You’re right of course. What I was thinking of was all the people who ban smoking in their home so visitors go ourside to do it. Bans like that would’ve been considered anti-social in the days when I was young, but are routine now. My condo bans smoking completely, even on the balconies.
Still I believe that outlawing it, even in slices as proposed, will lead to all the negative consequences that the other wars on drugs have.
I’m of many minds on the issue. I don’t smoke, but my grandparents did (sometimes around us), and my mother and step father did (although they tried very hard not to do it around us). It absolutely contributed to the early death of two of my grandparents as well.
I think that overall the health consequences for the direct users could be managed via various legislation, and I’m glad I’m young enough that most of memories eye-watering, smoke dimmed family restaurants are generally with age.
Still, second hand smoke is a real and lingering problem. I’m sure we’ve all seen it, that the rules tends to be enforced… unevenly. Every workplace and public area I’ve been has signs about “no smoking within X feet” and every single one has been disregarded with minimal if any enforcement. So we’re all far better off (well non-smokers) than even my personal memory, but still suffering despite the existing laws.
Honestly, despite my wishes for a perfect world (and boooy do I have a long list), I think that especially in the US, the reactionary efforts against even such a time-derived ban would result in unspeakable scorched earth state-by-state refusals. Not to mention refusal to enforce such laws that would make the conflicts of MJ legislation look tame. No, I think even slow acting bans are doomed for at least another generation, but as outlook and markets change, it should be kept as a viable possibility 15-20 years down the line perhaps.
However, I see few to any problems (again borrowing from MJ legislation) to once again increase state and/or federal taxes on all tobacco products, to be applied to research on cancer, or some other largely non-political public welfare benefit. Not so high as to lead to a de facto ban (and to prevent the rise of large scale black marketing) but enough to subsidize some of the societal costs and even save a few smokers!
IE instead of say, $8 a pack (which seems to be roughly the average right now), if it were $10 a pack, you might get smokers to cut down even just one a day, to make a pack stretch farther. It wouldn’t help much, to be sure, but I don’t see a great deal of harm at the same time.
I grew up in a house of smokers. Both parents smoked - a lot. I remember being fascinated by the way she could puff away on a fag while preparing a meal - the ash tip getting longer and longer until it finally fell off.
I smoked as a teenager and into my twenties, but more as a social thing, since almost everyone I knew also smoked. Eventually, my decision to give up was driven by the combined factors of anti-smoking propaganda and rising costs.
Well, first of all, it wont be like Prohibition. Some 60-70% of adults drank. Currently, about 15% of Americans smoke. So, there’s a HUGE difference. And smokeless, the patch, nicotine gum, and vaping would all be allowed, so it’d be like if prohibition had allowed beer and wine, like people thought it was going to. In other words, there would be a way for smokers to get their fix.
Not the same at all…
The USA already has more severe restrictions on who can drink alcohol and where it can be purchased. Of course, it varies between States, but I understand that in many cases a 20-year-old adult is breaking the law if they have wine with a meal, and in many States, one has to buy from a State Liquor Store.
Contrast with the UK, where a 14-year-old can legally have wine with a meal and booze of all kinds is on sale at outlets from tiny village stores (where they still survive) to major supermarkets, as well as specialist stores. Across the Channel, there are even fewer restrictions.
I don’t understand how Sunak’s proposal will work in practise. The legal age to buy cigarettes will rise by one year, every year. Therefore, anyone who is too young to smoke today will always be too young to smoke.
What’s going to happen in thirty years, when smoking is prohibited for anyone under 45? Will newsagents have to card people in their mid-forties? I can’t imagine them complying with that. How will it be enforced? Will the police be sending in 44 year olds to buy cigarettes from newsagents in sting operations? When two friends in their mid-forties both go into a store to buy cigarettes, will the eighteen year old behind the counter have to deny one and serve the other because the first is a month too young?
It all sounds so silly that it’s difficult to imagine anyone taking it seriously.
That is the thought that I had as well. Of course, it pre-supposes that there will be anyone still selling cigarettes.
Only about 12% of the UK population are currently smokers and that number is steadily falling. With fewer new smokers becoming addicted, the demand may eventually be so low that it will no longer be profitable for stores to stock them.
It may well have become routine for smokers to produce ID at the point of sale. Friends in their mid-forties will, no doubt, get the older one to make the purchase to avoid embarrassment. Currently, a pack of cigarettes costs nearly 10% of an average working person’s daily wage. Who knows what it will be in thirty years?
My dad smoked cigarettes. When I was a kid I remember him saying he’d quit if the price ever went above fifty cents a pack. As prices rose, so did the goalposts. Lucky Strikes, then Camels.
The first time my daughter smelled burning cannabis in the wild, she was in kindergarten. Her friend told her the odor was DRUGS! My daughter told her she was crazy, the odor was what her dad smelled like and it was good.
I sometimes wonder is I am actually allergic to tobacco. If I am in a room with a lot of lingering smell, and full ashtrays, but no one actually smoking, I still get itchy red patches of skin anywhere it’s exposed (arms and face, mostly), and my eyes get red and run, and I sneeze a lot.
Had a similar, but less severe reaction after walking through several rooms of tobacco leaves on display at the Kentucky state fair, and a itchy red patch where I brushed up against one.
I find it difficult to breath in a room where there’s lots of smoke.
Have documented allergies to grass and angiosperms. Have to take Benadryl in order to walk into a florist’s.
So I find cigarette bans appealing. Very much.
But honestly, in places where current laws are strictly enforced, like medical facilities, I’m fine. Only places I have any kind of reaction are restaurants that are supposed to ban it at their outdoor tables, but don’t, and it comes in the doors-- those kind of places tend to let employees smoke in backrooms and offices, even though they aren’t supposed to do that either.
Makes a meal unpleasant for me if the server reeks of stale tobacco.
Also bugs me when I’m in a place where there are butts all over the ground, although that has nothing to do with allergies. But what the hell makes smokers think that a butt isn’t littering?
(Probably referring to this thread or another one like it:)
It’s not always illegal for people under 21 to drink. In 45 states, laws allow underage drinking in certain situations.
The same arguments were made when the raised the age to 21, but it works just fine.
Right. And here in CA, they have restrictions on who can sell and you have to have a license- which can be taken away. There are proposals to limit the sale to specialized smoke shops.
It is already routine in many places for everyone to produce ID at the point of sale for booze.
I used to know one ex-military guy who always field stripped his cigs when out. Other than him, pretty much all smokers are littering pigs. Butts are the most littered item on Earth.
Many children are poisoned by butts-
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00046181.htm
During 1995, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) received 7917 reports of potentially toxic exposures to tobacco products among children aged less than or equal to 6 years in the United States (1). Most cases of nicotine poisoning among children result from their ingestion of cigarettes or cigars (2).
So, not only are smokers killing tens of thousands of kids a year through second hand smoke, they are poisoning thousands by their butts.
Note that number- smokers will kill more than SIX MILLION KIDS. But people still talk about “smokers rights”.
That’s not what it says.
I’d like to see the scientific basis for that claim.
Indeed it does. Yes, most of them will die from being smokers themselves, but still, smoking will kill 6 million + kids.
There are dozens and dozens of scientific peer reviewed and CDC cites about smoking deaths. Find the one you like or just live in denial.
We can’t have a conversation if you misrepresent information.
That is not what it says. At all.
“They will eventually” does not mean they will die as kids. It means they will die from smoke related causes at some point, it could be when they are 75.
That is true. But at this point in time, they are kids. That is exactly what the cite says-
And there is this-
Oh, I had zero expectation that it would stop more than the tiniest percentage. No more than increasing costs have stopped some of my friends from their pente-venti Starbucks addiction who swore much the same as your father.
But If the cost makes them suddenly decide that instead of stretching a pack to 2 days, to making in stretch to 3 days, it’s still a win.
Regardless of any new laws, it is my personal opinion that peer pressure and rising prices will eventually make all but the most determined smokers give up.
I was in London last week and drove through the City. I only go there rarely and it suddenly struck me that the last time was about ten years ago, not long after smoking indoors was banned. Back then, there were little groups of smokers outside every office block - last week I did not see any.
Raising the smoking age to match the drinking age is one thing, raising it every year to the point where eighteen year olds will be telling 60 year olds they’re too young to buy a pack of Marlboros is quite another. I can’t imagine anyone complying with the latter. If nothing else, they’d just be too embarrassed.
I think it’s a worthy goal, but I think it’s likely to be unsuccessful. What I’d rather see would be a prohibition on marketing nicotine to minors (yeah, that’s theoretically in place already, but widely ignored), and specifically a prohibition on flavored nicotine products.