321–330 of 430 posts
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In a country with a national health system, why should you be able to internalize the benefit of smoking whilst externalizing the cost?
You could use this logic to ban unhealthy foods, or restrict people from eating too much.
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You could use this logic to ban unhealthy foods, or restrict people from eating too much.
Indeed yes. We have extremely large governmental departments regulating what can and can not be sold as food.
As a former smoker (who quit for seven years and regrets taking it up again), and as a present-day vape user, wtf. This is a clear restriction on liberty. It may be stupid that I do it. Just like many stupid decisions (junk food included), it ought to be my right to decide how to live. Cut off production so cigarettes are no longer made or imported. Don't block me from them while letting others have them. (Not in UK)…
>This is a clear restriction on liberty. So is banning the sale of leaded gasoline.
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In the UK tobacco is heavily taxed and those taxes bring in more money than the cost on the healthcare service.
Interesting - do you have a link about the financial accounting around this?
As a former smoker (who quit for seven years and regrets taking it up again), and as a present-day vape user, wtf. This is a clear restriction on liberty. It may be stupid that I do it. Just like many stupid decisions (junk food included), it ought to be my right to decide how to live. Cut off production so cigarettes are no longer made or imported. Don't block me from them while letting others have them. (Not in UK)…
It's a restriction on liberty but not an unjustified one. I agree that it gives cigarettes a "mystique" that they do not deserve to have one generation able to smoke if they like while another generation has to go outside the law to do so. When I was a smoker, I used to decry places that were less liberal about where I was allowed to smoke, and places with high taxes. As a former smoker, I know that the high taxes ha…
How is this constitutional lol. Especially the age discrimination aspect.
Alcohol costs the UK 4-5x more than smoking. Coincidentally, it's the upper classes drug of choice. Must be a coincidence though
As the US found out, alcohol is very very hard to ban because it is very very easy to make.
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This is just whataboutism, but the UK also regulates sugar in fairly draconian ways too, for example. There are good reasons to target smoking given how addictive and deadly it is. Nicotine is fairly unique in this regard.
It's reductio ad absurdum. Obesity is really bad for you and strains public health services. Should the government enforce a cap on caloric intake?
Governments try to address this problem through education and regulation of food. There are drugs available now to help control obesity and they're very popular, so people obviously want to avoid the condition.
I don't know why you think people should have a right to take highly addictive drugs that result in premature death. Contrary to smoker's claims, cigarettes are pure addiction and provide no benefits whatsoever to the smoker.
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They already prevent advertising the sorts of foods that contribute to obesity to children, and encourage you to drink less sugary drinks by applying tax to them (though unfortunately manufacturers have responded to this by reducing choice and adding artificial sweeteners instead of selling something at a higher price that can be enjoyed once every few weeks. I don't think any of this is unreasonable in a country tha…
Would a calorie cap be reasonable?
A legislation that isn't possible to enforce is not reasonable, no.
Banning cigarettes = easy to enforce.
Banning sugar in soft drinks = easy to enforce.
Limiting how many calories you can consume = how do you propose we do that? Do we even have the technology to track what someone eats? And do we carve out exceptions for athletes?
If there was a way to cap calories without surgically inserting trackers into everybody I'm sure you'd see a lot less opposition to your idea.
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If future generations want to smoke, they can change the law as easily as yours passed it. Running government budgets further and further into deficit, believing that, as a result, your children will, some day, be in a stronger financial position to repay the resulting debt that, until that day, continues to grow at an ever-increasing rate? That seems psychopathic.
Given the population pyramid, it would be impossible for them to change the law until they are well into old age.