1y ago

MPs to vote on smoking ban for those born after 2009

Plans to stop young people born since 2009 ever smoking are being debated and will be voted on later.

Rishi Sunak's bill aims to create the UK's first smoke-free generation in a major public health intervention.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill would ensure anyone turning 15 from this year would be banned from buying cigarettes, and also aims to make vapes less appealing to children.

A number of Tory MPs have told the BBC they won't back the bill.

The BBC understands that Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch is considering voting against the plans.

16 comments

I’m all about personal choice and laws like this conflict me.
- Same. Normally I'd say "keep it legal" but smoking has significant second-hand effects, unlike something like motorcycle helmets for example (which I do not think should be legally mandated). I'm very torn on this one.
  
  I find the second hand effects argument a difficult one to swallow when we deal with car pollution, industrial waste, microplastics, and so much more on a minute to minute basis. Anyone who lives in a city has essentially no reasonable expectation of overly clean air.
  Public spaces are just that—public—and there should not be an expectation of being insulated from every harmful output by your fellow citizens, within reason. I’d take the errant cigarette waft over a bus station fart any day.
  
  If you ride without a helmet, you're too dumb to get a licence
  
  I don’t see any benefits to smoking but we can say that about many things. I’d like to live in a smoke free world but once we go down the path, we run into the issue where to start banning everything on health concerns.
  I like being able to go out to eat and it be smoke free but I wish the market had decided that.
I don't smoke and am completely against smoking. But this sounds like wishful thinking that has the potential to backfire spectacularly. There is a reason why many jurisdictions are deregulating banned substances. It helps to prevent the black market for concentrated and adulterated versions of the banned substance. It also helps people with addiction to seek treatment without worry of prosecution. Perhaps they should invest in better education than go for bans.
Get fucked prohibitionists.
There will come a time when humanity wins the war on drugs, and everyone has the bodily autonomy to put what drugs they want in their own body.
And when that day happens... will you see drug users persecuting people for not being high?
Will you see prisons built for those who dare stay sober?
Will people be given felonies for being straight edge?
Will drug users militarize the police and erode our constitutional rights in a vain quest to enforce thier way of life on others?
NO
because we are not them.
You should feel fortunate we seek justice, not retribution.
- Governments banning drugs just creates dangerous black markets and criminals instead of doing their job of establishing and regulating markets with medical support for addicts. Arresting drug users for using drugs is similar to arresting people for eating Doritos because some people overeat them. You can do it, but it's not going to stop people from eating Doritos it just means more people will suffer making and distributing the Doritos. Nobody is going to force you to eat the Doritos, and if you're eating too many you'll benefit by talking to a doctor not a judge.
Smoking does cost society money. Where medical care is subsidised by the public; we sure should prevent people from making money of selling self destructive stuff.
- IIRC in the US, it's revenue-positive for the government. Smokers tend to die earlier, and on average don't collect various old-age benefits, and that outweighs the costs.
  googles
  This was from 1989, so inflation will have changed the dollar values, but I doubt that it's changed qualitatively:
  https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11584/c11584.pdf
  Our simulations suggest that each median-wage male smoker in the 1920 birth cohort roughly "saves" the Social Security system $20,000, and each median-wage female smoker saves $10,000.
I don't mind people smoking as long as I don't smell it. The second I smell it, I'm pissed my kid has to join in on your addiction.
If that isn't possible, maybe we should do a total ban.

16 comments