Creating a new illegal drug market.
In fairness, smoking tobacco is one of the few routes of administration where outlawing makes sense. The overall societal cost is very high, even for non-smokers, as in second-hand smokers and cigarette butts littering. It's one of the few substances that health experts often recommend to make as unattractive as possible, be it through taxation or law.
I don't really mind vaping or heating that much, I'd be fine with making cigarettes illegal while keeping the alternatives. Unfortunately, latest legislation has imposed higher burdens on the latter while doing jack about smoking.
Using the litter aspects of cigarettes as a reason to curb smoking has always been a tough one for me. Say someone quits smoking and takes up vaping. Now we have introduced plastic waste & to an extent e-waste in the form of batteries in the disposable vapes.
I don't have an answer to it but I have at least thought about how there is no 100% environmentally friendly alternative outside of smoking straight tobacco leaf in rolling papers.
The "disposable" vapes are a different issue that needs to be tackled. I'm pretty sure that a meaningful deposit (5 or 10 euros) and the obligation for every seller to accept returns would solve the problem.
You're forgetting the harm from all the fires (house, grass, and forest) caused by smokers too.
Shittest high ever. Only people already hooked would be interested and they could buy it legally anyway.
For some. Some would ultimately quit and some would never start.
There can be some significant downside to a black market though. De-regulation could pose additional health risks to users as the product may be exposed to unknown and untested chemicals. Not to mention the additional violence and related crimes that always seem to accompany a black market. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol. Prohibition isn't working for Weed. Why do we think it will work for nicotine?
I think a big part of the difference is that most people get addicted to cigarettes just by being around it, rather than seeking it out. Cigarettes don't get you high/drunk (well OK, you get a small buzz early on, but nothing like weed or alcohol).
People will seek out weed even when it's illegal because the risk is worth the reward (to them), because it comes with an intense high you can't really get anywhere else. I don't see nearly as many people seeking out cigarettes in the same way, unless they're already hooked.
I don't think it will "solve" the cigarette problem, but I do think that prohibition for cigarettes won't go quite the same route as prohibition for weed and alcohol.
Now, whether I want the government to be able to ban recreational substances just because they think it's bad (or use that as an excuse) is another question
Except we have cleaner alternatives in the form of vaping. This isn't like prohibition where all alcoholic beverages were banned, or like drug prohibition where all narcotics and hallucinogens are only accessible for medical need.
If you need nicotine, you can still buy it. Just not in cigarette form.
If they want to ban tobacco let them first legalise weed, acid, and psylocybin. That'd be a fair trade.
All these progressively restrictive laws have been good to me. I'm of the generation who remembers smoking on planes, and my grandmother smoking in her hospital bed.
I was probably at two packs a day in the nineties because it was cheap and acceptable.
These days, a pack will last me a week, and I only ever smoke in my backyard at home, in clothing dedicated to the habit that get washed separately from my other clothes.
Bans and social stigma have forced me into near non-smoking without ever consciously trying.
Do I ever have an occasional night of celebratory drinking where I exceed that trend? You betcha, and I don't feel sorry about it. But I'm glad that I'm not the chain smoking beef jerky with a voice three octaves lower than it should be that my grandparents were.
I still believe that people should be able to enjoy vice and that you shouldn't be completely ostracized from society for not living a perfect organic free range fair trade intoxicant free perfectly vegan whatever else life.
But to phase out tobacco as it has been going, I have found that I haven't minded at all in the long term.
(As to the occasional celebratory night, for completely different reasons, I hardly drink anymore. Also was not a conscious choice or effort. It just lost its attraction for me)
About bloody time. Cigarettes are disgusting and do nothing but immense harm to those who smoke them, and those around them.
Sunak is a tosser, but cigarettes are a no brainer. Sure, old boomers still smoke them, but only the dumbest young people still smoke, and most of them use e-cigs (which are still bad, but nowhere remotely near as bad).
Several of my grandparents died before I could ever know them because of smoking, for example. Fuck smoking. Smoking kills.
Two of my grandparents died before my birth because they smoked. I smoked. I still vape. I hate that companies make money on addiction. This is still stupid.
Tried going cold Turkey today, made it like 14 hours.
It’s the right thing to do. It’s a very hard addiction to escape. I know a guy who beat heroin and can’t beat nicotine.
It took me years to quit, I slowly cut cigs out of my daily activities.
Good on you! That’s awesome. thankfully I’m not inhaling anything anymore, but damn if it’s hard to quit the substance entirely. Big ups to everyone who made it out though.
Ban alcohol too or it's hypocrisy once again.
Checks history
Wait a minute...
ban every single drug and watch how wrong its gonna go
they simply cannot stop repeating the mistakes of the past can they
I'm very pro-legalization but honestly tobacco is a shit drug. No real high, very addictive and awful health effects. I don't see many people going through the hassle of maintaining their addiction illegally if it was banned everywhere.
Smoking is one of the very few things everyone is better off not doing.
Same with alcohol, but I don't think we're allowed to say that yet. Maybe one day!
American prohibition and the war on drugs has shown that toal band like that really just make consumption worse while piling a whole new slew of problems onto an existing issue.
IMHO they should ban all types of smoking. If people want to eat weed brownies and nicotine chewing gums, I don't care. But smoking just smells bad and is really unpleasant to be around in the street.
Just ban smoking drugs and combustion engine. I just want clean air.
Neither of those things are even like, the top 3 things that are stopping you from having clean air.
Living in a tolerant society means that we need to be willing to deal with these little inconveniences in our lives. One of my neighbours has kids who love to play on a go-kart and wake me up at 6am on a Saturday morning, sometimes I can smell people barbecuing even though I’m vegan, and so on.
As long as it’s not a direct risk to health (e.g. smoking indoors) and not extremely obnoxious (playing extremely loud music and refusing to turn it down) people should be able to do what they want to.
I don't think that is realistic.
Didn't he just say yesterday that he didn't want the government to butt into people's lives? I thought that was why he abandoned all those laws which didn't exist. You know, the meat tax and the 7 bins xD
prohibition still doesn't work
People saying that's a good decision are simply unqualified to talk about it, they're completely clueless and willingly ignorant, just like sunak and his fking delusional confidence. How is it not obvious that people will refer to black market tobacco? Has history AND WHATS HAPPENING LIKE RIGHT NOW IN GOD DAMN REAL TIME not fking taught you all what banning drugs does? Because of people like you other people will die. That's also YOUR responsibility, not just theirs. It's YOU who affect their decision. And it's not just the fact that it's black market and people will just die, it's also the fact that underground, potentially mafia-like organisations will have MORE POWER. You all LEGIT make me believe in totalitarian governments. I simply can not handle the confident ignorance.
Like imagine a society where 1/4 of the population is forced to quit cold turkey. Y'all are fking insane
It's very easy to compare this to The Prohibition but the reality is alcohol is much more popular than tobacco. For someone who doesn't drink, understanding the appeal of drinking in a social setting is way easier. With this law I don't think there is a need for a black market of tobacco like there was with alcohol as it will still be available to purchase, just more controlled. The effect will be a reduction in exposure in younger generations that simply won't find the need to start smoking. This works and in my province of Quebec since laws have been getting stricter the only people that still smoke are poor or raised by heavy smoker parents.
The (stopped?) trend in the US had been to tax cigs to make them unaffordable. Just before the last major hike, my brand was about $5/pack. Now it is $10-12. So glad I quit.
Is that a viable strategy, to continue tax/price hikes?
Did it stop you smoking? If so, then yes it worked.
Every 10% increase in cigarette tax results a 4% reduction in consumption among adults, and a 7% decrease amongst youth. Source
It was a minor motivator for me. Bigger ones were things like not dying and my son.
Interesting stats, thanks.
Good
Legalise weed but ban tobacco!
Just saying.
I've been suggesting they do this in the states for a while now.
I smoke. I like smoking, and I don't plan to quit. But it's obvious that most people want smoking to go away. They keep increasing the price of cigarettes, they keep banning smoking in new areas, and every time they'll tell you it's to keep kids from smoking. It's a lie - they want everyone to stop smoking.
So fine. Set a date, and make it illegal for anyone born after that date to smoke. Then leave us smokers alone. If it's as bad for us as you say it is, we'll all die soon anyway.
Will some people born after that date smoke? Sure. But the majority won't. And it'll be a constant annoyance for them that they can't just go buy a carton at the store, which will encourage them to quit. I'd feel sorry for them, but I was told it was bad for me, not that I'd be standing outside in -50° weather puffing as fast as I can because I can't smoke in my hotel room, or that I'd spend more on cigarettes than I do electricity. They at least know they'll never be allowed to smoke.
You don't like smoking; you're addicted to a harmful drug. You have nicotine induced Stockholm syndrome.
they keep banning smoking in new areas, and every time they’ll tell you it’s to keep kids from smoking. It’s a lie - they want everyone to stop smoking.
That's just not the case, at all. I'm a very recent ex-smoker and non-smoking areas absolutely helped me stop, but not for the reason you might think.
In Australia it's the same - cigarettes getting more expensive and the number of places you can smoke reducing.
No one ever suggested that it's to keep kids from smoking - the message has always been pretty clear: every cigarette is doing harm, so less places to smoke means less harm.
The main benefit of non-smoking areas is that it made me realise that withdrawals and cravings are really no big deal. About 5 years ago I was terrified of trying to stop because I had convinced myself that the withdrawals would be awful. Then I took a job at a place where it just wasn't possible to smoke even on breaks. The most noticeable thing was that getting through the entire day without a smoke was actually no big deal - the symptoms were very manageable.
So, to say "they" want everyone to smoke is an odd take IMO. The assumption is that everyone want's to stop - and non-smoking areas assist with that.
I don't really believe that you do enjoy smoking. I mean, sitting with friends and having a few beers and smokes is certainly an enjoyable activity - but it's not the smoking that makes it enjoyable. Anyhow, even if you did truly enjoy smoking, I guess you unfortunately just have to cater for the majority who do not.
Non-smoking area are also there so that the people around smokers don't have to breathe cancer they never asked for.
A absolutely hate how every time I go eat on a restaurant terrace the experience is ruined by some guy next to me smoking...
How about we let adults make their own decisions. My body my choice.
Generally I agree with you, but with cigarettes you are not making the choice only for yourself. Every time you walk down the street with a cigarette in hand you are forcing other people to inhale it.
I was born in a world without a cigarette ban in restaurants and clubs and the current situation is 1000 time more preferable imo.
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