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UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

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Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#81

Post by BLKNSLVR »

keybored wrote: post #71
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cigarettes don't grow out of the ground to be able to be deep fried. Some private enterprise manufactures them for sale. Just ban the sale of them in the country. They offer no positive for society or humanity whatsoever. Chippies at least have their origins in actual food sustenance. If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck ar…

> If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck around so long because of legacy and well funded lobbyists and PR / marketing types that have been happy to lie at the cost of millions of lives. > Nice, let's defend that. Many discussions about freedom are just marketing and corporate interests in a trench coat. I guess this is my fa…

Privatise the profits and socialise the costs. It's the American way!

Let's hope it recedes back to the US sooner rather than later. Let this be the first domino.

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#82

Post by postepowanieadm »

tt24 wrote: post #27

This is the logical conclusion when you socialize healthcare. If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.

Not really: you want to prevent people from being passive smokers, and add sufficient taxation on cigarettes.

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#83

Post by orev »

amiga386 wrote: post #67
klodolph wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> guess how that turned out? My guess is that significantly fewer people use drugs than would have used drugs if they were not banned. > "The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"…

They're pointing out that 2.9 millon people take drugs (extrapolating from the people surveyed), and law says that should be zero. This law will attempt to ban cigarettes. Estimate how many people will buy them and smoke them illegally. The number will not be zero.

False Dilemma fallacy

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#85

Post by BLKNSLVR »

roenxi wrote: post #64
pkulak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not also bring in mandatory exercise and ban people from sugar and alcohol too I literally said "so care needs to be taken" and you hit me with a slippery slope argument?

There isn't really a slope here. If we take your original comment for the justification, then what is your argument for why sugar or alcohol are OK and cigarettes not? Alcohol and cigarettes are basically the same category of goods. Exercise is maybe a slippery slope because it requires enforcing a positive action, but if we're going to force people to be healthy anyway, why not? In a practical sense, not a theoretic…

For me the answer is easy: alcohol and sugar in moderation do not have negative effects. They may have few positive ones, and there's the easy argument that 'in moderation' is a rule followed by exactly no one, but cigarettes have no 'safe' level of consumption. Heck, passive smoking can cause lung cancer. You can't passively absorb sugar or alcohol. Sure, alcohol can lead to putting other people in danger, but there are existing laws around that.

Literally nothing in the world would be less fun or good or enjoyable if cigarettes simply no longer existed (unless you're already addicted, and the day that cigarettes disappear will be the first day of the rest of your longer life).

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#86

Post by newdee »

tt24 wrote: post #70
fontain wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your perception of drug users is woefully out of date. The most “valuable” members of society by your metric (contributing tax dollars) are using a lot of drugs. The U.K. upper middle class are snorting so much coke.

Sorry I don’t believe this

Why not?

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#87

Post by tt24 »

newdee wrote: post #86
tt24 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I don’t believe this

Why not?

Personal anecdotes and bias. I’ve never met anyone successful who regularly consumes drugs as serious as cocaine. At worst it’s marijuana, with minor experimentation with harder substances in college or on special occasions.

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#88

Post by snapplebobapple »

threepts wrote: post #24

They also permanently banned coke,meth and other drugs since the inception of law, guess how that turned out? "The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024" I believe limiting people's…

there is also a strong question as to whether smokers are actually a net cost to government or not. They draw decades less old age pension, have decades less medical visits, etc. I am extremely unconvinced that a large cancer related medical cost now has a higher net present value than a stream of government pension payouts, health costs, etc for decades ended with a large medical cost for some other reason. This is the correct comparable for smoking vs non smoking if you are contemplating limiting peoples freedoms and i dont think it holds water.

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#89

Post by saalweachter »

tt24 wrote: post #78
mancerayder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are already paying for other people's healthcare costs, whether it's private or public! If you pay for home insurance (you kind of have to unless you own your home outright or are renting), you're paying for other people's fire or water damage. And one day they might pay for yours. If there's a lot of fires or water damage, everyone's costs go up.

That’s a consensual transaction that I choose to engage in. Doesn’t apply to single payer or the NHS

If you are housed, you are almost certainly paying for home insurance, even if you rent.

Re: UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

#90

Post by roenxi »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #85
roenxi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really a slope here. If we take your original comment for the justification, then what is your argument for why sugar or alcohol are OK and cigarettes not? Alcohol and cigarettes are basically the same category of goods. Exercise is maybe a slippery slope because it requires enforcing a positive action, but if we're going to force people to be healthy anyway, why not? In a practical sense, not a theoretic…

For me the answer is easy: alcohol and sugar in moderation do not have negative effects. They may have few positive ones, and there's the easy argument that 'in moderation' is a rule followed by exactly no one, but cigarettes have no 'safe' level of consumption. Heck, passive smoking can cause lung cancer. You can't passively absorb sugar or alcohol. Sure, alcohol can lead to putting other people in danger, but there…

That seems to be a completely different argument. pkulak was saying this was about the cost of healthcare in a society that has decided to handle such costs collectively. If you want to make an argument that this is about the minimum possible harm done by cigarettes that's a bit of a non-sequitur.

Although I will say a minimum possible harm argument is weird on practical grounds. Members of my family have smoked in the past, its done them some theoretical tiny amount of damage that is so close to 0 as to be the same thing. That doesn't require the police to get involved. The harm done by the amount of work to earn the taxes and pay the police was probably greater than the damage done by the smoking.

> Literally nothing in the world would be less fun or good or enjoyable if cigarettes simply no longer existed

That seems ridiculous. Obviously there are people who smoke for pleasure. I know several. You can't just tell them that they aren't having fun and pretend that counts.

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