Some people seem concerned this might work… “the threat of a good example”
So, as I do, I was curious. The total cost of home fires in the US is around $4 billion a year. So, you’d take 20% of that. Countering that, however, the US brings in around $13 billion a year in taxes from tobacco.
I think the medical costs would be more profitable to look at. Lung cancer costs the US around $3-4 billion a year, and this probably isn’t including all the costs.
This is a typical narrow focus. You are looking ONLY at dollars. Would you be willing to lose your house to a fire if someone gave you the cash value the next day? There are logistical and emotional costs to house fires that are not offset by tax revenue.
No, I was only responding to the post because I was interested in seeing what the costs were. Of course, there are other factors…I didn’t think that needed to be said. It was just an interesting (to me anyway) mental exercise.
You could use such an attenuated argument against pretty much any argument for a personal freedom to do anything. Why should anyone have free speech, religion, petition, gun ownership, private property, freedom from arbitrary searches or even things with less constitutional significance like eating ice cream cones? And what about the other 80% of housefires that according to this test should call for the banning of candles, home fireplaces, and the banning of all private use of fire?
There is no activity that doesn’t tangentially touch someone else, and the fact that the overwhelming number of smokers are able to smoke without burning down the whole city block makes this argument rather facile. The risks to anyone else from a person smoking, assuming it is not in an enclosed space with others around, is solely on the smoker and the effects on others is de minimis.
Not a risk, but the costs to the tax payer where there is a nationalised health service are enormous. I’m sure this is a factor.
Yes, these rights protect acts that have potential costs. But society has determined that the potential benefits of these acts outweigh the potential costs.
I don’t think a similar argument can be made for the right to smoke. The potential benefits from people smoking are minimal while the potential costs are quite high.
New Zealand is absolutely protecting the right to smoke for everyone who matters.
What differentiates that and a proposed law banning sugary foods?
High sugar foods are only harmful to people who consume too many calories. And not any more harmful than any other high calorie food.
Smoking is harmful to everyone who smokes, along with other people who are nearby.
This seems like a very good idea. Sure, early on 17 year olds will just get their friends who are a couple years older to buy for them, but when the minimum age hits 35 or so that’s going to be much more difficult.
Tobacco is different from most other drugs of abuse in that almost nobody who makes it through their teens without getting addicted to tobacco decides to pick it up as an adult. By raising barriers to access for teens, we can greatly lower the numbers of adult smokers.
We could do the same thing for alcohol; “completely outlaw “ it and not annoy anyone who matters.
We could, but the arguments against it are similar to the ones BigT made in post #176 against “doing the same thing for” high sugar foods.
Risk/benefit levels and addiction levels are far higher for smokers than for consumers of, say, alcohol or high sugar foods. Moreover, the immediate negative physical impacts of smoking directly affect non-smokers far more than the immediate negative physical impacts of alcohol consumption directly affect non-drinkers.
In practical terms, smokers are a far smaller percentage of the population than consumers of alcohol or sugary foods. And most smokers, unlike most consumers of alcohol or sugary foods, want to quit smoking entirely.
So there really isn’t an effective functioning opposition (other than the tobacco lobby itself) to the common-sense approach of just phasing out tobacco consumption entirely, on a generational timescale. Most people recognize that future generations of New Zealanders will not be genuinely harmed by being deprived of the opportunity to become addicted to smoking.
For both alcohol and obesity-promiting substances, there is can indeed be a negative affect on people other than the individual involved. Ask the children of alcoholics, or the spouse of a morbidly obese person.
There is a difference; the vast majority of people use alcohol relatively responsibly, and the same with food. The recommendations for how much alcohol to consume safely per week is greater than zero; I don’t think there’s a recommended amount of safe tobacco.
My point is that any argument resting upon harm to others can be expanded to other subjects; the difference is in degree rather than kind. But nicotine is unique in that it has a high probability of harming the self, a decent probability of harming others, and it is more difficult to avoid smoke in public than it is to avoid a problem drinker. So I don’t think any one negative about smoking would justify this type of ban, but the sum total of negative effects on the user (health) and on others (health, social disapprobation) and the environment (toxic litter, etc.) is unique among currently legal substances.
From a theoretical point, not a lot. You could make the same argument.
But I think you would not find a consensus for banning sugar. Society seems to accept the costs of sugar consumption.
From a practical standpoint, regulating sugar would be much more difficult than banning tobacco. First off, what types of sugar are you banning; sucrose? fructose? glucose? lactose? maltose? To really ban them you’d have to ban all of the foods they naturally occur in, which would severely limit our diets.
The key point of the “ban” is that no one who can currently legally obtain the “banned” items now will be affected. So our diets won’t be changed.
Because it isn’t nicotine addiction per se that causes the negative health effects of smoking, and other delivery mechanisms (such as vaping) are not generally associated with negative health outcomes such as lung and oral cancer (popcorn lung notwithstanding). And it is likely that in future vaping products will be regulated, to ensure that nicotine levels via vaping do not cause problematic addictions.
I’ll give my own zombie some mouth to mouth here with this piece of news:
Like New Zealand they also plan to gradually raise the lower age limit.
Hopefully, not too OT … it’d be nice if NZ would lead (and the US would follow) in putting an end to direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising … next:
I simply disagree. I think that for anyone to believe that an individual who believes that their life would be diminished in quality by no more alcohol, sugary foods, marijuana, or tobacco could rightfully be said to have a problem with those things as they are not necessary nor sufficient for happiness. Your post seems to be claiming that tobacco is so unpopular now that it can suffer this ban while an alcohol or sweet food ban would not have such support. I don’t disagree, but that doesn’t add to the logic of the position.
As noted above, this is not a debate about smoking in bars or restaurants. We had that one twenty years ago. This law prohibits tobacco smoking in one’s home or in an empty field. I don’t believe it is proper to argue about second hand smoke in this context.