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New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

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Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#141

Post by nerdponx »

foxrider wrote: post #74
swlp21 wrote: post #17

The price increases (10% per year since 2011) have created a market for stolen and counterfeit cigarettes already. Creating a slow-roll prohibition will not stop people wanting to smoke tobacco products - in fact, previous evidence (e.g. alcohol and cannabis as things most people know about) shows that people are motivated to partake by the very idea of it being illicit. The product of US prohibition was the creation…

While both alcohol and weed can give you altered reality experience, tobacco can not. Tobacco smokers are a major annoyance and a nuisance to the public, on top of killing themselves slowly, so if the tobacco cigarrets would've been strictly illegal and you coldn't smoke in public I can't imagine people willing to organize into small secret clubs to smoke a few cigs a day in a place you have to go to.

That's not true. A lot of people start smoking because it feels good.

Nicotine is psychoactive, and the physical act of smoking can be pleasant.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#142

Post by lostmsu »

NoSorryCannot wrote: post #139
lostmsu wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody made that argument. The cause it for being on the list is "deadly addictive". See above.

See above indeed.

I gave you a direct quote. What are you referring to?

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#143

Post by ksec »

bigyikes wrote: post #26

The amount of support for drug prohibition in this thread really surprises me. Why shouldn’t an adult have the freedom to smoke and put themselves at high risk of lung cancer? If it’s “for their own good”, what makes the government the best entity to decide what’s good for one’s self? I hope lives are saved, but dang, it just hurts me a little bit to see personal liberty curbed. There’s no way this will result in an…

>The amount of support for drug prohibition in this thread really surprises me.

Most people I know smoke not because they are a drug addict or real smokers. They smoke because there are million things in life and work they cant get it out. And smoking is a pressure relieve system. That is why the trend is cigarettes with little Nicotine and fancy taste profile. Or E-cigarettes. I am willing to bet one could even create "cigarettes" with no nicotine and it will still sell.

May be cigarettes should be taxed by their content, where high Nicotine would be taxed higher or even ban. These sort of policy and system should be progressive.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#144

Post by NoSorryCannot »

lostmsu wrote: post #142
NoSorryCannot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See above indeed.

I gave you a direct quote. What are you referring to?

I'm not being taken for a ride where we pretend that nothing was intended nor implied by calling it a narcotic.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#145

Post by r00fus »

elzbardico wrote: post #129
r00fus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an inapt slippery slope analogy. The supposed bastion of freedom, the US, still has states where books are banned. And abortion is functionally banned. Not all freedoms are the same. Losing one doesn't equate with losing all of them. Equating the freedom to become addicted (or indebted perpetually) is not the same as the freedom to read or travel, etc.

Who gives the right to define something as addictive and therefore, bad, and other stuff as not and therefore virtuos. Why do we got the right to moralize some stuff as being "an slave of a substance". Aren't we all slaves of water, nutrition, companionship, shelter? Why do I get to feel superior to the cocaine user?

> Who gives the right to define something as addictive and therefore, bad

Data. Decades of data and the societal costs of ignoring addictive substances. The rest of your comment is a set of false equivalencies.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#146

Post by qball »

dougmwne wrote: post #130
qball wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder if this could have other legal applications. Not in any country that believes in equality before the law; the concept is that you're not allowed to create 2 classes of citizens, which is what this law effectively does. Not that the US is at all perfect in this regard, and nearly every state establishes some form of this, but effectively making a group of citizens permanent children should be troubling to an…

I have a higher social security retirement age than my parents, even though life expectancy is dropping. We absolutely have different rules for different cohorts today in the US. Maybe there are times when cohort based law is a good tool, and times when it is not or should be unconstitutional.

>We absolutely have different rules for different cohorts today in the US.

Crucially, however, none of those rules involve criminal or civil penalties (outside of the distinction between who is and is not considered a full member of society; there are no tiers between full members outside of "does qualify as an adult" and "does not qualify").

It's worth noting that the part of the Constitution that deals with this was laid down after the US fought an incredibly destructive 4-year war against itself *to deny itself its own ability to pass cohort-based law*, though it took a good 100 years after that war for the results to be fully incorporated.

Of course, the US certainly isn't perfect in this regard, and this can be abused in the other direction ("In its majestic equality the law forbids both rich and poor to sleep beneath bridges...") but "honor what the 14th says" remains the cultural law of the land for very good reason.

>Maybe there are times when cohort based law is a good tool

Apartheid schemes and Jim Crow laws have always enjoyed wide popular support- they all have valid anecdotal backing (and scientific backing, if you consider P-hacking valid science), direct society in ways those not targeted by the law find preferable, and have enjoyed wildly popular support amongst the groups not targeted by the law.

That's fundamentally what cohort-based law is; society hasn't managed to solve the obvious abuse problems that come with "but I'm too lazy to solve this problem the right way" or "the solution to the problem compatible with human rights is taking too long", because without fail that's what it always becomes.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#147

Post by elzbardico »

r00fus wrote: post #145
elzbardico wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gives the right to define something as addictive and therefore, bad, and other stuff as not and therefore virtuos. Why do we got the right to moralize some stuff as being "an slave of a substance". Aren't we all slaves of water, nutrition, companionship, shelter? Why do I get to feel superior to the cocaine user?

> Who gives the right to define something as addictive and therefore, bad Data. Decades of data and the societal costs of ignoring addictive substances. The rest of your comment is a set of false equivalencies.

Heard the same from other moralists for quite some time about marijuana. They had tons of "data" about the societal costs of it.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#148

Post by LanceH »

bloak wrote: post #106
LanceH wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't support any legislation that so blatantly discriminates against a whole class of people. People should be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

I think lots of countries have changed their pension rules in a way that treats people born after a certain date differently from people born before a certain date, whether or not they express it in those terms. Is that fundamentally any different from the proposed smoking rule?

Theoretically that is based on actuarial data which says people are living longer and can work longer.

If you can find one where people born before a certain year get a pension and people after it will never get one, then it's a like to like comparison.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#149

Post by boogywoogy »

swlp21 wrote: post #17

The price increases (10% per year since 2011) have created a market for stolen and counterfeit cigarettes already. Creating a slow-roll prohibition will not stop people wanting to smoke tobacco products - in fact, previous evidence (e.g. alcohol and cannabis as things most people know about) shows that people are motivated to partake by the very idea of it being illicit. The product of US prohibition was the creation…

Availability matters. Buying drugs/products from dealers is not something most people are comfortable doing.

A ban on smoking products dramatically reduces availability.

There are already black markets for cigarettes anyway. I think they are unavoidable.

Re: New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes – for life

#150

Post by scythe »

gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #75
scythe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The same arguments that people who refuse COVID vaccines should be cut off from the community (jobs, commerce, etc) applies to tobacco. When was the last time an ER or ICU was closed to new patients because of lung cancer? The problem with COVID denialism isn't that they impose the usual sort of healthcare costs but that they produce correlated emergencies which strain the hospital beyond its usual operating capacit…

Once the ERs slow down can people who didn’t get the shot have jobs or leave their homes? Many on the Left say no.

I expect that vaccine mandates for employment (a la Biden) will go away eventually, yes. But that won't happen "once the ERs slow down"; rather, it happens when we are confident they won't "speed up" again. One operationalization: I would figure that when we are at 95% vaccinated or so, and when it is no longer a major news item, the mandate will be repealed.

>or leave their homes?

I do support continuing the vaccine mandate for as long as people continue to say ridiculous things like this. Government policy has rarely been so funny.

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