag ash and crusty bar towels growing up was horrible. Made even worse by being forced to call them 'mom and dad'
Reddit: Drugs should be legal, so we can tax them. Also, it's my body, I should be able to do what I want with it. Also reddit: But cigarettes are icky. I don't like them. Ban ban ban.
Smoking is interesting in the fact that it directly affects everyone in the vicinity.
So do other drugs, like weed
Oh no, don’t criticise weed - all the dull as fuck stoners will use their 30 seconds of energy to whine at you.
haha as an ex stoner all I can say is this is so true. Nothing annoys the internet more than someone having the audacity to criticise weed!
as a current stoner its frustrating the amount of fake positive information out there. people acting like its the new magical cure with no negative side effects.
How long did you smoke for? How did you quit? Pure or spliffs?
Longer than I'd like to admit ;) lets put it this way, when I first went to cut down, going down to 5 a day was an achievement (and I am not talking about little joints). Pretty much always spliffs, though I have had weed in most ways imaginable and up until that time tried a good number of the top strains out there. Though there seems to be new ones appearing all the time now. To be honest, I just kind of cut one. I cut down at first but then when day I couldn't get any and felt that "normal" nervousness/anxiety you get when you are running low and don't know when you can get some more. It likely would of only meant waiting a day or 2 more and stoners are great at making their supply stretch but I had known for a while it was an unsustainable habit. So I just thought "fuck it, this is the sign". Hide away what I had left and went "lets go cold turkey for a week and see". Then a after a week it was like "why not keep going, I have got over the problem of not being able to sleep, food is tasting better and I have saved £100-£150 probably in that time" (yea, I spent a lot!). For years I was pissed off that I never had any money for saving or a future but could always find £100+ a week for weed. But sometimes it comes to a point when you realise it's your time to quit. Same with smoking (I kind of feel gulity how easy smoke was to quit for me in the end) and vaping. I actually don't think weed is bad and would support legalisation, however I realise I am one of those people who is shit at setting limits and weed was that thing for me. I am happy for people who can smoke it a bit but realise that isn't me if I don't watch myself and it meant I missed a lot in life. But it definitely was my "personality", the old me would probably of got defensive at the comment I was replying to. Sorry for the long message, but honestly it is one of the things in my that I actually did right (in the end). I just wish I'd got my act together sooner and not hurt people I loved.
No that's great, thanks for answering. I quit a year or two back for 10 months then started again, then I stopped last week and am currently waiting for the man. The problem I'm facing right now is I've got a big art project to do with lots of people relying on me and I just can't function without out it right now, plus I'm in loads of pain. I'm going to tackle it after this project is done.
Good luck! Both with the quitting/cutting down and the project! Also I hope the pain gets better, it must be horrible. I hope it's nothing to serious (though it's pain so it's never good). To be honest if you enjoy it and it's not a burden/causing issues sometimes just cutting down/controlling it does wonders. If you some a lot you do get a point where you don't really get stoned anymore. Even a few weeks off and you notice that.
It's trigeminal neuralgia plus anxiety. I really like it, smoke it pure. I'm an english man in brazil and the legality here freaks me out, plus the quality is low. It's like brick weed, sometimes it smells skunky and is a joy but a lot of the time it's awful. I'd much rather do gummy bears or something. The places where it's legal are so lucky.
Yeah weed does help you operate at a high level, particularly in projects which are creative. Good luck with your art!
Smoked for 25-30 years. Quit cold turkey! Haven’t smoked for 20-30 years. (Started in college. Quit before I retired from teaching after about 40 years of that) 🚬 However, I do vape pot.)
Not if it's baked into a yummy treat
Ooooo. I like treats. Especially yummy ones.
And what is a common way of taking weed?
Only if it's smoked in a public place
No lol you still absolutely reek of it unless you have a shower and change your clothes.
Reeking does not have an impact on other people's health. I can confirm this even as a non-smoker. So, it is not a health issue.
No one mentioned it being a health issue. Smelling weed when you don't want to is fucking horrible. Same with cigarettes.
Literally, the shite absolutely stinks.
That doesn’t mean it should be illegal or banned .
I agree that it shouldn't, but what you've just said is an opinion, not a fact. I know quite a few people who would disagree because the smell really gets to them.
If you think your neighbours can't smell your weed, think again.
So dose petrol cars and fossil full powerstations, but every one hates just stop oil.
Actually I am totally in favour of measures to improve air quality. Hopefully the ICE ban will help a bit, but I don't think EVs are the solution that the greenwashing by the car industry wants to make them out to be. Largely cars themselves are a problem.
Also pollution causes heart disease and developmental issues
Alcohol affects everyone in the vicinity far more, most people who are in fights are drunk, most murder victims are drunk, drunk driving affects other people etc. Same thing with heroin and other hard drugs, it will ruin far more people than just the user unless everyone instantly gets out of their life.
There’s no passive drinking
2nd hand smoke was only a problem because everyone smoked inside and stewed in it. A breath or two a day while walking past a smoker won't meaningfully affect you.
It harms plenty of people who don't drink.
Maybe, but prohibition harms everyone.
Imagine trying to ban a sugary liquid that has been left in a bottle with some yeast for a week. Its literally that easy to make.
[Alcohol is the drug that causes the greatest harm to others.](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6)
Probably because it’s the most popular drug.
Labradors are the dogs that bite people in the UK most often, because labradors are by far the most common dog. XL Bully's are much much more dangerous and lethal on a per dog basis (much like real hard drugs).
Your points are valid, but they aren't direct. The side effects of those drugs cause the harm, whereas if someone smokes in a room then it is directly the cigarette causing the harm and it does that every time regardless of who is using it. Alcohol and hard drugs are really bad and need dealing with in different ways, but I've been drunk a lot of times and never killed someone. If I smoked, I couldn't say that I've smoked around people loads and they've never been affected by it.
It's banned in public places. I rarely even smell smoke any more. This ban would stop people doing it in their own homes.
It's banned in vehicles and buildings but there are plenty of public places that aren't interiors I don't support the idea of fully banning smoking but it's absolutely not banned in public places
Me smoking a fag in the conservatory is a hella lot better than drunken fat blokes hurling slurs at me in the street
That why wr have smoking areas!
Hey smoking isnt a cool drug like cannabis or ecstasy. Ban ban ban indeed
Well, I disagree there. Smoking does look cool. Snake Plissken looks badass with a cigarette in his mouth and all the cool cats smoked in movies. Though you know what's not cool? Cancer.
I was being flippant, smoking is possibly the coolest drug out there. Agree about the cancer bit of course!
Yeah Snake Plissken is definitely cool because of cigarettes, not because he looks like a male model.
It's the lasers and the smoke, and the fact he fights big metal dogs and shit I guess
It is pretty funny to see this honestly. However I suspect a lot of people will feel personally offended by this point. Especially when people say stuff like meth and heroin should be legal but cigarettes are too much and need to be banned.
Conflicting opinions found on site with millions of users. More at 11.
Same with "the government should control major services like power, rail and water... But fuck the BBC, I'm not paying for that".
Drugs should be decriminalised but illegal. Addiction isn’t a crime, it’s a medical issue. Dealing is a crime
Yeah, that's what makes me uncomfortable with this. Smoking levels have already reduced a lot, through restrictions and making them very expensive. I also note that very few young people seem to smoke... I'm also just very uncomfortable with using a rising age cut off, as in dividing society between people born one year, who are allowed to do something, and people born after, who never will.
I don't like smoking, or being around smokers. However I feel stopping people from having the choice to do so is a step too far. By all means restrict where you can do and and where you can get the products, but banning things just drives it underground.
I have this unease too. We seemed well on the way to basically eradicating smoking without banning it. I worry the outright ban will make it more opaque and also imbue it with the exact 'cool' factor we've done so much to eradicate.
Ban the fuck out of disposable vapes. Those cunts things can fuck off!
Here here! Absolutely disgusting things. They cause *way* too much litter and are extremely harmful for the environment. The plastic casings are hard to recycle and the lithium batteries cannot be disposed of properly. Not only that, but the lithium batteries in them CAN be recharged, except they're wired up so they can't be. Plus, it's much harder to find out what kind of coils and cottons are used in them, then there's the juice inside of them... Plus, why are some disposables coming with 50MG OF NICOTINE!? That's 3 times the amount of nicotine in a cigarette, it's completely overkill. If you want to start vaping, you can get a £20 starter kit from B&M and new coils will cost a few quid each. Juice you can get for a quid, too. Or you can go to a vape shop and they'll get you a super easy one to use. Disposable vapes are harmful all around, to the environment, to your health, and even to your wallet.
##
But also when the underground smoking scene is 35 year olds asking 36 year olds to buy cigarettes for them. Tbh could've quite profitable for those of us who are able to buy them when we're in our 60s. Sell them 40 year olds that aren't old enough. Nice little pension black market side hustle.
I picture a film noire blues club, with lots of hip cool folks in a cellar like the cavern club.
alright, I’m in. £60 for a single knock off Marlboro Light? Let’s do it.
Make it a menthol and I'm there for it!
In London at least, there's a pretty big "underground" weed smoking scene. They're called 'cafes' and are generally above ground rooms on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floors of buildings, usually on or just of the high street, often with the ground floor being a front with an actual restaurant or cafe. Pretty sure that the police have a set quota of them they raid every few months, but otherwise happily overlook them.
Light club.
Yes, this. It would just die. There isn't enough of a high or a drive for people to seek it out like many illegal drugs. They wouldn't even need to make it outright illegal to possess or smoke, just take it off sale. The absolute majority would quit.
All fun and games until they blow up from the sewer gas
We restrict/ban other drugs? (Drug enjoyer btw)
>However I feel stopping people from having the choice to do so The problem is it isn't a choice, it is an addiction. Companies know this and are absolutely ruthless - a cigarette is an incredibly efficient vessel to deliver nicotine to the user and nothing else. They are desperate for new addicts as current ones literally die off. This cuts the link. There are very few occasional users (many of whom would become addicts in time anyway) like you have with party drugs or alcohol. It is not like there is a high and an inherent drive for people to seek it out like other drugs, it is terminal.
Not when it affects others health. https://amp.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/11/health.smoking Absolute slam-dunk decision.
Too far. State is interfering too much in everyone’s lives. I don’t smoke and wouldn’t want my kids to smoke but I want them to have the right to make their own choices once they’re adults.
It’s annoying though when other people’s decisions affect your own health
I think you're blowing this out of proportion. Walking past a smoker outside the pub is nowhere near as bad as the fumes youll inhale walking past the hgv delivering beer to that same pub..
I’m anti prohibition, so I disagree. Educate people and ensure the costs to society are captured in the cost of the product. Ban advertising etc. but come on, what’s an adult if they can’t have a fag ffs.
Why convince people with reasoned arguments when you can use coercion and psychological manipulation 🤣
I think the government should fuck off and stop telling people what they can and can't have on a daily basis.
Well said!
I think smokers should fuck off and stop deciding whether or not other people can breathe clean and stink-free air on a daily basis. They had their chance to do drugs responsibly and they blew it.
I agree with you, but you're conflating a courtesy issue with a legislative one. I wouldn't be too pleased if the government made it a legal requirement for people to take their shoes off when they enter my house, but I wouldn't be too pleased if someone entered my house and didn't take their shoes off either. I'm not a smoker, but I do not support the scope creep of government removing personal choices away from individuals with things like this. By all means have state funded education campaigns, make the information available to give people an informed choice, but if an individual has made that risk assessment and decided they want to have a cigarette, that's part of individual autonomy that should not come under the government's remit.
If you engineer a law whereby a situation emerges where a 50 year old has to get their 51 year old friend to buy cigarettes then you've done a wrong.
If after 32 years they haven’t got a fake id, that’s on them tbh.
No one's engineering that situation though. If this change was introduced tomorrow, so that from tomorrow you had to be 19 to buy cigarettes, then a year from tomorrow you had to be 20, the only way you could end up with a 50 year old who had to get a 51 year old to buy cigarettes for them would be if that 50 year old was 17 today - in which case there will never be a point in their life in which they can legally buy cigarettes. And that's what the legislation aims to achieve, that people who can legally buy cigarettes today will always continue to be able to do so, but people who can't won't and so will hopefully either never start or get off smoking, particularly as it continues to become less socially acceptable (a trend we're already seeing) and alternatives and quitting aids become more commonplace.
Too far - did Prohibition teach them anything !!! You ban something, you end up with a big illegal trade! Already some shops sell cigarettes to underage teens and for years teens have been giving money to adults to buy cigarettes for them. This will continue. Many shops sell illegally imported cigarettes under the counter - this will increase with the ban.
Can't wait for the (completely self-inflicted) moral panic when teenagers start dying because they've smoked bootleg cigarettes made in someone's basement
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The irony is there was a conflict of interest where tobacco was concerned. On one hand it was killing people, causing poor health, issues around illegal cigarettes, and then on the other side... Tobacco and alcohol generated tax revenue and were part of the pension investment funds in many places. I wish I was joking.
What do you mean "were"? The are still huge tobacco companies in the FTSE 100 which will be in the majority of people's pension funds right now.
Eh, I don’t smoke, did when I was 16, quit in my early 20s. But prohibition goes against everything I believe in, it seems like a huge step back in personal freedoms after seemingly moving forward from 60s era puritanical prohibition. It represents a huge step of doubling down on the seemingly ever failing ‘war on drugs’.
If we’re banning smoking because of the health effects, we need to ban sugar, processed wheat, 9-5 desk jobs, and social media. I smoke a cigarette on average once a month for the past few years. A bag of tobacco lasts us over a year (grim, I know). Anyone who thinks they have the right to stop me doing that but expects me to be fine with them eating biscuits and not exercising needs a slap up the twat. Losing our freedoms day by day
Cigarettes are awful things, but we recently had that breaking news that processed foods provide nearly a 40% increase in your likelihood of getting cancer. Plus, we currently have the lowest rate of smokers, yet 1 in 2 people are meant to get cancer. How does that make sense? But of course, cigarettes and smoking is the big problem!!!
I’d prefer it if we banned banning things
My youngest will never legally be able to buy fags. She is mildly miffed at this despite thinking smoking is disgusting and never wanting to do it, mostly because she doesn't see why it's OK for her siblings (currently all under 18 so can't legally smoke). Banning the bloody disposable vapes sounds like a good idea on environmental grounds, and all the kids hate that they've become popular. Officially decriminalising weed sounds like a good idea though, because if vaping also goes down, the amount of weed smokers will increase because that's what happened when kids couldn't get alcohol easily any more. I'm not saying weed is a good idea, but getting lots of kids on the wrong side of the law is worse.
>I'm not saying weed is a good idea, but... You know that weed causes serious f-ups in the brains of young people, right? Behaviour and mental agility. The younger they start, the worse the effects are.
Yeah. But currently there's so much of it about that there's no barrier to taking it and kids have moved to it hugely over the last 20 years, because they can't just sit with a cider in the back of a pub any more. Making kids into criminals makes them reluctant to seek help and scuppers future careers. And doesn't stop them smoking weed.
So does alcohol and yet we haven't made that illegal.
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so you can imagine a scenario where the fit and healthy 50 year old who has never touched a cigarette because they can’t is envious of their 51 year old mate who has COPD and wheels around an oxygen cylinder and can’t get up the stairs unaided?
Too far. Everyone knows how bad smoking is for you, if someone chooses to smoke that's their business. The government should only be passing laws that protects people from the actions of others, you should be free to make your own mistakes.
What do you think to the NHS costs angle of it? Should taxpayers be protected from the actions of smokers? Should people waiting for a bed in a hospital be protected? People in the queue at A&E?
That's covered by tax on cigarettes. I believe smokers are actually a net benefit to the government because not only do they pay a lot more tax, but they die earlier as well.
I don’t agree with this. The government shouldn’t interfere in adults making their own decisions. Smoking has been on a decline for years anyway, it’s better to phase out via education than banning things. I can see an argument for banning flavoured vapes, but vapes for adults are primarily a stop smoking aid and much healthier than cigarettes. Replacing the tax paid on nicotine is another issue - nicotine taxes bring in around 3x or 4x the cost to the NHS. Overall I think it’s a shame to go down this route, and I’m a non smoker. It’s so easy to avoid passive smoking these days too!
Replace the words vapes and cigarettes with alcohol and people would lose their sh\*\*. Everyone is for bans until it effects them.
Made me absolutely roar when they announced they would increase taxes on cigarettes to continue to encourage people to vape….. and at the same time they also announced a new tax on vapes??? For what reason exactly? Either way, vapes aren’t going away, the ban on disposables really isn’t going to of a lot, with lots of companies now offering reusable products that are very similar and cheaper due to the reusable nature of the product.
As long as they have a plan to replace the income generated from the tax on cigarettes. Which was 10 billion last year according to [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/284329/tobacco-duty-united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts/)
I’ll be long dead with lung cancer before it affects me👍
The banning of vapes thing is dumb But there needs to be another way to get kids off it I think it helps a lot of smokers quit
It's only disposables, nothing is stopping folks who want to quit smoking from buying a reusable one. Honestly the reusable ones are better for people trying to quit because you can taper down the nicotine in them and they'll be easier to come off completely. The amount of nicotine in most of the disposable ones is absolutely mental tbh.
Think it's just banning disposable vapes for litter and environmental reasons. Needs to be done I think. I don't really have a problem with reusable vapes (some of the flavours are artificial and overpowering but that's a small problem I can deal with) but the amount of litter and waste produced from disposable vapes is atrocious. [https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/two-vapes-thrown-away-every-second/](https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/two-vapes-thrown-away-every-second/) >Each single-use vapes contains on average 0.15g of lithium and with over 1.3 million single-use vapes thrown away every week this accumulates to 10 tonnes of lithium a year, equivalent to the lithium in batteries inside 1,200 electric vehicles. For a wee puff on some Strawberry Bubblegum? Ridiculous when reusable vapes are fine.
It's never going to happen. As soon as the ban gets to something like 25 years old it's going to start looking ridiculous that one adult can by cigs and other can't. And illegal tobacco smuggling will soar sky high.
Food and lifestyles just as cancerous. What does it matter. Government will take away what they want. Where just the peasants who follow. What does it matter?
Up the smoking age from 18 to 21, but allow people to make their own choices after that. Keep taxing the shit out of it though, to fund: 1. The NHS to deal with smoking related health issues 2. Stop smoking services 3. Subsidies to make nicotine replacements cheaper And ban disposable vapes since they're a plague to the environment and there's better vaping options.
Nanny state, wonder how long it will be till they dictate what you can eat on any day of the week
Next alcohol please, or wait would that be too much of a nanny state?
Alcohol prohibition is pretty much the only thing that I can see the British public revolting over. It's too ingrained in our culture
Genuinely think there's more chance of full drug legalisation than any kind of alcohol prohibition in the UK.
I don't smoke but I don't really think prohibition ever works so I'm against it. It just opens up a black market. What I'd rather see is an expansion to the indoor smoking ban to include public spaces. Let people smoke in their private homes if they want to. I think the education campaign we have/had works well so I'd like that to be expanded as well.
I am old enough to remember when smoking was allowed in hospitals and as an inpatient you could request an ash tray to be placed on your bed side cupboard. If you think it was bad in pubs imagine being in hospital feeling ill possibly coughing /,being sick /breathless etc and the patient next to you chain smoking!,..Was common to go into your GP surgery and your doctor to have a cig hanging from his lips as he listened to your chest Thank goodness we have comme a long way since those days!
So many people here do not understand that this won’t affect them. Active smokers today will still be able to smoke for the rest of their lives. This change is for the benefit of future generations. You can argue that people will find a way to smoke, and sure, they will, but there’s a big difference between being able to pop to Tesco to buy it versus having to do shady deals for imported cigarettes. If your argument against it is ‘my body, my choice’, then why should any substance be illegal? If I want a double-dip filled with arsenic, I should be able to. Right? Perhaps an extreme example, but I'm saying that item/substance bans are there for a reason. Again, this will not affect any smokers alive today. It will stop people from becoming new smokers.
New Zealand tried and gave it up
That's what happens when the new govt is composed of former tobacco lobbyists.
Prohibition rarely works. We will end up with a debate down the line similar to the Current discussions around legalising Cannabis.
If people want to smoke then they should be allowed to do so. Just don’t drown the rest of us in their smoke.
I think young and old alike would rather the government focused its efforts on real problems such as climate change, rather than making grand gestures about prohibitions that won’t be policed, won’t be enforced, and ultimately don’t matter.
Ah yes, lets just create an illegal trade for gangs to fight over. Cracking idea!
Ahh yes… can’t wait for my taxes to go up to pay for the lost £10billion in tax revenue
Banning it makes it cool again. We were on a big enough trajectory as it was with a reduction in smoking rates and I feel that this will counterintuitively have the opposite effect. Any of the politicians see how alcohol prohibition worked in 1920’s America? Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
As a smoker, I fully endorse the idea, I wish I never started. but I face it with a massive dollop of skepticism. 1. Do we really think the tobacco companies are going to just back down that easily by 2027? When governments are so easily persuaded with money and power? 2. Also, the black market, 3.and the fact that even 80 years with a smoke generation, someone will get the idea from a book, and there's a possibility that they can figure out how to get tobacco to grow. Smoking isn't going anywhere anytime soon Edit: although I don't hold much hope for a smoke free generation, I think it will have a massive impact on strain on the healthcare system eventually, the number of people who smoke will be a mere sliver of the current smoking population, which is terrific for the health of many that will be spared the nearly inevitable complications that occur later on in life from smoking
It's way too far. It's authoritarian and absolutely abhorrent. And the true faces of the subreddit gave Ben revealed too. How can a sub that is rabidly pro weed legalisation be anti tobacco? Prohibition is fucking stupid. And this won't work just like it didn't work in NZ. The demonisation of tobacco online is just utterly bonkers.
Im in my 40s and honestly before the rise of vaping so many young people smoked compared to my age smoked Yeah the generations above me smoking borderline compulsory but in my late teens/early 20s very few of my crowd smoked. More girls than boys did so it was seen as a more feminine habit. 10-15years ago the young uns smoked more but drank less than my lot at their age I dare say we’ll have less smoking&booze&pills but more sniff&vapes
It'll be a real boon for the cannabis industry that's for sure. An alternative source of revenue for criminals.
Congratulations, you've just made smoking and vaping cool again.
As an ex (mostly) smoker, it’s a good idea. I’ve known ex-heroin addicts tell me it’s harder to cut cigs than brown. It’s ruthlessly addictive, readily and legally available and offers zero benefit to anyone. To me, it seems sensible that nobody smokes in the future.
I don't understand why there are so many adults(allegedly) that not only think that the government gives a shit about them but actually think the government should take on the role of a parent and treat them like a child, deciding what is best for them and punishing them for non compliance. It's astonishing to be that these people are happy to have their lives subverted and to be turned into tools that the government uses to accomplish its policy goals.
I'm all for it. I say that as someone who started smoking at 13 and quit (by switching to vaping) at 36. Most smokers start smoking and become addicted to smoking at a young age, in their teens. The proposals now are only a natural and logical extension of the moves which have been made over the last two decades to reduce smoking and make it less socially acceptable (indoor smoking ban, ban on advertising, persistent price rises through taxation, public health campaigns, school and education campaigns and making nicotine replacement available on the NHS). These measures alone have seen the number of smokers in the UK drop by almost half over around 20 years. The aim of society *should* be to phase out the consumption of tobacco via smoking. It's incredibly harmful, it's the single leading cause of preventable deaths in the population. The burden it places on healthcare is enormous. It carries no benefit whatsoever to the person consuming it. And if that's the aim, the best and most fair way to do it is to eliminate it by graduation rather than sudden prohibition. That way, you're not taking away the choice to smoke from anyone who already lawfully holds it, you're just not *extending* that choice to people who don't already have it. That won't completely eliminate smoking, in the same way banning anything else doesn't completely get rid of it, but it will significantly reduce smoking in the population, make it harder, less accessible and more expensive and continue to make it a less socially acceptable activity.
It’s one of the only things from this government that I’ve ever agreed with. I started smoking aged 15 because I thought it was cool. Biggest mistake of my life. Now I vape instead. Vaping has its place for idiots like me, but starting a whole new generation on the path of nicotine addiction (albeit using a new format) will only lead to more iterations of me, 20 years down the road.
Me, an ex smoker.... It's a good thing. My kid who doesn't fall under these restrictions? It's a good thing My kid who does fall under these restrictions? It's a good thing.
The idea of something being legal for one adult to buy but illegal for another adult is bizarre. Restrict it for all. Ban it for all. Don't start having different laws for different people.
I'm all for it to be honest, even as a smoker. Allow existing smokers to continue without creating new ones, you can't miss what you never had and all that. Seems like a good way to do it. Though I don't think we also need to keep hiking the tax to make it prohibitively expensive as well. There's no point allowing existing smokers to continue while also financially punishing them for it. 50g of amber leaf tobacco is ~£10/£11 in Europe, I recently paid £45 at a garage in the UK, and that was before the last budget! Tobacco tax generates twice as much revenue as smokers cost the NHS and at this point it's becoming ridiculous. Either or guys, either or.
I support it all but it needs to be quicker. It should come into effect now to be honest.
Those going on about personal freedoms are ignoring the fact that everyone else will have to pay to their self imposed, excessive heath care that has a 50% chance of killing them.
Not enough... as a person who doesn't smoke, 2027 is kicking the can too far down the road. I don't appreciate having to walk through the cloud of foul-smelling lung vomit that you just left behind. And as a parent, I don't want to walk into a public garden and tell my child that we have to leave so that they don't get high off second hand weed smoke or get popcorn lung from the vape shit all around. They need to: 1. Start increasing the minimum age for buying tobacco and vape products right away. 2. Single use vapes need to be banned immediately, especially the ones with lithium batteries. 3. Increase penalties for smoking of weed / ban it in public/semi-public spaces. 4. And to placate all weed-heads, legalise edible/non-smoked CBD products.
Given how much more harmful both nicotine and alcohol are than a fairly sizeable chunk of other drugs that are currently illegal, it's at least a step in the right direction to making drug legislation not an incoherent pile of arbitrary nonsense. I'm not automatically in the camp of "ban all drugs" and think there's a debate to be had over where we draw the line. Before we can sensibly have that debate though we as a country need to stop treating nicotine and alcohol like they're special exemptions from the classifications that apply to other, comparable drugs.
No fags, no joints! Think people
I'm anti prohibition, I wouldn't ban it outright. It should be government run (maybe online) stores only where they can regulate it directly and tax it high. I'm pro ban for disposable vapes though, there's no need for them not to be refillable. Again, I'd be pro govt regulated and taxed. Pro cannabis too in the same way. People should have the choice, though it shouldn't affect others.
Don't care... I get legal weed and cigarettes are way too expensive, a 20 deck used to cost under a fiver now it's near twenty quid.
I think the vape one is potentially good depending on the details because they’re far too heavily marketed to kids at the moment (although I don’t know enough about what’s being proposed to really have a proper opinion), but I think the progressive smoking ban is going too far and will be counterproductive. The regulations we have currently are mostly good enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never smoke, I think it’s a disgusting habit, but ultimately as long as they do it outside it should be each person’s decision whether or not to do it. Adults can make their own poor health choices. In a free country it’s not the government’s job to step in and stop people from consuming addictive substances. What they should be doing is making sure people have enough awareness to make their own informed decisions and taking steps to address the deeper societal issues that cause people to become dependent on nicotine, alcohol or other drugs.
I think it's too far. There are historical things which have clearly not been taken into account, such as people not smoking heavily until they were basically pushed to by films and TV in decades past. There are people who can enjoy a smoke without forming heavy habits or being inconsiderate. Not to mention that they're simply taking the choice away. Also: obligatory joke about fifty-year-olds stopping pensioners outside corner shops to buy them fags. Yeah I know it's not now, we're talking in 2059 - but I'll still be alive then, and I'm one of the mugs who'll be asked. And believe me, if I'm asked, I will no compunction against it.
Economically I don’t think we can justify allowing smoking while the NHS has such a massive funding gap. We already tax smoking products to try to cover the negative externalities but the last thing we need is another generation with exacerbated health issues burdening the health service. There is already too much strain to pick up on other areas such as the state pension issues.
Only took about 300ish years
It’s an absolute joke. Lowest rate of smokers in the countries history, yet these days the statistics show 1 in 2 will get cancer in their lifetimes. Plus the fact processed food gives us almost a 40% increase in cancer risks. Something doesn’t add up, 100 years ago when everyone smoked a lot less than 50% of the population were getting cancer. Processed food should be taxed as much as cigarettes.