Doesn’t seem very arbitrary to me. It feels to me like they’ve given it lots of thought, especially to protect the rights of existing smokers. But if it rubs you up the wrong way then I can understand that.
This sort of thing goes right to the heart of government reach. Can a government really outlaw the usage of a plant? Most still do it with cannabis. At least tobacco is addictive and will probably kill or reduce the lifespan of the user.
For countries with a national health service there is a logic to outlawing things like smoking. Treating smokers for all their various ailments costs the taxpayer an enormous amount of money. I wonder if this is one of the reasons that some American politicians push back against nationalised healthcare. One of the consequences is that there is an incentive to keep the population healthy, and that might mean prescribing a healthier lifestyle through legislation.
Putting aside the merits of banning tobacco, this seems like an odd way of enforcing it. People of a certain age will forever be permitted to purchase tobacco but those one year (or even one day or one hour) younger than them will never be permitted to purchase it. That seems rather arbitrary in day to day enforcement throughout the life of the people involved and the law.
It would seem silly in the middle of the implementation that 46 year olds cannot purchase tobacco but 47 year olds can. While I am, for example, freely able to purchase tobacco without penalty, the person one year (or day or hour) younger than me forever must violate the law and obtain his tobacco through black market channels or even from me acting as a black market representative. What makes me materially different from the person slightly younger than me to justify such a prohibition?
One might argue the same thing about a 21 year old drinking age, but the difference is that the 20 year old who cannot drink this year will be able to drink next year. It may be arbitrary, but it is at least rational.
I tend to side with @kanicbird above. If they want to outlaw tobacco (and setting aside the merits of that) it would seem like a five year phase-in with smoking cessation programs funded would be a better plan.
Like I said up-thread, it’s rational from the perspective of voters. After all, those who currently vote won’t have their own access to tobacco limited, it will be those who currently can’t vote who will. Of course, done the road that will or may impact things, but they might think that they have enough momentum to nip it in the bud, so to speak (to mix metaphors). If they basically stop smoking by anyone of a certain age, or even a large percentage, then those future voters might not care enough to be pissed off later and vote to change things back.
Personally, like I said earlier, it seems a lot of work and effort to save 5k deaths a year (sometime 20-30 years from now), even in their relatively small population, but if that’s what their voters are concerned with (or, more likely, their public health care system) then it’s all good.
Sure, but not for people who are mostly similarly situated, and not one that will last this long. Take the last 18 year old who lives to be 118 and you have 110 years of disparate treatment under the law, again all between adults with no meaningful thing to differentiate them other than age.
If you passed a law that only current smokers could continue to smoke, then I would agree that is a grandfather clause. But under this law, that last 18 year old could take up smoking at age 60 and keep smoking the rest of their lives. They could enjoy a casual cigar for the first time. The person a day younger could never do that, even if that younger person was a current smoker.
Perhaps, but again, I don’t see how it will stop smoking. It is easy enough for kids to get booze/tobacco today. What is to stop a 40 year old from giving it to another 30 year old? It’s not even like they have to sneak it past parents. You would just see a lucrative and illegal black market by persons “of age” setting up an underground distribution speakeasy-type system only without the need of a speakeasy.
Those who are trying this probably have a feeling that demand will drop off as the older folks die off and there are no new customers, so, while it’s true you COULD smoke that fine cigar starting at 60, it might be so expensive that only a very limited number of people would be able too. I’m not sure that’s going to work out the way they think, but it’s probably part of their calculations on this.
Really, it will certainly suck for the people who are aged out of having a choice, but they will always be a minority of voters, regardless, if the plan works as I’m sure the folks doing it envisioned. It’s actually a fairly clever way to try and do this.
I’m sure you will have some of that, but, really, most people will not bother for tobacco, at least IMHO. And I’m a (cigar) smoker saying this. I just don’t see most kids wanting to jump through the hoops necessary to get something like this on the black market, or even have their slightly older friends get it for them. Even if some percentage does, I think it would still be a much smaller percentage that would have smoked if you’d done nothing.
I still am not convinced it’s worth it, but then I don’t live there so I’m not the target audience that needed to be convinced.
Sure, I agree that it is “clever” in the sense that nobody currently voting for it suffer any consequences and they all fall on the now children, but I don’t think it will turn out that clever.
Let’s say I smoke. Instead of buying a carton, I buy two and sell them for double the price to younger people so I am smoking for free and they are paying double. So we would have to have a new law limiting the amount of tobacco I buy so I don’t resell it, but then people who don’t smoke will now be roped into being a conduit to purchase “legal” tobacco as a side business or to “help out” younger people. I have a consulting business. I hire only non-smokers over age 36…next year over age 37.
I just don’t see it working in a practical sense at all. It would be much better to phase it out as I described, but I agree with you that this is an easier thing for voters to pass.
We don’t need a crystal ball for this. Underage kids get booze/smokes/drugs all the time. Smoking among youth has dropped off drastically but it has done the same in the general population. Outlaw it and see how fast kids take the habit back up. Kids love nothing more than to be told they cannot do something, and adults much more so because although you can point to a good rational reason why a young person shouldn’t have access to certain things, there is literally zero logical reason to tell a 52 year old that he can’t buy something that any 53 year old can. People simply do not comply with silly laws.
There’s no hoop jumping though. Hell, when I was a teenager, it was easier for me to buy beer than it is now. All I had to do was pull into the parking lot, hand some homeless guy some money and I got my beer. I didn’t even have to get out of my car like I do now. lol
I think most people do comply, by and large…especially in places like New Zealand. While it’s true enough that underage kids get smokes, booze, and drugs all the time, and while I can see kids going through that phase (hell, I did so myself back when dinosaurs roamed the planet), I don’t see that translating into continuing to do that as they grow up. That’s the thing…if you look decades down the road, I think what you’d see is a drop-off in smokers over and above what you pointed out (which is that tobacco is already on the way out, or at least has been decreasing in the population for a long time now). Sure, you’d have kids who get tobacco, booze, and drugs at a certain age, but how many of them will still be going out to get stuff that is illegal for them going forward? As many as would have smoked if it was available? I doubt it, especially once the going against the rules and those adults phase is over.
But you’d still have some…just like you still have adults who go out to get their illegal drugs. But at a certain point, most just won’t be bothered, especially for the effect that tobacco actually has…it won’t be worth the bother. Whether all of this hoop-jumping will be worth it to New Zealand will be interesting to watch as this thing moves forward. We will have a prime opportunity to watch this experiment and see how it plays out. In a decade or so, you can revive this zombie and happily tell us all that you told us all so.
See, in NZ and CA the smoking rate is about 10%+. In the 1920’s the drinking rate was at least 40%. You can make booze fairly easily, but growing tobacco, then aging is, etc is not easy. And Drinking was socially acceptable, smoking no longer is.
And, nicotine gum, patches etc, will still be available for the die hard addict.
Note also, what this does is not stop diehard addicts from getting their fix, it stops new users.
No, since when done this way the new smokers to be will never get hooked in the first place.
Smokers die or quit all the time. The only way Big Tobacco stays in business is getting new teens to start smoking. They target kids, they spend millions on smoking placement in movies, etc (they are not allowed to place brands anymore, but they are allowed to bribe movie makers to show smoking as cool)
Because everyone abides by age restrictive laws? All the data shows that current smokers started when they were too young to legally purchase tobacco anyways. So they got hooked when it was illegal; how will they not get hooked now that it is still illegal?
ETA: There will be a larger black market because instead of one only existing to provide smokes for kids, it will expand to provide smokes for (increasingly) all adults and have a legal avenue of supply.
That is pretty funny and I don’t want to hijack the thread, but how is that calculated? Those 5000 lives that are saved in, say, 2040, will die in, say, 2060 and be counted in that year’s deaths. Will the numbers show that no lives were saved? Will people be talking about more measures needed because of the upticks in deaths in 2060? What if instead of dying from a smoke induced heart attack at age 55, I live until age 82 when I have dementia and plow my car into a group of school children, killing 6? Did my quitting smoking “save lives”? Is that even counted? Is it rare enough to ignore?
I mean, as you implicitly noted, everyone dies eventually. How are “lives saved” measured? An extra 1 year? 5? 25?
Just Google it…I’m basically using the figure for deaths due to tobacco annually in New Zealand. So, AT BEST, they would save approximately 5K lives a year. In theory, some time 20-30 years down the line, they might see that drop to 3K…then, perhaps 2K a year…then maybe 1K a year. It will probably bottom out at some point with the folks who you project are still buying tobacco on the black market somehow (once no vendors in New Zealand are even selling it anymore because no one can legally buy it, or the market is so small that it’s not worth staying in that market) is still a constant number of deaths per year.
While it’s true enough that underage kids get smokes, booze, and drugs all the time, and while I can see kids going through that phase (hell, I did so myself back when dinosaurs roamed the planet), I don’t see that translating into continuing to do that as they grow up. That’s the thing…if you look decades down the road, I think what you’d see is a drop-off in smokers over and above what you pointed out (which is that tobacco is already on the way out, or at least has been decreasing in the population for a long time now). Sure, you’d have kids who get tobacco, booze, and drugs at a certain age, but how many of them will still be going out to get stuff that is illegal for them going forward? As many as would have smoked if it was available? I doubt it, especially once the going against the rules and those adults phase is over.