aside from the issue of ‘prohibition still doesn’t work’, i don’t think giving kids or “underage” adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone
Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.
TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.
Incorrect.
A black market is created, kids still smoke, but poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail.
It doesn’t fix the issue and syphons poor people into prisons.
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Prohibition laws do put people in prison.
“Noone goes to prison for underage smoking”. False. The people selling the cigarettes, poor people trying to make a buck, go to jail for the underage smoking.
I suggest we do nothing.
Prohibition doesn’t work.
Mind your own business.
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You’re just being purposefully obtuse now.
No. The kids aren’t the ones going to prison, but the prohibition laws do send people to prison.
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No one but you is being obtuse here.
You “corrected” someone by making an entirely different point from the one they made. In fact, the person you said was “wrong” actually stated the very thing you did.
No one is saying your point is wrong. Just that it isn’t a correction.
I would argue that society should reserve the right to punish individuals who harm others for their personal benefit.
And I would argue that selling a physically addictive substance that directly causes harm with no benefit to the user for personal profit is causing harm.
So while I don’t support arresting people for smoking, I 100% so support arresting people for selling.
Again, I just see mental gymnastics.
So you just outright said that people should be free to smoke, but anyone who sells what is being smoked should be incarcerated.
How is that not a complete oxymoron?
No. You have a factually flawed bias against a thing, and you want to mob up with other people to enforce your opinions and will upon people you disagree with.
As a result, you want to imprison poor people and not accomplish what you claim to want to accomplish.
There is no oxymoron.
Smoking is harming oneself.
Selling is harming another.
They are not equivalent.
poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail
As they should
Works for pedophilia too.
How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.
They should raise the heroin age
Yes, because no one has ever smoked before they reached the legal age.
Are you fucking with me right now?
There is already a black/gray marked near many schools (for the younger, there are cigarettes and for the older there is weed.) it’s a market where there is just one person selling, it is more a fluid market where the young people sell and buy to each other, mostly there are multiple kids with connections to get the goods in any school and then it rotates through the different kids by selling, buying, stealing etc. Source: I’m 26 now, and don’t believe that has changed since I left school.
I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it’s “cool”, making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.
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how to create a blackmarket with health issues
I’d prefer they start at 60 and raise it every year, but I’ll take what I can get.
Sunak should start publicly smoking all the time, then it will be the lamest thing and teen smoking will crater.
…how do 14 year olds get smokes now?
Making it illegal to buy at certain ages has never worked…banning them outright also won’t work. You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
Has the war on drugs not been a thought to these people? It is useless and does nothing.
I agree that prohibition doesn’t really prevent a thing from being consumed. However, I don’t think an age limit really counts as prohibition. Selling substances to those who are underage is bad and there should be potential consequences for doing so.
Underage in this scenario could be 40, 50, 60. They will just drive to an Indian reserve and buy cigarettes.
I assume you’re talking about teens though…I’m fine with the current age limits, but increasing the age by 1 year ever year won’t do anything.
Um, you do realize that Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the UK? It’s a long and arduous drive to the nearest Indian reservation.
This is on world news, so I took it as world change. But no, I didn’t know that
On balance I think it’s a good thing. A gradual ban like this will help break the smoking culture and save some lives. Maybe it will help gen-z get laid too.
Why have laws against drunk driving or speeding? You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
It’s true, you can’t stop people from doing what they want to do with laws, but smoking doesn’t smear a child down the street for everyone to see. What a terrible comparison
Fine, why have laws against littering, or smoking in public buildings, or jaywalking, or embezzlement? People are just going to do those things anyway, no matter what is written on paper.
We have laws to provide an enforcement mechanism for behavior that is unacceptable in our society. You’re right, in that laws written on paper can be ignored, but you do so at a risk of the penalties laid out in the law. Your argument essentially invalidates the purpose and effectiveness of every law. Clearly, we have laws and they work, so your argument is frivolous and empty.
Why not just ban Marijuana again…
Because the social perception of marijuana use has changed? You’re not really keeping up with the conversation here…
I am, but it will always go back to the same. You want big daddy to protect you from others doing harm to themselves, whereas I see people being able to police themselves and if they screw up it’s their problem.
If it doesn’t work then why are the vast majority of minors non smokers?
The war on drugs can’t work because the CIA uses illicit drug running to fund off-the-books projects.
Maybe if they stopped fucking doing that?
Sure on a global scale, but on a more macro level, the war on drugs failed because people want to buy and consume drugs… if there is no legal, regulated, safe method to buy them then the black market will fill that gap… same under rationing, same under prohibition, same with drugs and in the future cigarettes…!
The war on drugs succeeded, because it was actually a war on black people. It was never meant to stop drug abuse.
Don’t leave out hippies and hispanics. Cannabis is called ‘marijuana’ in the US because it stoked anti-hispanic racism. It was also a convenient way to attack liberals in general.
I would like to congratulate drugs, for winning the War on Drugs.
True, but the want of cigarettes is much lower than recreational drugs. One of the reasons they’re still so popular is because they’re legal and easy to get.
I don’t smoke and never have, but I can’t imagine anyone starting smoking in order to get some effect like with marijuana.
Yet, the addiction of cigarettes is much more powerful than non narcotic drugs & every day new people are starting smoking.
There is a legal, regulated, mostly safe method to buy cigarettes. It is inaccessible if you are under a certain age, but only the seller/provider is punished for violating regulations. It’s okay to have restrictions on what children can consume.
While current laws on illegal drugs do not work, arguing against any regulation whatsoever is similarly silly, the laws obviously work. Smoking rates have dramatically declined since those laws and public education campaigns began.
I think you’re wrong. The market isn’t magic, it needs supply to meet demand and there is a steady supply of drugs to fulfill the demands because of state intervention in the market. The CIA isn’t the only government entity that uses the drug trade to raise illicit funds for off-the-books jobs, it’s just the biggest. If it weren’t for bad state actors, the war on drugs probably would have worked to a large extent; maybe not eliminate the drug trade completely, but at least reduce the volume of trade substantially.
It’s not the 1980’s. Reagan’s long dead. What makes you think they still do that?
The war on drugs can’t work because people want drugs. Has literally fuck-all to do with anything or anyone else.
Drug smuggling could never be totally eliminated but I’m sure the government could do a better job if the goal was actually to stop the drug trade.
But that is not and never was the goal.
This is an amazing, for the sole reason that everyone who is 17 and change now will turn 18, be able to smoke, the law will bump to 19, they won’t be allowed to smoke any more, but then they’ll turn 19 and they’ll be able to smoke again until the law raises to 20…
I believe they passed a similar law like this in New Zealand. You could be 50 and still too young to smoke lol.
Smokefree action plan: Cigarette sales to be banned for younger generations
Why adjust the law annually? Why not just write it as “no person born after Jan 1, 2005”?
This is the better way to write the law of course, but the ham-fisted way it’s proposed by Rishi would look more like what I wrote, because he said specifically that the age should rise one year every year.
So the age is going to get risen to 19, then the Tories are going to lose the next election (basically the only reason to have the election at this point is to find out by how much they’re going to lose so we know how much to laugh at them), and then the law stops getting updated because it’s a dumb and badly written, and then Labour don’t implement it any more.
If anything they will probably just rewrite the law to the above version.
New Zealand has done this
Man the fuck up and outlaw it for everyone instead of this sneaky prohibition that only affect people that can’t vote yet. It’s such a cowardly, disingenuous way of doing it.
Prohibition never works, the best bet is to keep it legal and make it as inconvenient as possible like: raising taxes on tobacco, make it illegal to smoke outside of dedicated zones (Quebec has done it I believe), fine people who litter their cigarette butts (hard to implement but, it might deter a large majority from doing it), keep helping smokers to quit and keep raising awareness for younger people.
This is the way. There are so few places to smoke in BC that I pretty much only ever see people doing it 5 metres from a bus stop.
They are so expensive that the few people that still do it smoke maybe a pack a week.
We even banned the sale of no-nic vape juice because they were becoming a gateway to nicotine addiction for teenagers.
I just visited Canada for 4 days, was around a lot of people and I only smelled smoke twice. Both times were outside the airport (once arriving and once departing).
Nah the best bet is to remove the profit motive. And through legal means execute every cigarette company owner or employee who covered up health risks for mass manslaughter.
Hmmm, where have I heard this proposal before?
The reason I used the word Prohibition is because I think it’s bullshit either way. We’re sitting here legalizing pot because Prohibition doesn’t work, but somehow doing this chickenshit year-by-year outlawing is somehow going to fix something that education is doing a fine enough job. People are going to smoke cigarettes, there’s always a group that will do it, legal or not. Whether you want a crime problem around it or not is the obvious question these chucklefucks don’t seem to understand, despite repeated examples to the contrary.
NZ already did this and it is the most cowardly way to avoid political blowback.
There’s plenty of other options for minimising smoking. A more altruistic way is by lifting people out of poverty and tackling social disintegration, since smokers are overwhelmingly poor and disaffected.
So instead of reducing a clearly destructive habit now we should wait for a major social change that likely won’t happen. I don’t see how that is more altruistic for the “poor and disaffected”.
If this is the only effort, it’s weak. Better to also (or instead) tax each box by another 20 pounds. Kids don’t have that money. They’ll find other things to do.
I much prefer to see kids vaping.
It’s much harder to be intimidated by a gang of 10 youths in balaclavas when they smell like a pack of Fruit Salads.
Vaping is a joke, they stuck the addictive chemical (nicotine) in it and now they are hooked on vaping. Let them sell vaping goods but they shouldn’t be allowed to add nicotine to them.
Taxation is a tool but it also creates inequality where rich people are able to smoke and poor people can’t. That situation risks making tobacco a signifier of wealth - an aspirational good like an expensive handbag.
good, let them smoke and DIE
It’s already prohibitively taxed to be around £12-15 for a 20 pack. There are 4 corner stores within a 5 minute walk of my house that do them under the counter for a fiver, and you can bet they don’t care about IDs either
“We operate a Check-74 policy. If you are lucky enough to look younger than 70, we will ask for ID when buying cigarettes”
Big tobacco trying to kill big vape by making it exciting again to smoke and break the law
So he’s nicking what newzeland did ok cool something that he’s not going to profit from for a change atleast
If he wanted it to work he could make cigarettes more lethal. Kill you in a couple of months type of thing.
(Clearly not a serious suggestion in case you wonder)
Sounds like a reasonable proposal to me.
Minutes to seconds better, also if the cigarettes put themselves off and doesn’t cause fires
This better not apply to vaping.
I vaped for a few years and then stopped. Quitting was pretty damn easy imo
Agreed. I stopped smoking by switching to vaping, slowly reducing to 0mg and then realised I hadn’t used it for a week so got rid of it all.
They want to look at how vaping is being marketed to kids to reduce the number starting to vape but they’re not changing the age restrictions as far as I know.
Hopefully this will lead to them just using vapes instead of cigarettes and not them trying to illegally get cigarettes. I’m still on the fence on whether I think this law is a good idea in general or not but allowing them to still buy vapes / vape liquid is definitely the right decision IMO.
Under no pretext should vapes be surrendered.
Counterpoint, a majority of the man’s bathrooms in high schools are taken up by vapers and no one can piss anymore
the GOVERNMENT wants to TAKE away your PISS
Death to America
They’re doing a separate crusade against disposable vapes. If they’re going after smoking I’d imagine they’d be trying to encourage people to vape to quit.
It’s all hypothetical because it’s highly unlikely he’ll still be in power to put this plan in to action come the next general election
If you are above 18 this doesn’t concern you anyway
I care about people younger than me lol
Your extreme views frighten me! I thought we were just gonna let them all deal with this mess long after we’re gone.
Shit you’re right, I got mine, fuck them.
Sure it does. The functions of government concern us all
Cool, when does the minimum age for joining the military start to raise by one year every year?
What’s with the whataboutism?
They’re right, there shouldn’t be recruiters in school that’s predatory as shit.
Do they do that in the UK? I didn’t think they were quite so gung-ho about their military.
