- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- Technically, the new law will raise the legal age requirement in the UK for buying cigarettes, cigars or tobacco, which is currently 18, by one year in every subsequent year, starting on January 1, 2027
- This will effectively mean that people born on or after January 1, 2009 will never be eligible to buy them
- Retailers will face financial penalties for selling the products to those not entitled to them
- The government will also be empowered to impose a new registration system for smoking and vaping products entering the country, seeking to improve oversight
- The bill will expand the UK’s indoor smoking ban to a series of outdoor public spaces, for instance in children’s playgrounds, outside schools and hospitals
- Most indoor spaces that are designated smoke-free will become vape-free as well
- Smoking in designated areas outside pubs and bars and other hospitality settings will remain permissible
- Smoking and vaping will remain legal in people’s homes
- Vaping will become illegal in cars if someone under the age of 18 is inside, to match existing rules on smoking
- Advertising for smoking and vaping products will be banned
- People aged 18 or older will remain eligible to purchase vaping products, but some items targeted at younger consumers like disposable vapes have already been outlawed as part of the program
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I sometimes feel like people get so caught up on the word “prohibition” that their arguments bend towards addiction enabling at a societal scale. Smoking is beyond crazy when you look at the stats (using USA for convenience, but similar for other countries)
- Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable disease and death, causing nearly 500k deaths per year. [For reference, the far more popular drug alcohol is the 3rd highest with under 100k deaths]
- In 2024, 41k deaths were due to second hand smoke exposure alone
- Cigarettes cost the USA more than $600B in 2018
- Private insurance only pays for a fraction of the health care costs, the vast majority coming directly/indirectly from public funds
- The damage done has a vastly disproportionate burden on minorities, the poor and other at-risk populations
The problem is simple: cigarettes are a massive drain on the health system, directly and indirectly. The solution should be just as simple: buying cigarettes forfeits your rights to health care treatments for the damage caused. You get some palliative care but we save the lung transplants for people who aren’t killing themselves.
If you think that’s too harsh then you should stomach the cost of prohibition, policing and black markets. No matter how shitty, costly and dangerous it may be I promise that it will save lives and money if it’s a barrier to even a fraction of smokers.
[For reference, the far more popular drug alcohol is the 3rd highest with under 100k deaths]
Yet accidents or acts of violence while under the influence, involving other people and getting them killed needlessly.
I’m saying so because I was a victim of violence related to alcohol abuse.
You can make every single argument you used for unhealthy eating. Especially since its the leading cause of death in the United States yet no one is talking about banning oreos. Regulate the industry and inform the population to make better choices but a ban just a uncalculated reaction. We’ve literally seen it with prohibition and the drug war and it ultimately doesn’t work. You can’t just say that the black market won’t be as costly because you have no idea what will actually happen. Global smoking trends have been going down. Let’s just continue to do what has been proven to work.
Also denying ppl healthcare based on their bad health habits is facist…
Exactly. Following that logic, joggers should be barred from getting synthetic knees in later life.
This is all ideal rhetoric for some more neoliberal budget cuts to healthcare systems.
They’re not even close to comparable as far as health crisis go. People need to eat; nobody needs to smoke. It’s possible to eat oreos without taking years off your life. Hell, it’s possible to have a diet entirely of oreos with some nutrition supplements. You won’t die from second hand oreos.
a ban just a uncalculated reaction
I’d believe this argument 80 years ago when big tobacco was still hiding evidence but not today. The calculations are right there, millions of lives being thrown away and trillions of dollars burned (in spite of massive progress!) while we drag our feet and push back on something as simple as a generation purchase ban.
We’ve literally seen it with prohibition
Prohibition was a naive attempt with no thought put toward implementation. It was backed largely by appeals to morality and sin instead of strong public health research. And even in spite of that, it did succeed in cutting alcohol consumption.
A whole generation had dramatically lower rates of alcohol use and it took until the 1970s for per-capita consumption to match the pre-prohibition peak. There’s a lot we can learn about public health policy from Prohibition but people only focus on bootleggers and gangsters.
[…] and the drug war
Woof that’s certainly one to unwrap. The war on drugs was a failure as a public health policy but wildly successful as a tool for creating a slave class and an imperial casus belli. Even a glance at policies that restricted drug research and criminalized drug use shows that public health was a fig leaf. And if you’re using drug proliferation as justification for ulterior power consolidation then eliminating drug use is obviously counter productive. I don’t think it bears much weight in these conversations.
Also denying ppl healthcare based on their bad health habits is facist…
Which is my point. I’m also not saying that other methods like education, sin taxes or tobacco alternatives are a waste of time. Public health problems always have to be fought on multiple fronts. But at some point you have to decide how much time and effort you’re going to spend tiptoeing around vice industries. A generation purchase ban is simple and gradual; and there’s no evidence that it won’t work unless you make oblique comparisons to other failed/mixed public health efforts.
You forget we are not talking about the USA here. The article is about the UK where we already have a lot more food regulation than you do in the USA.
If you really want to go down the road of things proven to work, maybe start within the USA and introduce the effective firearms legislation and regulations that most of the civilised world has proven reduces per capita gun deaths and almost entirely negates mass murder of schoolchildren.
A good move in my opinion. Not sure how enforced it will be but phasing out cigarettes full stop is a good idea.
Now we should be clamping down on vapes. Tax them more, ban advertising, hide them from sale and put them in the same blank packaging as cigs.
In my opinion, they should ban the sweet flavours and only allow menthol, tobacco or mint flavours but not sure how that would fly.
Oh yes, we have seen how effective prohibition laws are working. Good luck with that one. And to all of you four-eyed, I have never smoked and never will.
It’s OK, nobody born after that will be able to afford them.
There’s a reason vapes got popular, and part of that is a pack of 20 ciggies costing £15+.
So now everyone smells of either fruit salads or weed.
I’m not sure about banning smoking outside of hospitals. The hospital near me doesn’t allow smoking by the entrances but has a designated smoking zone.
I’m not a smoker, but I’m thinking of when my grandma was dealing with my grandpa in the intensive care unit. She was already stressed to the gills with family and husband stress. I wouldn’t want her to have to deal with nicotine withdrawal, too (or finding alternative methods of nicotine use).
On the other hand, there was an asshole smoking right at the hospital entrance last time I was there. Screw that guy.
Grandpa was in the hospital for emphysema due to a lifetime of smoking. He left the hospital and quit smoking. I don’t think Grandma ever quit, even with full-on dementia. So, mixed feelings about old folks smoking near hospitals.
No way the police are going to use this to further harass young people, especially from racialized communities.
And no way this will create pathways to link marginalized youth with organised crime and such.
raze nazi england to the ground, salt the earth that nothing can grow there again
This is regulation, not prohibition.
There is no value but death to smoking tobacco and nicotine products simply interface with that reality. There is value to other substances like alcohol and cannabis.
The conflation in this thread is staggering.
Isn’t that discrimination based on birth ?
Smoking is bad, but prohibition of drugs just drives them underground and denies freedom. Bad call UK
Well. This will create an underground for buying cigs. Hopefully though it kills smoking forever. I vape myself but used it to get off cigs. Young kids in America at least hate both, some are still doing it but the stigma is vaping/smoking bad.
Young kids in America at least hate both
Younger generations aren’t even into drinking. It’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
Yes. It will kill it forever. Just like illegal drugs and guns in the US!
Young kids in America at least hate both
How young? That hasn’t been my experience with plenty of teens and young adults I’ve been around who vape all the time or go looking for cigs while drinking
Pre-teens
Now, this is a good thing, but I can’t help but imagine in 2099, a 90yr old begging their friends to sell them a pack
Vaping is still legal. Why wouldn’t he just get his nicotine high from a vape?
Same reason my smoker friend tells me he hates vaping: “it just hits different”
But having to use a shitty black market for cigarettes every day would surely motivate most of them to try to learn to love the vape.
The black market would then only be supported by irredeemable vape haters. Who got hooked on cigarettes while never in their life being able to buy them legally. Which doesn’t seem like a big market to me - so might not be big enough to be profitable.
Better they buy regulated weed, in edibles, oil, or otherwise.
Lol I see your an optimist when it comes to uk recreational
I mean, I do not think they will, just that that would be less bad.
If people over 18 can buy it then that’s fine. I do think under 18 is too young for cigs. Way to ruin your lungs. Though I am wary of how totalitarian the UK is becoming especially for young people - no phones, no social media. Prohibition and banning people turns us into North Korea, China, and Russia. It’s a fine line to cross. However, we definitely do need tighter regulations for certain things. But I think the gov is diving in head first instead of finding a more nuanced approach with things. This feels more like it’s about control and policing society rather than making a healthy and happier society.
Not including vaping is kinda… Odd.
