The United States should ban cigarettes, but should continue to allow tobacco to be used in smoke-free forms.
If you want to poison yourself, that should be your choice, but poisoning others should not be allowed.
In countries with solidary health insurance expenses to cover unnecessary, tobacco related cancers are paid by the whole population.
That happens in the US too. We just also pay CEO salaries and shareholder disbursements.
We're such a generous nation ❤️
/s
The United States should ban cigarettes
Never read about the Prohibition?
Prohibition was unpopular. Smoking bans are popular. So it's not a very good analogy.
Prohibition was ridiculously popular until it wasn't. Just like smoking bans will be.
People will choose to smoke just because it's illegal, and it will unironically be a gateway to harder drugs since the same guy selling tobacco will now be the same guy selling crack.
It’s a good analogy, because nicotine is a drug and smokers as addicts will seek it out whether or not it’s illegal.
A non-addictive drug like THC is a good comparison, as the legalization within the US is a big source of tax revenue and the period when it was more illegal made it a staple of cartels, which smuggled it into the states.
When criminals run an enterprise, they inevitably use their resources to undermine government and commit more crime. That’s the true nature of prohibition.
No one ever got cancer standing beside a drinker.
Drinkers kill people every day, drunk driving, drunken murders and violence, etc., all would not happen without alcohol.
They kill many more people than second-hand smoke, DUIs alone.
12000 drunk driving deaths vs estimated 34000 deaths from second-hand smoke in the USA.
You can easily search for these numbers given by official government sources.
Not a terrible idea but
The problem here is thinking the U.S. government exists to make intelligent decisions that will help us
They're all ramming Snus against their gums like there's no tomorrow though.
Smokers who have taken up snus use have quit smoking to a significantly greater extent than smokers without snus use, and a substantial proportion has eventually quit snus use as well and become tobacco-free.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5129320/#sec6-ijerph-13-01110
Registrations dated from 1994 to 2023. All participating regions provided data from at least 2015 and forward. Overall prevalence for smoking was 12%, and 13% for snus.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14034948251350193
Doesn't really seem to be true exactly. But, snus use is mildly more popular than smoking in Sweden.
I know theres nicotine pouch brands with up to 200mg per pouch. Idk how this person ended up in this state but i would guess they werent a regular nicotine user before.
I use nicotine pouches myself, not trying to defend it, its obviously bad. Compared to inhaling the giga cancer smoke from ciggarettes i do still believe it is better though. Although idk which crazy people go for the "end my life instantly" strengths.
Yeah as the article notes people have switched to nicotine pouches to get their fix. Which are better because they don't produce smoke and lung cancer, but they can still give you other oral cancers and dental diseases. If anything they're probably worse in that aspect due to being constantly pressed against the gums and lips. But at least they're smokeless.
More research is needed. Nicotine on its own is not cancerous. Tobacco is. Nicotine pouches that aren't tobacco might carry much lower risks, but there is other stuff in them.
Nicotine on its own is not cancerous.
Man... if you really want misinformation, read Lemmy on the subject of vapes and nicotine. Everyone just copy pastas incorrect "facts".
and
and
Not to mention the littering problem is even worse than with cigarette butts.
That was my problem with replacing cigarettes with vaping, it worked great but you can literally use it all the time, so I was just puffing constantly when I was sitting, bathroom at work, airports, etc etc. and I don't think a coating of vegetable glycerine on your lungs is any better tbh. I feel great after quitting that too.
At least with vaping you can taper off the nicotine.
Yeah that was nice, went from 12>8>6mg
I mixed my own liquid so I was able to go down to 4, 3, 2, 1, then 0.75, 0.5, down to like 0.25 and lower I think
I was such a fiend that lowering the nicotine meant I would just hit it harder and more often for longer lol but once you get sub 1mg you literally cant hit it fast enough to feel satisfied even if you spend hours chain vaping 🤣
I also had a RDA that put out massive clouds though so that didnt help with moderation lol
People just need to rediscover pipes. Tolkien knew what was up 👍
I love my pipe. Much more enjoyable experience.
I haven’t smoked in a long time, but I used to love my pipe. It’s been getting more and more tempting to try it again, since I have one of the few health issues where nicotine can sometimes help.
Pipe smoke smell is way worse than cigarretes. Old prof used to smoke pipe in his office... Stench is worse than tobacco bars and cig smoking offices +20 years later.
My dad occasionally smoked a pipe. I do not remember the house or his clothes stinking from it (he probably didn’t smoke inside, I don’t remember) and to this day get warm feelings when smelling cherrywood smoke
Unlike cigarettes or pot, pipe smoke can be pleasant
Can't say about wood smoke, but a cherry topped aromatic tobacco can be good 😊
Fantastic. About 75% of the people I know still smokes though. Paywall stops me from reading the article but I do wonder what the sample size is.
I'm pretty sure i got the whole article:
Sweden has reached its target of fewer than five percent of the population smoking regularly – and is consequently considered "smoke-free".
"It is an incredible development that a harmful behaviour can be reduced to this extent," Mats Ramstedt, head of research at the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN), told the TT news agency.
For the first time in CAN's surveys, fewer than five percent smoke regularly in Sweden, according to the 2025 annual report on smoking and snus habits, which means that the political goal for Sweden to be smoke-free by 2025 has been achieved.
The proportion of daily smokers dropped from 16 to 4.8 percent between 2003 and 2025, according to the new report.
"It is not just the proportion of smokers that has decreased; we also see that people are smoking fewer cigarettes. Given the health risks associated with cigarette smoking, this is obviously very positive," said Ramstedt.
Smoking has been declining in Sweden since the late 1970s (for comparison: in the early 1980s, over 30 percent of Swedes smoked daily), thanks to broad preventative work, according to Ramstedt.
"The first and perhaps most vital point is that accessibility has been drastically reduced. It is both harder and more expensive to smoke today," said Ramstedt, citing taxes and real-term prices rising by 45 percent since 2003.
FROM THE LOCAL'S ARCHIVE: How Sweden is close to stubbing out smoking for good
He also credited efforts made to deter people from starting to smoke in the first place, such as advertising bans, and to make it easier for people to quit.
Meanwhile, Sweden has seen a sharp increase in the use of snus in recent years – the small nicotine pouches popular in Sweden – a factor that the tobacco industry often highlights as a major reason for Sweden's low proportion of smokers.
"One must keep in mind that smoking had already decreased sharply before we saw this rise in snus. In a way, that argues against it being a decisive factor in reducing smoking," said Ramstedt, but conceded that more research into its role could provide useful insights. "My assessment is that there is a lack of studies proving this, and I would maintain that it is primarily down to preventative measures."
My country is fentanyl-free. Less than 5% of the population consumes it.
That said, congrats on Sweden.
That inspired me to look up my own country's rate of smoking over the years and I'm shocked that we're over 10% still, and were at 20% in 09. I know everything used to stink of cigarettes all the time, but that still feels so high
Thank you. Looks like they ask 18 000 people at random yearly. Quite a good sample size for a country of 10 million citizens. But I'd take it with a scoop of salt as it's self reported and other numbers are weirdly worded if not wrong. I recall cigarettes being 38 SEK for a pack in 2008. Now they're 78 SEK, which is far more than +45% and in a shorter time span.
Edit: found the summary. 30% are still using nicotine, allegedly.
If they follow the rest of the EU and start banning flavored snus in favor of only menthol flavors you can expect to see a sharp spike in cigarette usage again. It's funny this study doesn't mention vapes, which, anecdotally, are massively popular in Sweden.
using Reader Mode in Firefox does work.
But yet when the British government does this, Lemmites claim it's an attack on personal freedom and fascism.
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