Sunak proposes raising smoking age every year to create 'smoke-free' generation
(news.sky.com)
from alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2023 06:07
https://lemmy.world/post/6324011
from alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2023 06:07
https://lemmy.world/post/6324011
#world
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Addressing the annual Tory party conference today, Mr Sunak also promised to restrict the availability of vapes under plans to “put the next generation first”.
Read More:Rishi Sunak confirms northern leg from Birmingham to Manchester will be scrappedSunak says nobody wants an election - the truth is he can’t risk one | Beth Rigby
Ministers have faced repeated calls to ban vapes to help protect children and reduce the significant environmental impact of the single-use products.
It commissioned a review, published last June and led by Dr Javed Khan, which made a series of recommendations, including increasing the legal age for buying tobacco.
Cancer Research UK’s chief executive Michelle Mitchell said: “Raising the age of sale on tobacco products is a critical step on the road to creating the first ever smoke-free generation.”
“Future generations of adults who are considered old enough to vote, pay taxes, drive a car and drink alcohol are going to be treated like children and denied the right to buy a product that can be purchased legally by people a year older than them.”
The original article contains 665 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Punishing the symptom, great idea
In a physical health perspective, smoking is the cause, or contributing factor, to a lot of problems. In what perspective is smoking a symptom?
I take the view that smoking is a behavior that is largely impacted by socioeconomic factors. To put it plainly, it’s something you mostly see among the poor.
tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/30/4/380
It is, until it isn’t.
And when it isn’t, we should all cheer.
Okay.
I’m just sorta reading what the researchers said. Did I misread it? Are they wrong?
no shot they read it
Not saying that I agree with RS's policy proposal but what is wrong with targeting smoking cessation especially amongst the poor? If poor people quit smoking, that's better for their health, the health of those around them/who live with them (secondhand smoke), and their wallets.
I don’t have a problem with the intended result, but I would rather see an approach that is reformative rather than punitive or prohibitive, since those methods tend to create dark markets; in my town quite recently, illegal cigarettes worth more than a small home were seized from a single shop. I come from America, where we have had issues with prohibition-style laws, so I feel that I see where it leads.
I would rather see community funding for smoking cessation resources and support groups, education initiatives in schools, and broader policies aimed at decreasing the underlying wealth inequality that drives the behavior.
So don’t get me wrong, I fully support this kind of measure.
But there’s potentially an argument to be made that there is an issue (or more likely multiple issues) that isn’t being addressed properly that is leading people to choose to smoke. It’s well known to be harmful, addictive, and frankly doesn’t have many upsides. What that bigger issue could be is kind of up for debate- is it a failure of the education system or health system not doing enough to educate people about the harm and risks? Is it a mental health issue leading people to choose self destructive behaviors or possibly a conscious or subconscious attempt to self medicate those issue? Is it a societal issue like peer pressure, portrayals in the media, people emulating role models, or just plain old rebellion? Is it due to regulations or enforcement being too lax?
Whatever it is, there may a root cause that isn’t being sufficiently addressed that makes people choose destructive behaviors like smoking, which makes smoking a symptom of that bigger issue. And what other vices are those same factors pushing people towards? Maybe addressing those kinds of underlying issues the right way might do more good than just getting people to stop smoking, maybe we’d kill 2 birds with one stone and also make headway on other substance abuse issues, or gambling addictions, etc.
Now again, I’m totally in support of this kind of regulation. Sometimes you need to treat the symptoms before/while to treat the underlying disease. But we need to be sure we’re looking at it from both angles.
Any perspective that isn't being deliberately obtuse (if you cared you'd have looked it up and seen for yourself all of the evidence that exists, but it's easier to go the "personal responsibility" route and ignore the societal and economical factors, because acknowledging those makes you too uncomfortable)..
So is drinking.
I guess we ban alcohol too, huh. Oh wait, we tried that.
You must be one of the, “I don’t like it so neither should anyone else” people.
“we tried that” do you know who sunak is?
Most countries have set a legal age for drinking alcohol.
What a weird take. Nobody is punishing people who smoke.
Of course, not counting the smoke, ash, and other toxic oxidized chemicals that will be kicked up by gas and diesel vehicles with his scrapping the HS2 Manchester line. What a fucking idiot. “Oh no, we brexited ourselves so hard that we’re poor now and can’t afford to build infrastructure that would stand to enrich multiple cities for hundreds of years!”
Such classic smooth brained thatcherite conservatives. It’s mind numbing that people keep voting for them.
This is the smoking ban thread
I mean, Sunak is a complete and utter bellend and cancelling half of HS2 is a ridiculous and nonsensical move.
But I think that the good old idiom about broken clocks might just apply here. Smoking bans are a good thing.
Yes, I love it when people buy things from black markets too.
Yep, arresting a 47yo for smoking will be very on point for a broken clock.
Keep in mind, this will be policed only on poor ethnic minorities. Rich white guys in their private club s will still smoke with impunity.
The proposal is to raise the legal smoking age every year. Meaning each yearly increase, this hypothetical 47yo will also age a year and so will be able to smoke forever
Not if he wanted to pick up smoking one year before legal age. So he will be chasing that legal age forever and can’t smoke even if he’s 68
That isn’t how time works.
Are you saying that time advances at a different rate to human aging? 1 year to the earth is how many years to a human?
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/de8263e8-2984-4246-8e94-bd2c6af8b036.webp">
This is the real answer right here - this is just another poverty tax/punishment.
I don't smoke, never have, but I know why people smoke, and it's now (that it's no longer seen as "cool") almost exclusively to try and relieve a tiny bit of the mountain of stress that existing in the world today (especially as part of a marginalised group) brings, and there are a million better ways to reduce the need to smoke, and improve the health outcomes of smokers (eventually, hopefully, to the point where they are able to reduce smoking or stop altogether).
Sunak is looking for a quick "win" for headlines and distraction, not to actually help people live healthier better lives (E: just seen his transphobic comments, which only reinforce this point). Why target the source of the problem when you can slap a band aid on it and bask in your own glory for a couple of days before your next bit of corruption is exposed?
Counterpoint: A lot of people that smoke want to stop smoking. A lot of people would more easily stop smoking if it was banned or not so easily available.
Also from the title of the article it seems that this would never apply to people that already smoke legally. The idea is that you set a minimum age and then you increase it every year. Meaning that in 100 years smoking is banned for everyone. But nobody was never banned from smoking when they were legal before. They were just never allowed to. So it prevents young people from picking up the habit.
right, just like how it being illegal prevents young people from drinking and smoking weed... 🙄🙄🙄
Do you really disagree that it reduces the amount of young people consuming those substances?
Yes, For example, youth cannabis use halved in Canada after legalization. Also, when I was in HS, people were smoking even though it’s illegal under the age of 18. People would just buy cigarettes from reserves and sell them to each other. If made illegal, people will just find other means to get it.
Prohibition doesn’t work but better education does.
Calling him smooth brained is looking past the fact that it’s just plain corruption. He has interests in the oil industry, and they are against public rail. Hold him to account for what he is, a criminal.
Honestly he’s more corrupt than Boris Johnson which is saying something.
Of course. Why else would a billionaire want the job of leading a country?
At least nobody can outcorrupt Putin. Fuck him, fuck UR.
Well recent polling would suggest that they no longer will be voting for them.
Didn’t literally no one actually vote for him?
He’s still an MP, so those in his riding would have voted for him, and the Tory party members voted for him, and the rest of the country voted for members of his party that include Lettuce Head and BoJo, so they did vote for a numbskull from his party to be in power.
The fact that I have no idea what her name is but still know exactly who you’re talking about when you say Lettuce Head is endlessly amusing to me.
It’s hard to believe so many people vote for them
I see angry wankers want to moan for the sake of moaning.
Eliminating smoking is a goos thing! I’ll take my wins whenever possible, doesn’t happen all that often.
But but there are other things that are also bad and if one proposal doesn’t solve everything it is complete trash!!!
First and foremost, people have the right to slowly kill themselves with cigarettes as long as it isn’t harming innocent bystanders.
Arguably more importantly, the proposed ban is worryingly dystopian.
Finally, agreeing with anything Sunak does is unforgivable. And in this case would reflect neo-liberal sympathies.
They’re literally cancer sticks…
I guess we should allow people to sell antifreeze as both an industrial chemical and a soft drink. Arguably, people have the right to quickly and painfully kill themselves as well.
Humans have been smoking tobacco for thousands of years. Banning it will only allow the black market to swell to an unimaginable size
These are cigarettes. Engineered to be as addictive as possible. We aren’t talking about hand rolled stogies here
They absolutely are talking about any form of tobacco…hell track and trace in the EU has effectively destroyed the nasal snuff industry in Germany…a form of tobacco that has no deaths on its hands… literally. This is just ignorance being used in the name of “think of the children” hell that’s one of the main things everyone keeps bringing up in this thread.
Meanwhile, smoking has been on a sharp decline for decades, is no longer a mass killer…while obesity is and alcoholism has grown 10 fold, so much so that they created a new label called social drinkers because it would put a massive amount of the population into alcoholic territory.
By that logic we should continue slavery. Aren’t you worried someone’s going to purchase one of your children on the black market!?
Slaves don’t grow on trees though
Moving the goalposts or something like that?
You can imagine it, it would be less than the amount that is currently being smoked.
Not necessarily. People could actually start smoking more because tax free cigarettes are astronomically cheaper
Are people smoking less weed now it’s legal in many US states?
Where do you think tax free cigarettes are going to come from?
They are either domestic bootlegs or imports. If cigarettes were actually fully banned, organized crime groups would begin mass cigarette smuggling and manufacturing operations. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s true
People don’t enjoy or need smoking that much, so no.
And my first question?
That’s the thing with smoking though, second hand smoke is a big problem, especially for vulnerable people
Indoors maybe. People really have a warped idea of how much smoke they’re inhaling in outdoor scenarios, unless they’re literally blowing it in your face from centimetres away it’s not doing anything.
I’m surprised they can still walk around outside, when there are literally cars everywhere. Those are killing way more people on ‘second hand’ exposure than tobacco.
Whataboutism.
You may not know it because you’re a smoker (smokers’ noses are completely and irreparably fucked), but normal people can tell a cigarette was lit in a 10 meter radius, even on a windy day.
Hell, I can still smell smoke strongly enough to make me breath lightly because of how bad it smells even if the smoker is gone. That shit lingers.
We’re talking about the outdoors. That shit dissipates rapidly following an inverse square law.
I’m not a smoker.
There is a difference between smelling and inhaling enough smoke to do any sort of real damage.
The fact you think they’re exactly the same thing is exactly the point.
I bet you think you can get high from sitting next to a weed smoker as well.
Let’s be honest, people just hate smoking and want to get rid of it.
See, you get it afterall!
Why don’t you just mind your business instead of being a puritanical twat?
Because fuckers keep burning and smoking stuff that smells like shit in public spaces.
People think BBQ smells like shit. Ban that yeah?
Except smokers always insist on slowly murdering everyone around them and littering everything in their path. If you want to smoke in a hermetically sealed room and not get close to me for at least 6 hours after, fine by me.
I mean, I understand that it smells really bad to non smokers. On the other hand, statements like this seem so ridiculously over the top that it makes me question you as a person.
We live in car country - assuming you are German as well -, with a wide variety of unhealthy crap that you have to inhale on a daily basis. Smog, exhaust fumes, half the food we can buy is unhealthy.
Honestly I don’t understand how people can be so worked up about smokers in that context. Is it because those are people you can bitch at and boss around, instead of nebulous corps and governments who ignore your calls for climate action and environment protection?
Otherwise it makes no sense. Smokers are already segregated away from non smokers nowadays, what about their freedom to live (or die) as they want? Your freedom not to smell unpleasant things doesn’t trump that. Me farting in your vicinity doesn’t constitute harm to your individual rights.
Your freedom ends where mine begins. You are free to kill yourself, but not to blow cancerous substances on top of me - and yes, that should include cars.
I generally agree, just that it seems cheap to pile on smokers like they are some sort of lepers. Also you are free to go somewhere else when around a smoker. Their habit doesn’t make them second class citizens, or should I say your freedom ends where theirs begins?
If we want clean air we have to start with the actual polluters, not the easy pickings who are just random people. That’s like, obsessively worrying about your personal climate impact when the vast, vast majority of climate change is caused by just a handful of corporations.
Their children aren’t.
Not always.
That’s not how it works.
So you want to ban cars?
Rolling my eyes at “slowly murdering everyone around them”. Why do people think they’re inhaling a non negligible amount of smoke outdoors? It barely registers compared to traffic fumes. Stop with the over exaggerating pseudo scientific moralising.
Considering that's exactly what second hand smoke does, I really don't see what point you're trying to make.
What they are trying to say is to ban it in public areas, but not at home.
But consumption isn’t being banned…
Except it doesn’t, less than 9% of the population in the USA uses tobacco in any form, including in that group is past smokers and vapers so it’s probably around 7% or less. Continually attacking a vice that’s basically done is just virtue signaling bullshit. Alcoholism has skyrocketed and kills way more people a year, and obesity is now our number one killer by miles. No one is dying from second hand smoke…you sitting in traffic is doing way more damage to your body than getting a random breeze of smoke from someone outside.
No.
It’s gobsmacking what people will argue for. Shines a light in the general dimness of people.
Yea not everything is a partisan issue, and this seems like a good thing? Antismoking efforts have largely been successful in a lot of places.
It’s not one of those things where someone is choosing to harm themselves only. Smoking affects the people around you
So many people like to portray everything as a 'personal choice' while ignoring all said implications to others. Very rarely does something only actually impact you.
With enough hoop jumping anything can have a terinary chain of impact if you need to justify your cause.
Too many people use it as a cop-out to avoid being accountable. It's like when meat eaters say it's a 'personal choice.' Like yeah, it is a choice you mean, but it also implicates other things not only you.
Let’s ban McDonalds while we’re at it. Obesity has higher health care costs than smoking, believe it or not. In fact let’s just ban eating meat altogether. Surely you’ll smugly agree with these simple numbers.
The difference being that cigarettes are always unhealthy, no matter how many you smoke, they procure zero benefits. McDonald’s is just a meal and becomes an issue if you eat too much of it, once every now and then won’t have any consequences.
Eating a vegen diet is always more healthy than eating a meat diet. You like banning harmful things, surely you should be in favor of banning meat.
I mean… I wouldn’t complain if megacorporation fast food restaurants that provide nothing but cheap, unhealthy junk were driven out of business…
That’s the authoritarian spirit!
“If I don’t like it, then neither should anyone else!” - you
"If it harms the people using it (and makes them addicted and unable to stop even if they wish to), the people around them, and the planet, I don’t like it"
So, ban alcohol then.
Cause that worked so well the first time.
If I never have to smell cigarette smoke again and also no one ever uses the medical system to cure the consequences of smoking then I don’t care. Otherwise I am all for this.
Banning it for everyone is OK, telling some people that they can’t ever because they were born too late is silly, discriminatory and will inevitably create a flourishing black market.
That’s gonna work splendidly since underage people would never dare to smoke!
Ehhhhhh, you make it permanently harder for a generation and eventually, barring a political change, you need to find an 80 year old to boot cigarettes for you from that one shop down the road that still caters to a rapidly shrinking audience.
Not to say that this is a good idea or one with which but long-term, it could work. (Or at least reduce smoking to a relatively minor few.)
Eventually stores will just stop selling them. Why stock cigarette when you only sell 10 packs a month.
I think it’s a great idea. People will create a black market for them, but it will be really small and die out.
It’s not like you really get anything from it like you do from alcohol or other drugs.
This is a woefully ignorant take
Similar ehhhhhh as earlier.
There are moments when a cigarette gives you an amazing or just right, feeling, for lack of a better word. In reality you’re just sating a self inflicted addiction, but it can feel great to do so.
I don’t think it’s a good trade, that’s why I no longer smoke, but I understand the simple pleasure. Even if in the long, medium, heck, often even short term that pleasure has stupid costs.
There's already a black market for tobacco, and it will just grow in size not shrink. You can buy 50g for like £5 on DNMs.
Yeah, the risk is that if the black market becomes large enough, it will mean youths will have easier access to cheaper cigarettes than the current situation (with the added issue of cigarettes being entirely unregulated, meaning they’re going to put God knows what in them).
Let’s ban people from smoking because it doesn’t even get you high like meth does. Great argument.
It’s a nice theory but it does sort of forget that other countries exist - the black marketeers will just smuggle tobacco in. They’re also going to be guaranteed a market of younger immigrants who’ve gotten addicted in another country.
Sure, at first, absolutely, though even then you are raising the cost of smokes, not just financially but convenience, potential customer base (not everyone has the connections or would feel comfortable buying on the resale market) etc.
Long run, sure, smokers will probably always exist. But at the point where it’s awkward to smoke in public you’ve probably cut down on a good percentage of smoking at all.
It’s still gonna slowly reduce use. And that’s better than nothing.
How is this supposed to be enforced? In a decade's time are shopkeepers going to have to challenge anyone buying a packet of fags who looks under 28? And then later it'll be "sorry mate, can you prove you're 44?" and so on.
Asking for ID when buying cigarettes is not exactly an outlandish proposal. It’s already done around the current legal smoking age.
Arguably, this proposal makes it easier, since there’s a fixed cutoff date of birth instead of calculating their age.
Is it legal to discriminate against people who are over 21 years old in the UK? I think you couldn’t even pass a law like that in Germany.
Calling it discrimination is quite a stretch. By that logic our gun laws are discrimination, too and why can’t I buy enriched uranium in stores? I’m being discriminated against!!! Muh pearls! Some laws exist to protect people from themselves and I would welcome a law like this in Germany. Cigarettes and vapes don’t do anything that you can’t do in other ways, without harming others. Except maybe get you more breaks at work :P
I mean, if you have the equipment and chemicals, i think you can buy uranium ores and manually process them for a tiny amount of u235
I disagree. It’s not the same, because everyone can buy a gun if they have the paperwork for it (and noone can buy the uranium). It’s not only an exclusive group of old people, people with spots on their skin or people with green eyes. Otherwise it would be discrimination, because it creates differential treatment based solely on age, skin type, eye color…
We also discriminate against young people to protect their vulnerable health via alcohol, tobacco regulations. But it’s justifiable and ‘good’ discrimination, because they’re not of age yet and need to be protected.
I’m not smoking or anything btw so I’m not emotionally involved in this argument, I’m just curious about the debate :D
Not everyone can buy a gun, to get the paperwork you need to meet a somewhat arbitrary age requirement and you have to be “mentally stable”. So we are discriminating against mentally handicapped people. It makes sense, I don’t even disagree with it, just saying that it’s the same logic as op’s.
Okay, maybe a better example: if you’re interested in becoming president you have to be at least 40. Sounds like age discrimination to me :P
I don’t smoke so I’m not super invested in this either. However, I travel a lot by train and besides the trains always being late what annoys me most are smokers. Smoking is already banned at all train stations and bus stops but the first thing some people do when exiting a train is lighting a cigarette. In the middle of a crowd. Imo the only way to stop them from doing that in crowds is by banning smoking completely & this law is a good way to do that, but it would have to be an EU-wide measure imo. Otherwise it’s too easy to just drive to a neighbouring country and buy a pack of cigarettes.
Sure, that’s exactly what we do. And there’s a good reason for that. I’m also not against dropping it, just because it’s discriminatory.
Sure. In this case I don’t see a rightful reason for it to exist though, which is why it has to be abolished.
I hate second hand smoke as much as every other non-smoker, but I’m not a fan of banning smoking, just because I think it’s annoying. Let people ruin their health if they want it that bad. We live in a time where second hand smoke is almost completely avoidable. At least in Germany. With the vapes it’s even less of a problem now. If I breathe in smoke from some other guys’ cigarette once a month it won’t affect my health.
However there’s a much much bigger problem regarding breathing in toxic fumes, which we should address immediately: cars.
It is avoidable overall but it always requires an effort on my part which is the wrong way around imo.
Ultimately my stance on it is that it’s annoying but there’s only so much we can reasonably do about it. I don’t expect dB or the police to patrol train stations to make sure nobody is smoking. It’s largely avoidable and if people want to kill themselves then they’re free to do that. We have much bigger problems to focus on, like the one you mentioned: cars. (And maybe if more people used the train instead of cars there’d be more of an incentive make sure most of your customers aren’t being bothered by a minority)
Let’s hope it will turn out like you said, I’m all for it.
Discrimination has an actual legal protected definition, it doesn’t just mean I want to do something and I’m not allowed.
Care to share it? I’m quite sure it’s applicable in this case.
Allowing the future 45-year old to smoke, while making it illegal for the future 44-year old, sounds like text book age-based discrimination to me. And the health based age argument (protecting the youth), which is the main reason for smoking/alcohol regulations, doesn’t make sense here, cause they’re not teens anymore.
By the time they’re 44 hopefully they’re not such crybabies and have learned to accept a law that’s been there their whole life. Or they just get someone else to buy them.
Either way it limits access and I think that’s good, even if not perfect.
Imagining a 70 year old hanging around a store for some 80 year old to come by to ask them if they could buy them some cigs.
That’s such a ridiculous and unnecessary scenario. Just make it illegal in 20 years and be done with it. Why put so much money and effort into such a badly designed solution?
Why not right now? Waiting 20 years is such a ridiculous and unnecessary scenario
Because people need some time to adapt. Make it 5 if you want. I don’t think we should get rid of a transition phase however.
I think you answered your own question.
It’s not enforceable.
India is about as united as Afghanistan. We’ll see shops in Delhi follow the law and the government enforcing it.
Everywhere else probably won’t even know this is happening. If they did, they’ll take is as an opportunity to gauge young people buying tobacco. No law enforcement will occur.
Rishi Sunak is brittish PM btw.
Meh. We're all going to be dead from climate change.
We are all going to be dead, why care at all?
Good point.
Edit: Heroin dealers apparently don’t advertise on yelp. Anyone know where I can pick some up?
Speak for yourself.
I feel we’ve done a good enough job at making smoking undesirable, effectively banning it is excessive. It would be better to focus on doing what was done to cigarettes to vapes. Kids arent smoking nearly as much but theyre vaping like mad. I see kids as young as 13-14 doing it. Vapes are allowed to look appealing, combine that with their nice smell and flavour, ofc young people are going to gravitate toward them instead.
Make it so vape packaging is bland and has similar warnings as cigarretes, and actually teach kids about addiction instead of just a hard “dont touch these”. Everyone with a braincell knows that if you ban something from young people, theyre gonna do it more
the problem is there's actually zero evidence vapes alone (without nicotine etc) do any harm. The vapes which the industry is moving towards is just largely the same as steamed and cooling water vapour. It's totally harmless.
There’s plenty of evidence that vapes are harmful not as harmful as cigarettes but still.
There's zero evidence! (just ignore the mounds of evidence saying that it's still fucking awful for you)
Sadly though, vaping is associated almost entirely with nicotine. I know plenty who vape, but no one who vapes 0% juice. I havent personally done much research about them but inhaling any fumes is a net negative. Although vapes are far less harmful tham cigarettes, nicotine addiction is still there, and these kids are getting it. Im one of the few of my generation that used vapes for their original purpose, quitting smoking and they work great, but its depressing af seeing kids caning vapes just knowing its already an addiction for them
I mean I very recently got diagnosed with polycythaemia that was caused by excessive vaping. Which has seen marked improvement since I stopped.
The problem is its still too new to do long term (10+ year) studies on vaping and health institutions still don’t collect data on vape usage.
One problem: most smokers start as teens, all while it's forbidden to sell kids the cancer sticks.
Addition: I would punish the selling of tobbaco products to kids even more, including the ability of suing the adults for damages in the future (If it won't cause a cobra problem later on), and also give the ability to non-smoking workers to sue their employers if they give smokers more breaks.
Yeah, but then ultimately it becomes illegal for everyone to own them. Meaning shops cant sell them.
Then comes the black-market.
Black market of dead souls.
I think New Zealand implemented a similar measure some years back, it should probably be good to see how well it works there. Hopefully this doesn’t create a black market for tobacco.
Yes we did. Have not heard anything about it since… so it’s probably working as intended.
We’re currently freaking out about vape shops springing up every ten feet.
My first cig was illegally imported and sold by a dealer involved with gangs. All its done is make people get tobacco from their dealer rather than the guy outside the shop.
They change their main supplier
My first cigarette at the ripe old age of 13 was illegally imported. I very much doubt it worked where you live and in reality teens just went more underground with their smoking.
Yeah, honestly I think it would make more sense to increase the age at which it’s legal to sell to 25 (under the justification that supposedly that’s when your brain has finished developing), and then allow it from there on to prevent it becoming a way to support illegal activity.
Yeah, one of the best bits of WFH is that I can take as many breaks as my nicotine obsessed colleagues.
My 13-year-old daughter already has friends who vape. That’s how insidious it is and how deeply embedded in the public consciousness nicotine-based products are.
Most kids aren’t vaping anything with nicotine in it. Most are vaping 0mg juices and trying to look cool blowing clouds. Nicotine isn’t a super addictive chemical, it’s about as addictive as caffeine. Smoking cigarettes and vaping are habit forming, it’s why almost all smoking cessation forms fail multiple times for people.
What evidence do you have that this is not detrimental to their health and development? Because as far as I know, no major studies have been done.
Are you asking if nicotine is bad for you or ???
I just quit vaping like a week or two ago and it was fucking miserable for a week straight. Caffeine isn’t nearly as bad when I’ve quit that, but nicotine withdrawals are fucking horrible and they feel like they last forever.
Congrats on quitting. That took a lot of determination, I'm sure.
I quit caffeine and it took me 2 weeks of shakes and fevers to get over it. The withdrawals were horrible. I smoke cigars and pipe tobacco regularly and quit every winter with no issues.
bullshit
nicotine is incredibly addictive - and it’s very hard to break. and no, caffeine is less addictive. Much less addictive.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/100713144920.htm
rsph.org.uk/…/nicotine--no-more-harmful-to-health…
Nicotine is not incredibly addictive, the habit of smoking is. It’s why NRT have basically a 95% failure rate.
Habits forming actions like biting your nails, are also incredibly hard to stop and their is no underlying drug there.
The who nicotine is bad for you and causes cancer is also bullshit. The bad science that was used against smoking and still used today was done for the public good. It’s why a lot of studies are starting to come out that, nicotine isn’t what’s the issue…the inhalation of smoke and the habit of doing so are.
Sorry but no. habits generally take weeks to months to form. that smoking becomes habitual certainly makes quitting harder. there is no doubt there. but, if smoking was far less addictive, it would be far less likely to ever develop as a habit. Remember, that nicotine from smoking (or vaping) starts affecting your brain essentially instantly, creating a dopamine hit, as well as the other affects. it is that which makes nicotine addictive. not some random associated habits that developed over weeks or months.
Also your sources aren’t very good. In the first, there’s no direct link to the studies in question, but based entirely on what was said int he article… I’m doubting very much they took into consideration the use of alternatives by flight attendants- patches and gums are extremely common among FA’s that smoke; specifically to manage the cravings while they’re forbidden from smoking. And from what I can tell with a quick search (I’m far from authoritative here,) snuff has been used as an alternative to smoking on shabbat… from pretty much the first time it was brought to Europe, so I would have to assume patches are also a viable method of controlling cravings there as well.
In any case, nobody really says that nicotine causes cancer. At least, no one even remotely honest.
tobacco use causes cancer. As RSPH notes:
however it goes on to be wrong about one thing:
vapes frequently contain toxic chemicals. many are frequently contaminants from extraction; some are added as flavoring or turn into toxic chemicals because of being vaporized, which changes chemical structures. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Nobody really knows for sure what the long term impacts of vaping is- even if the vape juice is just water; we don’t really know if it’s safe or not. One thing people do know is that Nicotine is addictive, and that you keep saying it’s ‘not that bad’ makes me think maybe you’re trying to justify something. I don’t care if you smoke or vape. nobody here does. But I do care that you’re spreading misinformation about things.
Talk to any one whose tried quitting both caffeine and nicotine. there’s really no comparison between the two; and saying there’s not is patent bullshit.
That isn’t true, Elf bars and Lost Marys are so easy for kids to get hold of and it is 100% what they’re using.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28850065/
That data is 6 years out of date and times have massively changed. Seriously, just go walk down the street after the kids have finished school for the day and your eyes will be opened.
This report is from 2 years ago so still out of date, but you can see the change that happened just in the 4 years between this and the one you linked:
gov.uk/…/vaping-in-england-2021-evidence-update-s…
Why do you think nicotine is not very addictive? I saw several studies that called it a highly addictive substance (for example this review about e-cigarettes). By the way, the review is overall very interesting and worth reading.
Nicotine is on the same level of addictiveness as heroin and cocaine lol.
That sounds like some D.A.R.E. bullshit. If that’s the case then I’d be perfectly fine trying heroin once because I won’t get addicted to it. I’ve tried nicotine a few times, now, and I have less than zero interest in trying it again. You can make your point without being hyperbolic
You probably wouldn’t get addicted to heroin on the first try… Have you never taken opiate painkillers? Were you immediately addicted after your first dose? Sounds like DARE failed you as well.
You do not get the same high with nicotine as you do with heroin. It’s a bullshit lie told to kids to keep them from smoking. So many of you seem to have swallowed this crap hook line and sinker.
And you’ve demonstrated that you don’t understand what addiction is or how it works. Its not about the strength of the high you mope its about how the chemical interacts with your brain
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/100713144920.htm
Nicotine is about as addictive as caffeine. It sucks but the habit is what causes people to stay addicted. It’s why nicotine replacement treatments don’t work, and why vaping has a way higher success rate of getting people to stop than anything pharma companies have come up with.
The review study I linked says vaping doesn’t have higher success rate when it comes to stopping.
Lmfao.
Nicotine is highly addictive. Nice try Mr. Big Tobacco.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/100713144920.htm
Thanks, troll, for mixing valid points with blatant bullshit.
Also caffeine is neurotoxin.
rsph.org.uk/…/nicotine--no-more-harmful-to-health…
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/100713144920.htm
I mean I can back up my claims. This isn’t rocket science. Most kids in the smoking years (50-00s) started smoking to look cool and older…hell there are even studies that show most people hate it at first.
I didn’t compare harm, I was saying that caffeine is very useful neurotoxin. Meanwhile nicotine is completely useless at best.
gov.uk/…/phe-publishes-independent-expert-e-cigar…
rsph.org.uk/…/nicotine--no-more-harmful-to-health…
discovermagazine.com/…/nicotine-the-wonder-drug
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8078469/
Want me to go on?
Nicotine isn’t the harmful drug the anti-tobacco groups have you believing.
Soooo? We were talking specifically about nicotine and caffeine, not smoking and drinking coffee. Burning organic compunds is very nasty ofc. Again “it is useless at best”.
See. Useless at best.
The FDA would disagree.
Yes the same FDA who pushes for NRT…the same NRT that have people failing to quit…and committing suicide while on them…also no where in your link does it show what mg kids are vaping.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28850065/
1% is what your looking at for kids that get addicted to vaping…
And where does teens get the idea to smoke from? Is it from grandpa that coughs louder than a jet engine? Or is it the older cooler teens who got the idea from older teens, who got the…
You get the point.
I smoked as a teen because some of my friends did, they smoked because some of their friends did. And you don’t have to look very far to find the 18-20 year olds who provided them.
Luckily, I never smoked much and mostly kept it to social smoking which made it very easy for me to quit once I grew up and developed some brain-cells that enjoyed co-operating with eachother.
Yeah but the 18 year old buys for the 15 year old-- brothers, sisters, upperclassmen, etc.
The more that gap becomes larger, the less likely they have social interaction and access. How many 40 year olds buy for 15 year olds today? In 20 something years, 40 year olds will be the youngest purchasers.
Ah yes, because making drugs illegal has worked so well in the past.
Setting age limits on substance use is a little different from criminalizing possession/use. In the case of smoking, it has helped reduce rates. This is something backed by people working in public health, who also support decriminalization for possession and bringing in safe consumption sites. It’s all about finding the right approach for an issue.
I’d rather focus on calling out the OTHER bad stuff his government is doing, instead of turning this one partisan based on which party introduced it
But this isn’t am age limit, its using an age limit as a hack to basically grandfather in a smoking ban. It is about finding the right approach, and this ain’t it.
Why isn’t this it?
For the same reason prohibition of alcohol didn’t work, for the same reason the drug war didn’t work, for the same reason prescription requirements for medically useful narcotics doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter what the law is, people will make their own choices, and if the things are available, legally or not, people that want to use them will use them.
Look at the US. For all it’s faults, it has handled smoking very very well. The younger generation basically doesn’t smoke cigarettes. They’re not banned from it for life, they just were informed about it and so they find it disgusting and don’t really do it. You can’t even really get a date anymore with someone if you smoke cigarettes and you’re under like 40.
Whilst I agree with you in that I don’t think this is an optimal approach, at the same time I’m curious as to whether this would create a significant black market for cigarettes.
Anybody already addicted will continue to have access. Anyone not addicted has to overcome the barrier of acquiring it illicitly, which works in tandem with education about the harm it does.
Considering how bulky cigarettes are compared to most other drugs, I wonder whether most dealers would carry around loads of cigarettes - particularly if they’d be at risk of being prosecuted for having them (which I don’t think is the case here, though).
However, it would probably increase the rate at which weed is cut with tobacco as it increases the addictiveness and ensures customer dependency for the dealers.
I got my first cigarette from a uda (local gang) dealer. So yes there would be a black market for cigs
This really varies by state, based on the smoking policies. In Republican led states, smoking policies have led to shorter life spans.
Making things easily available increases their rates of use
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28850065/
Except it doesn’t. Vapes are super easy for kids to get, yet somehow they don’t stick with it.
…aap.org/…/CDC-reports-confirm-benefits-of-raisin…
It’s not really an age limit when you’ll never reach it, it’s just gradual criminalization.
That’s not true. It’s a ban on the sale not possession or consumption. The end user is not being criminalized.
Theoretically there’s nothing stopping from importation (barring implementation of another law).
Raising age limits on smoking has not reduced rates, making tobacco use taboo in society and knowing how dangerous it is for you has. In the US like 9% use any form of tobacco (which it’s more likely around 7% or less because they include people who have smoked in their lives and quit as well). At this point no one is really smoking… going after tobacco still is just stupid.
It’s more like 18-19% in the US.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10168602/#:~…)*%20(0.9%25).
Edit: not sure why the link got all fucky but it still works, somehow.
news.gallup.com/poll/1717/Tobacco-Smoking.aspx
%11…not 18-19% at all.
That’s smoking, not tobacco products use. Vaping, for instance, is its own category.
Tobacco use includes more options, so the numbers will be higher
Not really, cigar and pipe tobacco smokers are a rounding error against the population…nasal snuff users even less. Vaping is only added to pad the numbers. Let’s get real here, cigarette smokers are what is being effected, not other forms of tobacco use which are basically non existent.
By “pad the numbers” you mean “accurately reflect reality?”
I am aware that cigarette smokers are who is affected by this policy but that is not the discussion at hand.
Also raising age limits did reduce smoking rates, but also neither here nor there as this policy is not strictly about raising age to purchase but effectively forming a generational cutoff.
Sunak is really reaching here, to say the least, but the data is the data. It’s not worth trying to ignore reality.
health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/…/04
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28850065/
Kids smoking are at an all time high and so is vaping. Raising the age limit didn’t do anything to help reduce this, because kids haven’t been allowed to smoke for decades now.
Also, this is literally in your link:
Crazy thought… people aren’t smoking anymore. No wonder it’s in decline…
I love how you quote things in my link that mean the opposite of what you think they mean lol
…aap.org/…/CDC-reports-confirm-benefits-of-raisin…
Read the article for fucks sake.
They’re not making the drug illegal, just cigarettes. People who want nicotine still have other options.
It’s like how no one goes out of their way to make/sell pure ethanol, because you can still buy beer or vodka.
That’s still prohibition… it’s flat out dumb. A kid isn’t smoking a $10 cigar…
Smoking is redundant today. Kids are getting enough cancer from the environment already.
That wasn’t funny or clever.
True anyways
It’s just a fact, I don’t think it needs to be funny or clever.
It’s not a fact though, but I’m glad we can both agree it wasn’t funny or clever.
Just hyperbole.
Unfortunately these days, you’ll find that reality is neither
What is funny or clever, oh great wise bobman of unilem of org?
Lol, why do you people always get upset when someone says something isn’t funny?
It was just a rude and aggressive thing to say intended to make someone feel bad about IMO a valid (or at worst innocuous) comment.
Not really. It’s to show them the reality that some people think what they said wasn’t funny.
You seem to think that it’s only acceptable to say a joke is funny, but not that it isn’t.
You seem to think anyone cares about what you think is or isn’t funny.
What? Lol.
Pretty much anything in the state of California
This product is known to the state of California
Why not making the warnings be available elsewhere?
That law is an excellent example of knowledge vs wisdom. Knowledge is knowing that some substances may be carcinogenic. Wisdom is knowing that the dosage of a carcinogen is so low it hardly poses any risk.
To be fair though that’s hard to put on a warning label and harder to explain.
It’s not redundant. Harms compound. It’s not like people max out their carcinogenic index or something. 🙄
Everyone here is arguing the benefits of prohibition. I’m just interested to know how much money Rishi (and/or his family members/friends/donors) have invested in vaping and nicotine alternatives.
That isn’t always the case though. Just look at climate scientists.
Some just want to ban smoking because they see how much damage it has done in their community.
But I’d also like to know if there was any vested interests.
It’s Rishi Sunak. Of course he has a financial interest somewhere.
It won’t work, though. Hell. He might be getting paid off by big Tabacco- make smoking edgy and rebellious again so more kids start up.
It’s the kind of thing those ghouls would try.
I’m not sure what this has to do with climate scientists. What am I supposed to be looking at?
Rishi has a history of making legislation to benefit the companies run or owned by friends and family. I would be extremely surprised if this didn’t also have a similar angle.
Climate activists want to, among other things, pass extremely unpopular carbon taxes as they’re the most serious effort toward cutting fossil fuels usage
Extremely unpopular ideas that inevitably favor certain products are not always moves to sell those products, is the point
It’s pretty reasonable to assume no one outside the UK knows much about Sunak’s history with handouts to friends.
Who are carbon taxes unpopular with? Aside from politicians?
The people that have to pay them, I assume
People who don’t understand we need to break our addiction to petroleum based fuel. Also People who make money off of petroleum based products.
I think you overestimate the size of these two groups. The group of people who care more about their own financials is likely a lot larger.
Don’t care thier fucking size.
I care how loud these choads are and how many they might sway.
Because the number of people voting for something is irrelevant? Yeah, makes sense.
Not what I was saying.
Then you’re missing the point to begin with.
And you don’t have a good one.
Maybe try practising your reading comprehension a bit more, then I’m sure you’ll understand it eventually.
Good luck eating and drinking money.
I never said that I agreed with them.
That’s a matter of proper implementation. Tax & dividend! Distribute the tax revenue to the population per capita.
That means:
Since money is distributed unequally in society, this means most people will have to pay less in such a system.
The beautiful thing is, the financial incentive to emit less remains even for people who gain more than they pay. It’s also an incentive both for buyers and sellers, researchers and investors.
Just some good old “whataboutism”. Maybe he sprinkles some climate-change denial into some prohibition discussion to distract us?
Rishi Sunak also just promised to ensure cars will be able to drive through heavily populated areas indefinitely and has pushed back plans to introduce electric-only cars. He absolutely does not care about peoples’ health.
A lot of the alternatives are already owned by Big Tobacco
You can go EU-way and say that all vapes should be rechargable(in both meanings), repairable and intercompatible. Basically opposite of what Big Tabacco does.
Disposable vapes should be banned.
Though even the reusable ones generate a decent amount of waste between coil assemblies that get replaced and the plastic bottles the juice comes in. I mean, I hope we eventually get to managing waste at that level, though I’m not holding my breath since it would require huge changes to the way we handle food logistics, which eclipses vape juice waste by a lot per person.
But the disposable ones are ridiculous.
You can build your own coils and mix your own liquid. Me and my mate both do it it’s far cheaper and better for the environment, not too hard either once uve learnt the basics of materials and ohms n all.
But you cannot use them in disposable shit. Selling and producing disposable shit should be banned.
Glycerin costs 2.5$ for 1 liter bottle. And food flavoring about 6-10$ for 0.1 liter bottle.
Disposables could have a use assuming they were more like pods but made from biodegradable materials that are sustainably sources I,e wood or something but that wouldnt solve the coke bottles everywhere and those r worse. The problem isn’t smoking or vaping and it never was the problem is companies knowing they could get away with not being ecologically responsible and by putting the blame on disposables bring used, all you do is help them shift the blame away.
Greenwashing.
Is that like a play on words for brain washing? I’ve made ecigs from wood i’'ve cut myself the only downside I’ve noticed is if the wood gets wet but for disposables that would matter less.
Halp! I have no idea how to recharge my cigar! Beyond that, i really have no idea how Big Tobacco would comply with these regulations.
At all or while making insane profit and producing a lot of waste? At all simple: just look how vapes looked like before Big Tabacco came and enshittified them.
It always confuses me to learn that when people want to ban smoking it somehow means ban “cigarettes” and not “nicotine”
Well, nicotine isn’t the part of smoking that causes cancer
But it’s the part that is addictive and keeps you smoking.
If it’s not too harmful - what’s the problem with being addicted? I’m addicted to coffee and drink at least two cups per day, as do most people around here.
Nobody out there is just buying Nicotine gum for the flavor. The overwhelming majority are struggling with an addiction that may one day kill them.
Also, as a former smoker of over 20 years as well as a current coffee addict, I can tell you from personal experience that there is no comparison between the two. Some substances are simply more addictive than others. Nicotine is one of the worst on the planet.
You say that, but even if there was a pill that instantly cured all addiction, I’d probably still crave coffee every day.
…because there isn’t a pill that instantly cures all addiction. Addiction is a complicated thing that combines a lot of factors between physical dependence, pleasure-seeking, memory formation, and a lot more.
nah, it’s cause it’s delicious.
It becomes delicious. That’s part of the whole addiction process. Taste/smell is one (or two, however you count it) of the most unique senses in that it is largely driven by links in the brain. Tastes beget memories, and our favorite foods and beverages are the ones tied positively. Drugs tie us positively.
I used to hate the smell of skunks. I’ve used to have one of those things where smells effect me worse than other people and I cannot handle them. I would actually retch up from the smell of skunk. It got worse after the family dogs were sprayed near their eyes and my memories tied a night of chaos and stressed mother to it all. Fast forward YEARS later; I smoked a little pot when I was younger. I dunno if you’ve ever heard of the term “skunk weed”. Guess why? Well, after that, immediately after that, the smell of skunk was pleasant to me and I didn’t retch at all. And it’s stayed that way. I STILL like the smell of skunk spray.
The same with whiskey. Distilling is legal where I live. As such, I’ve acquired a taste for high-proofs. Things that would make most other whiskey drinkers spit out their drink saying the it would taste like rocket fuel. Why? Because a distilling run is a nice, mostly chill, 8 hour process where I hang out and have a sip here, a sip there. For a while, I stopped drinking regular-proof whiskeys entirely in favor of barrel-proofs. It may come as no surprise that wanting to drink 120-proof whiskey over 80-proof whiskey has almost nothing to do with the tasting notes.
Idk man, I vaped for years many times a day and was able to quit very easily, but sugar and caffeine I just can’t, they’re so much more addictive to me.
The problem with addiction is that it’s safe to say that NOTHING is good if used to excess.
I used to be so hooked on caffeine I drank a 30-cup pot each day. It was giving me all kinds of issues, and I was only in my 20’s. I’m still addicted, but I’ve learned to moderate. It took me years. And my 4th latte of the day is telling me that I’m not exactly great at it.
If I smoked/vaped Nicotine, I would have serious problems of taking too much all the time.
Are you suggesting you want caffeine banned?
Not at all. I don’t suggest any bans. I said elsewhere I would not oppose pre-rolled cigarette bans because they are especially dangerous and would not reduce access to the product itself. But I also don’t suggest pre-rolled cigarette bans.
If addiction is a problem, should the general use of caffine be banned then? Thats why its kinda odd to specifically ban nicotine.
Choosing to ban specifically nicotine and not caffine is as silly as the idea that cigarettes should be legal but weed shouldnt.
Probably, yes. Even the age restrictions are kinda silly.
I do think it’s ok to ban sale of “prepared smokables” like cigarettes. The harm level is known to be severe. But if someone wants to buy their own tobacco+papers and roll their own cigarettes, that’s on them.
Of course, I don’t think it would be effective to ban cigarettes. Just ethically coherent.
The addicting part isnt the nicotine. Its everything atound it. The ritual, the friends the “doing something with your hands”.
The psychological addiction is way stronger than the nicotine addiction that you can just overcome in 2 weeks.
What do you think is fuelling that connection?
The full effects of vaping are not well understood, and while they’re almost certainly not as bad as cigarettes, they’re also almost certainly still bad for you, and they are indeed still addictive for the same reasons as cigarettes because they still use nicotine.
Further, one main reason their risks remain as poorly understood as they do is that (again, because of the same active ingredient) people who vape often also use cigarettes. The two are closely linked, I don’t think my confusion should be so easily dismissed as that.
Oh sorry, I was thinking nicotine supplements like gum and patches. In my mind, smoking and vaping are the same thing. “Don’t inhale particulate matter of any kind” is an excellent rule of thumb for all humans in all situations
Exactly my point. It always throws me for a minute when I realize people are treating them so separately.
So you’re against smelling flowers, too? And scented candles?
The problem is that we “inhale particulate matter” all the time. Every day of our lives.
Yes, and it kills people.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8140409/#:~:…)%20in%20polluted%20air.
You’re not that stupid. You know the difference between inhaling concentrated particulates from a cigarette or vape and smelling a fucking flower. (Which, by the way, pollen grains are average 10-20 microns, not 2.5.)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7937385/#:~:…
And you’re not that stupid. You know that fine particulate matter in the air every breath we take is different from someone vaping sometimes. There’s a reason your linked study doesn’t mention vaping AND why scientists are still saying the risks of vaping are unclear.
Your second study is more useful, but it really is not intellectually defensible to take it results as saying vaping is unhealthy. Instead, its results are saying that we need to keep regulations to control air quality with regards to vaping.
I’ll reiterate my original critique.
…is something I disagree with, like most extreme naive generalities.
I wasn’t trying to link evidence that vaping is unhealthy. But we know that inhaling PM2.5 is unhealthy and those size particles are present in vape. You are free to take whatever risks you would like with your body.
This is no more true than saying “we know sunlight is unhealthy”. What we know is that PM2.5 is unhealthy in large quantities for long periods of time. We know the same thing about sunlight for a lot of the same reasons. Occasional 15-minute stretches in the sun is more healthy than consistent long-term exposure.
As are you. I’m just talking about what is or is not science vs propaganda, here. From a different branch, I would wager that vaped medications could reach a point of being healthier for us than injected medications.
That used to say that about artificial sweeteners. The question shouldn’t be “is it bad for you” but “is it worse for you than 99 other things you do in a day”. And vaping nicotine is “almost certainly bad for you” because of the nicotine, and nicotine is a known quantity - we know how bad it is and isn’t. We don’t have evidence that the mechanism of vaping is bad for you, and there’s no “almost certainly” on that.
And the truth is, I have problems with people who lean on “poorly understood” for vaping. Evidence shows vaping as a mechanism (for THC as it were) going back over 2000 years to ancient Egypt. Widespread use of hookahs started in the 19th century and has tons mechanically in common with modern vaporization. There are some differences, but short of a few badly-designed vapes that let air reach the lungs while superheated, it looks a lot like people are saying “not well understood” because they cannot seem to “understand” bad things and they don’t want to say good things. We have TONS of research precedent around room-temperature air with vaporized herbs in it.
If I were going to imbibe nicotine (or CBD or THC for that matter), I would probably prefer to vape it. I think the stigma against vaping needs to step aside for the vaccine research considering using vapes as an alternative to needle injection.
Hookah is pretty bad for you too, my friend. From Wikipedia, emphasis mine:
If the best you can say is “it’s pretty much a mini hookah, don’t worry”, then I’m going back to the best you can say for it is that it’s poorly understood. Vaping doesn’t burn anything, unlike a hookah, but the vaporized oils still contain toxins and novel toxins not in the smoke from cigarettes or hookah. The health consequences of that are not well understood, but are probably not as bad as cigarette smoking. That’s the best we’ve got.
I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said we have a lot more context than people want to pretend about vaping in general.
And I’m not trying to say “it’s a mini hookah”, nor am I trying to say you should vape.
If they contain toxins, we probably know quite a bit about those toxins right now. But what about pure vaporized solids? In the CBD and Cannabis community, dry herb vaporizing is the hot new thing specifically because 99% of complaints about vaping being unhealthy are irrelevant. All they do is get the herbs hot without burning it, run it through cooling, and inhale it. I laugh, but I used to do that with lavender with an aromatic herb heating unit.
Despite your incredulity, you really haven’t shown that. The consequences are not perfectly understood, but we understand enough to start making educated opinions about vaping. Even your points about hookahs work towards that, with the worst cons being that you still get Carbon Monoxide and the intensity of Nicotine is high. The problem is that we don’t want to tell people that the educated opinion is “probably better for you than that glazed donut”
Because probably it was defined as burning, not usage of nicotine
But why? The full effects of vaping are not well understood, and while they’re almost certainly not as bad as cigarettes, they’re also almost certainly still bad for you, and they are indeed still addictive for the same reasons as cigarettes. Further, one main reason their risks remain as poorly understood as they do is that (again, because of the same active ingredient) people who vape often also use cigarettes. The two are closely linked, I don’t think my confusion should be so easily dismissed as that.
Banning nicotine would be going too far. Nicotine in and of itself isn’t that bad, it’s the delivery methods that can be problematic. In particular the ones where you inhale things into your lungs. But there are smokeless tobacco and there are types of tobacco smoking where you don’t inhale the smoke.
Who would want other nicotine options without cigarettes or vaping? No one is starting out with nicorette.
Many people. There are many different tobacco products that either are smokeless or that you don’t inhale that are common in different areas, like dip, snus, snuff, cigars, pipes and what have you. In some regions those are what people start using nicotine with.
Actually I started with nicorette because of nootropics blogs and nasal snuff. I’ve only ever smoked 1 cigarette although I did partake in some hookah.
I tried to start with both a patch and gums years ago because of the stimulant benefits and the decent risk profile of nicotine on its own. I’ve never smoked, never will. Didn’t stick - it was too hard to get used to. If I could get it as a flavourless pill, maybe.
Nicotine is the active psychoactive poison that gets you hooked. Its not harmless.
It’s “psychoactive” in the same way that caffeine is. That is, it’s a stimulant. Using that term only serves the purpose of making it sound scarier. And it’s far less addictive on its own than when smoked. It’s not harmless, but it’s also nowhere near as big a problem in itself as specific product categories and delivery methods, and no worse than any number of other things we’re perfectly fine with people using.
Psychoactive poison. Great argument there. List the negative effects of nicotine itself that you think are so bad that they require a ban instead of the problematic delivery methods.
Well what’s wrong with nicotine? In itself it’s not worse than booze. It’s all the other crap they add that makes it so terrible
Hi from the depths of a nicotine addiction and struggling to quit. Its a worthless chemical that gets more expensive everyday and my brain SCREAMS at me for a fix if I try to go more than even a few hours. At least heroin gets you high.
And even when you break free for the most part the chemical which is classified as a poison will make you crave it years later.
Every time I smell somebody smoking I need a pouch or I’ll go ask for a bum
I switched to CBD only vape juice and it helped!
I suspect your struggle comes mostly from the habits, rather than the chemicals involved? I’ve known a number of cigar addicts that managed to quit, they often said that the hardest part was avoiding it after an activity, like a cigar after a cup of coffe, a cigar after a meal, etc. Being allowed cigar breaks during work also encourages use, since it’s a “free pause”
I’m sorry, but the chemically addictive and carcinogenic properties of nicotine aren’t really up for debate. Unless you’ve made some outlandish scientific discovery you’ve failed to get peer reviewed…
I beg you to inform yourself: www.healthdirect.gov.au/quit-smoking-tips#why-qui…
Nah fuck that guy
You don’t have any fucking idea what your talking about. I stopped smoking cigarettes 2 months ago and switched to tobacco free pouches. I have been tapering down from 6 mg to 4 to now 2. And here’s a good tip, especially when talking about addiction. You don’t get a say in anyone else’s experience amd diminishing another persons struggle makes you look like a real jackass, especially considering you have no experience of your own. I can tell because if you did you wouldn’t be spouting this bullshit
That’s really not the case. Nicotine is highly physically addictive. “Habits” are involved in the way the mind links itself to the addictive substances and the effect of consuming them. My wife quit smoking 15 years ago, and walking in the woods still gives her near-uncontrollable urges to light a cigarette. Because she and I camped a couple time the first year of our relationship and she smoked a cigarette on a hiking trail. That’s not habit-related. Having a cigarette was a more formative and powerful influencing memory to her than basically anything else in her life.
That’s just anti-smoker bullshit. Honestly, if you work at a job where you need to smoke to get a break, you should be finding another job anyway. Let’s just stick to hating the drug instead of the smokers.
Stay strong on your recovery friend 💪
Thank you for your comment, this is always my biggest beef with those defending nicotine (smoking/vaping).
It’s like, WHAT DO YOU EVEN GAIN FROM IT?
Smokers/vapers report a balanced pick-me-up with reduced stress and a sense of calm. If you ignore the massive health hazard and addictiveness and just pay attention to the effects, it seems like the best possible non-intoxicant. There’s a reason why indigenous people used it regularly and it was almost immediately an export crop when discovered.
Positive Effects
Honestly, a wonder-drug. Minus the whole “highly addictive and smokers die a horrible and painful death” part.
Honestly, if it weren’t addictive, I’d probably consider vaping. But I have enough addiction with caffeine in my life.
Google is your friend, lot of positives with Nictotine, Nicotine and Cigarettes aren’t locked together.
Far from a “Worthless chemical”, mainly because it literally isn’t, it’s a naturally occurring plant substance. That has a lot of benefits behind it when not abused, there are Altzheimers drugs being developed based on Nicotine because of it’s Nootropic ability and can keep people lucid.
You’re doing what most do and conflating Nicotine with Smoking. They’re not the same thing. Nicotine promotes alertness, relaxation, helps indirectly with weight loss from appetite suppression, athletic performance etc. The laundry list of negative from cigarettes don’t negate that.
I’m still very addicted to nicotine cessation products, despite a large drop in strength. I quit smoking months ago. Thanks
I dont’ doubt that, but you’re coming from smoking, which is very different than those using it otherwise as far as dependence. In your case, the nicotine lets you work on breaking the oral habit of continuing to smoke, but ultimately at some point you’ll still have to fight the nicotine addiction, but the smoking addiction will be gone. Most that just use the gum never get addicted to it. They should definitely make fractional doses for making that easier, but realistically chopping one in half and mixing it with another like flavored gum accomplishes that.
But to my point, cigarettes and smoking aside, Nicotine does have benefits either way. I use it as an addon to my preworkout as caffeine does zero for my energy. Been doing it for years, I can stop whenever I want, have a bunch of times, but haven’t found a cure for the energy end, and I like that stimulant feel. I’ve actually gone last week without any of it, mainly for money, but miss the bump, not sure if I’ll go back or not, wallet says not to. If the generic gum didn’t suck I’d just do that, but since Nicorette actually tastes like real gum… I dunno. My fahter in law who seems to be getting the possible start of Altheimers stays on top of shit with it, without it he’s a forgetful mess that constantly zones out.
Asshole
I’ll take your childish one word snowflake response as you not having anything real to disagree with. As if you did, you would have.
Have a great day troll.
Maybe I just need a nicotine fix
‘I can stop whenever I want’ where have we heard that before?
Relevance?
Are you kidding? Booze is incredibly harmful!
Yup, and it’s allowed and easily accessible
I mean I’m no expert but I do have some knowledge on the subject.
The difference is how you injest it. Our stomachs are much more resilient than our lungs. Your stomach is, for all intents and purposes, a sac of acid that dissolves mostly anything you put in it, your lungs on the other hand literally only do 1 thing all day and it’s breathe air. There are different qualities of air of course, and microparticles in it that could cause harm, but on the whole it’s more or less all the same.
Its like dumping garbage into a sink vs. a paper bag. The sink will get disgusting, and you may end up with a clogged drain, messed up pipes, or worse. But at the end of the day if you just clean the mess and don’t do it too often it will probably be fine. The paper bag on the other hand is gonna get Soggy, gross, and start falling apart in your hands. You can dry it out but it will never quite be the same…
Absolutely, and that’s the problem. The same argument you just posed could also be used against intentionally smelling flowers, or sticking your nose over a pot of boiling broth to smell that chicken deliciousness.
We don’t know that vaped nicotine is more harmful than most things we breathe. In fact, I’d say there are non-drug things people do that we already know to be worse than vaping. Ever go camping? The smoke from that fire is worse than vaping, worse than almost any substance you might want to smoke.
So the question is how bad vaping (the action, not the drug) is. Is it as bad as sniffing a rose, as bad as lighting a scented candle? As bad as incense? As bad as a campfire? If, as many suspect, it’s near the beginning of that scale, then the only critique we can rightly have is towards the substance vaped. If it’s near the end of the scale, we kinda need some research to support that claim.
As of yet, the medical and scientific community have not found solid evidence that it’s “like…garbage” at all if you don’t like it on fire.
Which is where things get complicated. Because it MIGHT be terrible for you. Or it might not be bad at all.
is not doing your argument any favors.
True, but people will never disconnect Nicotine from Smoking.
In the US it’s the opposite, which is absolutely bizarro land. Want to ban vapes but not cigarettes.
Because smoking is WILDLY more harmful than vaping.
Yes vaping has SOME health risks, but it’s like saying drinking tea and drinking four loko are just as bad because they both have caffeine
Bro what tea are you drinking that has nicotine
I can only imagine they meant caffeine, another common drug that’s heavily abused but a little more socially accepted
Tbf, caffeine is not bad for you, it might even be good for you
How much did big coffee pay you to make this comment? I bet that link installs covfefe!
Wait, they pay for this? And I’m out here sharing medical info for free. Sign me up!
Yes, because not all drugs are bad for you.
I mean lets not pretend it’s risk free, it raises blood pressure, causes headaches, can trigger arrhythmia in those at risk, etc. As far as drugs go it is probably the least risky, but it’s not like it comes with zero health impacts.
I don’t think anything is risk-free, including the vital molecules that we need to live. But caffeine has way a longer and significant list of health benefits that offset the risks at even moderate doses. So much so that there’s enough evidence to encourage people to drink more as a prophylaxis. That list includes protection from gallstones, cancers, asthma, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular disease among other thing like a potential aide in weight loss and even a significant performance boost in sports. What’s more, there have been large cohort studies that have found a 3% decreased in risk of developing arrhythmia per daily cup even when controlling for genetics. So the risks shouldn’t be used to discourage or scare people away from a proven benefit when the therapeutic window includes up to 4 cups a day. Would I risk the occasional insomnia, headaches, and temporary increase in blood pressure for all the other positive effects given such a lenient margin? Absolutely.
So, really, the public perception that caffeine is somehow dangerous for being labeled a drug is on par with the belief that other substances are inherently dangerous. I think it spills over from the war on drugs, and the delusion of clean eating that often emerges from the dregs of misinformation on the internet and those who perpetuate those beliefs for monetary gain within the wellness communities, ironically enough.
I’ve known people, myself included, that have had negative health impacts from coffee, so that could be biasing my perspective. My father nearly died from heart complications after coffee, I bleed at the exit 100% of the time I drink coffee. I love coffee, but I can’t drink it. There’s probably something genetic that makes my line intolerant. I know people that end up in a migraine caffeine withdrawal cycle on a regular basis. Obviously these are person specific, so you really just need to know your body and act accordingly.
Correction, caffeine (can) be good for you, but in normal amounts and it has diminishing returns. That’s not how most consume it. Most outright abuse it. It should never be illegal, but it being pushed as “healthy” is also a stretch.
With so many health benefits and mild side effects, it’s hard to say that it’s unhealthy when it protects you from various serious conditions. It can most definitely be part of a healthy diet.
However, the amount regularly consumed by US adults on average is 135 mg or 1.5 cups, which is well below the maximum recommended dose of 400 mg or 4 cups of coffee per day, which is in itself a conservative estimate as with all official guidances. To put that into perspective, but by no means to compare it with long-term consumption, you’d need to drink about 10 g in 100 cups in one sitting to reach toxic levels.
Surprisingly enough, and just to entertain the idea, there are some instances of increasing returns from a higher caffeine intake. A modest calorie burn for weight loss from caffeine would require 6 cups on average, which–although a large amount and not generally recommended–is still clinically safe to consume. An increased intake is also associated with a lower risk of gallstones. Even the American College of Cardiology has published a note encouraging users to drink more than the average nationwide to reap the benefits. Other sources put that number at 3 cups daily. And although moderate drinkers of 3-5 cups per day show a 15% reduction of cardiovascular disease, heavy drinkers of 6 cups or more per day are neither associated with an increase nor decreased risk. I even remember reading at some point that heavier users become more resilient to caffeine’s cardiovascular effects than casual drinkers but my Google-fu was not strong enough to recover the source but I’ll edit if I stumble across it.
So there you have it. The window of what’s considered a low risk or healthy intake of caffeine is much wider than what’s generally expected. In fact, it can be used and it’s recommended as a prophylaxis for certain conditions without a significant tradeoff in healthy adults, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that.
And no, this wasn’t paid by big coffee, but if you know that they’re hiring, send them my info.
Nicoteane 😉
Lmao, ironically I made that comment before I had my morning tea.
Nicotine is one of the safest stimulants we know, up there with caffeine in terms of safety. There’s little meaningful reason to ban nicotine. You’re more likely to harm yourself with any number of other things we readily allow.
The addiction potential of nicotine alone is also far lower than people assume, because smoking is highly addictive both due to the rituals and the other substances involved. I tried to get used to nicotine via patches years back to use as a safe stimulant, and not only did I not get addicted, I couldn’t get used to it (and I was not willing to get myself used to smoking, given the harm that involves). That’s not to say you can’t develop addictions to patches or vapes etc. too, but much more easily when it’s as a substitution for smoking than “from scratch”.
Restrictions on delivery methods that are harmful or not well enough understood, and combining nicotine with other substances that make the addiction and harm potential greater, sure.
this is from a 2015 article i found on the NIH library:
source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
in case you think i might be cherry picking, here’s something from johns hopkins, and here’s a source from the cdc. here’s something recent from harvard for good measure.
edit: i should be clear that the other sources don’t say exactly the same things as the NIH one, but they do talk about how nicotine itself is very addictive, and they talk about some of the harm it can cause
The links from John Hopkins, the CDC and Harvard all focus on vaping, and so are irrelevant to the question of nicotine rather than the delivery methods.
The first link has nothing wrong in it. It’s correct nicotine is toxic. So is caffeine - the LD50 of caffeine in humans is reasonably high, many grams. To the issue of ingestion, the issue is toxicity at doses people are likely to deal with.
To the cancer links, again without looking at delivery methods, this is meaningless. To let me quote one small part:
This makes sense. Don’t inhale lots of particulates combined with nicotine in other words. There are also many other parts of the article that are useful. E.g. it’s perfectly reasonable to accept that e.g. if you are on chemo you should stay off nicotine, and if you breastfeed you should stay off nicotine.
What the article does not show is that nicotine, as opposed to delivery methods like inhalation, is much worse than other drugs we’re perfectly fine with.
I’ll note that the article also includes things in its conclusion that it has categorically not cites studies in support of. E.g. it just assumes the addiction potential is proven (it is, but putting that in the conclusion of a paper without citing sources is really poor form, especially in a paper claiming to set out the issues with nicotine in isolation rather than smoking).
It also tried to drive up the scare factor by pointing out its toxicity at doses irrelevant for human consumption (e.g. as an insecticide; if wildly irrelevant doses should be considered, then we could write the same paper about how apples should be banned because they contain cyanide).
The “Materials and methods” section also goes on to say “Studies that evaluated tobacco use and smoking were excluded” but then goes on to make multiple arguments on the basis of harm caused by smoking (e.g. “Nicotine plays a role in the development of emphysema in smokers, by decreasing elastin in the lung parenchyma and increasing the alveolar volume”) and cites a paper focused on smoking, in direct contradiction of the claim they made (“Endoh K, Leung FW. Effects of smoking and nicotine on the gastric mucosa: A review of clinical and experimental evidence. Gastroenterology. 1994;107:864–78.”)
So, yes, if you make claims about how you’re going to address nicotine rather than smoking, and then go on to address smoking and other means of inhalation intermingled with the rest, and if you leap to conclusions you’ve not cited works in support of, and if you throw out risks without linking them causally to nicotine, you can make nicotine look very bad.
They also end with subjective statements they’ve not even attempted to support properly. E.g. they’ve gone from “here is why it’s dangerous” to “it should be restricted”, but if that was valid logic, we should restrict sales of apples too, most cleaning agents, all caffeinated products, housepaint, paint thinners, and a host of other things, it’s a specious argument and fitting that such a badly argued paper ends with it. That this passed peer review is an incredible indictment of the journal which published it.
That doesn’t mean nicotine is risk-free, but compared to other things we’re happy to ingest, I stand by my statement. But don’t inhale it.
they do focus on vaping, that does not mean they are irrelevant to the question of nicotine. from the cdc link:
there are also sections of that page titled “Why Is Nicotine Unsafe for Kids, Teens, and Young Adults?” and “How Does Nicotine Addiction Affect Youth Mental Health?” that focus only on nicotine.
from the harvard article:
from johns hopkins:
to your second point
i agree that it would be better to focus only on nicotine. i disagree that ignoring delivery methods is “meaningless”. form the johns hopkins article:
this is only to say that the cancer bit is not irrelevant.
the part you quoted says that nicotine acts as an accelerator for the development of cancers from other sources, including things like car exhaust. these carcinogens are widespread in the modern world, so accelerating the development of cancer associated with them is a bad thing. eg, car exhaust fumes are everywhere.
i agree, this is bad. the problem you brought up with the “materials and methods” section is also bad. i’m not trying to defend the article holistically, i’m even particularly attached to that source (which is why i included a few different ones). the only reason i picked that article was that it explains some of the harmful effects of nicotine, and then backs them with citations. the article did this by reviewing “90 relevant articles” from PubMed and Medline, then discussing what those articles found - and these are the parts of the article i was interested in. i probably wouldn’t use this approach if i were writing an academic paper on the subject, but i think it’s fine for arguing on the internet that nicotine isn’t “one of the safest stimulants we know”. (i also included a few different sources to counteract the limitations of this approach.)
your statements were
and
i think the second statement was thoroughly debunked by the sources i’ve included: they all say nicotine is highly addictive, and one of them says it’s “as addictive as heroin and cocaine”. i think the sources i’ve shared also discredit the idea that nicotine is “up there with caffeine in terms of safety”. i’m not trying to say nicotine is extremely dangerous, but rather that its danger is underestimated.
To this and your subsequent points, these claims are not backed up by sources in the pages you linked to, and as we’ve seen from the other paper as well, there’s good reason to be cautious about assuming their claims are separating the effects of nicotine from the effects of the delivery method, especially given every single source actually cited by the CDC article is about smoking. Neither the Johns Hopkins or Harvard article cites any sources on nicotine alone that I can see.
A claim that is not backed by sources, and has divorced this from delivery method. E.g. how many people starts with gum or a patch and goes on to tobacco? I can certainly see there being some transfer from vaping to tobacco, but that is very different from the blanket claim and illustrates the problem with these sources that fail to disambiguate and extrapolates very wide claim from sources that looks at specific modes of use.
Yes, inhaling nicotine is bad. That we can agree on, and the source supports the limited claim that if you get nicotine in a way that binds to cites in your lungs, that is bad. The sources do not provide evidence that this risk is present for other modes of use. Maybe it is, but they’ve not shown that.
But that article is the best of the sources you gave. The others cite nothing of relevance to the claim I made that I can see after going through their links.
But the problem is that not nearly all of those “90 relevant articles” are relevant to their claim, and so they start off by misrepresenting what they’re about to do. They then fail to quantify their claim in any way that supports their conclusion. They back up some specific claims without quantifying them (e.g. I can back up the claim that apples can be lethal, but you’d need vast quantities to get enough cyanide from an apple to harm you, so a claim they can be lethal in isolation is meaningless) or unpacking whether they are risks from nicotine in general, or nicotine via a specific delivery method. This is an ongoing problem with research on this subject.
They have not provided an argument for how any of those “90 relevant articles” supports their conclusion.
The say that, but they don’t back it up. Ironically, pointing to heroin is interesting, because the addiction potential of heroin has also been subject to a lot of fearmongering and notoriously exaggerated, and we’ve known this for nearly half a century – a seminal study of addiction in Vietnam war vets found the vast majority of those with extensive heroin use in Vietnam just stopped cold turkey when they returned to the US and the vast majority didn’t relapse, the opposite of what the authors assumed going into the study. A study that was commissioned as part of Nixons then-newly started politically motivated and racist War of Drugs with the intent of providing evidence of how bad it was.
(see mayooshin.com/heroin-vietnam-war-veterans-addicti… which gives a reasonable account of Robins study, and gives full reference to the paper)
That’s also not to say that heroin isn’t dangerous or seriously addictive
I didn’t read this novel but you’re arguing nicotine isn’t unhealthy and that makes you wrong
“I haven’t read this, but let me misrepresent what the thing I didn’t read says”.
I have not argued it isn’t unhealthy. I have argued it’s one of the safer stimulants we have, unless you ingest it in a way that is dangerous (e.g. inhalation). That does not mean it’s free of downsides, but neither are a whole lot of things we still decide it’s fine to use.
Next time maybe try abstaining from replying to something you’ve not bothered to read.
You just confirmed what I said. “One of the safest”
And yeah you wrote way more shit than you should ever expect people to read. Maybe abstain from writing 10,000 words ever but especially if you’re wrong
No, you made the false claim that I said it isn’t unhealthy. “One of the safest” is not the same as “isn’t unhealthy”.
If you can’t be bothered to read my ~600 words in reply to someone else and not directed at you, that is entirely your choice. Nobody is forcing you to. Neither are anyone forcing you to blatantly misrepresent what I’ve claimed, however.
You went and counted the words. That says more than I could
Your hyperbole was so idiotic that I took 10 seconds to pipe the contents to “wc” to highlight just how lazy you were before you misrepresented what you reply to, yes. That it was such a chore for you to read 600 words before making up a strawman to reply to does indeed say more than you did with words.
Get laid
Thank you. I will 😘
Well of course not. You weren’t getting the dopamine rush of a large acute dose rushing from your lungs directly to your brain in a matter of seconds.
What the heck kind of hot take is this?
Regardless, the dangers – including ease of addiction – are well-known and are scientifically proven. Your anecdata of one does not change that.
So in other words, you’re saying I didn’t pick the right delivery method to get me addicted. Which was my point.
Missing the point: 1) a large part of the addiction for most people is down to delivery, not nicotine itself - something you yourself used as an argument against my anecdote above -, and most of the research focuses on that. 2) the remaining addiction potential of nicotine is real, and proven, but it’s also nothing particularly special compared to other things we’re fine with seeing the addiction to as ranging from a nuisance (e.g. caffeine) to a problem that doesn’t justify prohibition (any more), like alcohol.
My point was not that it’s impossible to get addicted to nicotine, but that confusing nicotine vs. nicotine via a given delivery method is not helpful.
Love the “if I don’t do it, neither should anyone else” mentality among children in these threads.
It’s the same people who are alcoholics and obese… screaming how bad tobacco is, when like 95%+ of the population no longer uses it. Tobacco isn’t killing people at the rate it used to, obesity is our number one killer and healthcare cost now and no one wants to admit it.
I don’t agree with this type of stuff let people do whatever they’re going to do freedom is more important
To me, you have the right to throw a punch. That right ends, however, at the tip of my nose.
I have no issue with smokers. I have a massive issue with the huge clouds of noxious smoke they produce. They also seem to be extremely oblivious to the effects they have on those around them.
It’s akin to a drunk getting their cock out and pissing in the faces of people walking down the street.
I have no issue with nicotine use (so long as the additional health costs are covered by the taxes on it). I do have an issue with smokers, and their ability to ruin the day of those around them.
Would you be comfortable banning perfumes, cologne, scented beauty products and air fresheners. I’m allergic to all of those things.
Hell yeah, sounds like a great idea.
An allergy reaction just isn’t the same as cell damage done by the incomplete charred remains from cigarette smoke.
One of them is a water gun and the other is a uranium cell up your arse
… perfume doesn’t cause cancer when you inhale it
Hurr durr oops I dropped this
www.bcpp.org/resource/fragrance/
Oh man “maybe some contain some things that might cause cancer maybe possibly in laboratory testing on mice, and even only if you absolutely fucking drown yourself in it” against “smoking is always known to and will absolutely cause cancer, including to people around you.” Yeah definitely the same thing.
Sitting behind someone in a theatre that’s drenched in perfume will fuck me up more than a cigarette will.
If they are producing problematic exposure to a large number of people, for the benefit of only a few, yes I would.
It gets a lot more difficult however to figure out where to draw the line. In terms of noise, smoking is like someone letting off flashbangs. It’s obviously antisocial and problematic, particularly in a close environment. However , how should we handle loud music? Obviously playing music loud enough to vibrate windows at 3am is a problem, but below that is a murky zone where it’s difficult to agree on what’s problematic or not.
The equivalent to this, in smoking terms is vaping etc. It still produces something with a negative effect, but with a far lower problem potential. While I would personally prefer not to be exposed to vaping smells either, the balance is a lot less obvious. I accept that it would do more harm (to our personal freedoms etc) than good adding vapes to a ban.
There should be some rules on smell production, but it’s the sort of thing that is difficult to write into regulations. It’s currently impossible to write a quantitative test into law. All would be subjective, and so prone to problems.
Fuck yes. I hate walking into a room to be slapped with someone’s 36 spray morning routine. Thanks, I love having a headache all day.
Yes actually, those also ruin the air quality. I’m by no means allergic to them but oh man do i power walk away from those smelly areas in the mall
I assume you would prefer to see stricter legislation/enforcement about smoking in public versus outright sales bans, correct? I can totally get on board with that.
I would, however, such a ban would be harder to implement and enforce. Also, most setups where the smoke would not affect the public also risk a massive increase in exposure for those close to the smoker. (E.g. if you can’t let smoke outside, then some people will effectively hotbox their house and children). We apparently cant currently enforce the 5m rule around entrances to buildings a more complex set of rules could easily become toothless.
I’ll admit I have a personal bias. Incidental exposure to the smoke from someone 20-40+ meters away is enough to mess up my lungs and set me coughing for around a day.
I’d maybe even add a ban for in-home use around children under a child abuse clause. Very hard to enforce of course but I can think of some meaningful ways to make it not worth the risk for most people.
I’m also quite biased in the opposite direction. I just quit (4 months) vaping and have had some strong opinions that my own stupid choices should be mine alone. I draw a hard line when my choices become your consequences.
But frankly, us both being biased in opposite directions and still agreeing on potentially meaningful bans just tells me that it should be easier to get done in a way that might actually be effective.
One thing that concerns me is how a ban might impact the homeless population. It’s already basically illegal to be homeless in many places and the rates of smokers among the homeless is probably significantly higher. It could end up being yet another thing enforcement uses to harass people.
100%
Fuck off, let me breathe and don’t ruin my air quality. Cigarettes ruin the air quality of 15 meters around them depending on wind it also is small enough particulates to go through n95 masks. F U C K. O F F
you have the right to leave the area all the same
So many things wrong with this. First thing that pops to mind is that Sunak thinks we actually pay attention to these age restrictions.
A show of hands, who here has smoked before it was legal for you to do so? How about drank alcoholic beverages?
The second thing, how much interest does Sunak have in tobacco alternatives? Probably a lot, considering how much he’s pushing it…
E: autocorrect mishaps.
But what will boebert do while jerking off dudes at movie theaters?
This won’t affect her as Sunak is the Prime Minister of the UK.
No, no, they have a point.
She was vaping, not smoking.
no difference
She went from suck to blow
Fucking surveillance state you have there
It’s a camera… in private property…
I don’t see anything wrong with having cameras in cinemas and theatres.
You say that, but yet bringing a camera is guaranteed to get you kicked out of a cinema.
I meant a security camera.
And no shit you would get kicked out for taking a regular one. They don’t want you to record the movie.
Ohhhhhh, is that why.
I mean yeah, why else would they not want you taking a camera?
So we would eliminate smoking the same way we eliminated drug use…by making it illegal.
/S if necessary
few hours ago
I’m generally pro legalization of drugs, but will say this is likely to be much more effective than the war on drugs ever was.
You don’t outlaw possession, just the sales age. You’ll see significantly fewer new starters as time goes because after 20 years 40 year olds that can buy wont be bothered to support fresh 18 year olds looking to start a new habit or whatever. The ones that really want to start can buy from abroad without any form of punishment.
I think it’s different because I don’t think anyone turns to their first cigarette looking to try and attain some new feeling. It’s usually one of those things like… My friends were so I grabbed one from them and blah blah.
I would say I’m for the progressive increase in age, and I wrestle with my own hypocrisy seeing that I support legalizing other drugs. But maybe that’s rooted in the basis that I’ve never had a pothead or dude on shrooms negatively impact me. Cigarettes however–littered everywhere, get smoke in your face, etc
people could easily say they hate the smell of weed - is that a good reason to outlaw?
I keep thinking of the rat experiments where rats in cages took drugs until they died but happy rats in rat societies turned away from drugs.
I think people take drugs, including cigarettes, to cope. If they didn’t need to cope with terrible conditions, they wouldn’t use the drugs (except a few outliers). To me, taking away people’s cope is punching down.
We can’t get rid of tobacco like we can quaaludes or some synthetic drug. It’s going to be available to people. The question is do you want to create a huge black market for it (where people can easily lace cigarettes with fentanal, bonus? ), or do you want to address the reasons that people chain smoke?
Part of the point of a gradual ban is to avoid creating a supply vacuum that gets filled by a black market.
Is there any evidence to suggest a gradual ban actually prevents a black market?
It’s worth noting that even the happy rats would go get the occasional hit, they just weren’t dependent on the drugs. They did it for fun once in a while, not frequently as an escape from reality. This is how healthy people enjoy drugs.
That doesn’t change the end result though. Addiction is the result of profound despair, not the cause of it. Giving people hope and support keeps them from needing to escape.
I think people want to do things they are not allowed to. They will go through the effort to find a way. In a lot of states that legalized Marijuana, its use went down after legalization. Once it was normalized, some people lost interest. I think the opposite happens when you make it illegal, you’re basically making it cool again. This isn’t just drug use, it’s with a lot of things, if you forbid it, people will suddenly want that thing more than they did before. Religion comes to mind. Authoritarian countries that want to stamp out a religion or all religion often cause a religious resurgence. There’s nothing quite like being told you can’t do something to make you want to do it or visa versa. People are naturally oppositional.
Yeah, lots of bad faith comparisons to drug legalization. People outright against age-gated laws. So I guess that means it’s ok for 4 year olds to drive around?
He should also star making crimes illegal so that they can live in a society without crime /s.
I think they should raise it by 1 year every 2 years.
Yeah, I agree. That will give people time to not get hooked, but not screw over the kids who started smoking when they were 18.
Every year should be fine, illegal to buy cigarettes if you’re born after 1945 so we can finally stomp out the tobacco
Smoking’s already dramatically fallen out of popularity with younger people, being replaced by vaping. So I don’t think it really matters what they do at this point - smoking’s a dinosaur waiting to die.
Yeah the only thing raising the smoking age will do is make smoking cool again.
Everything about smoking is cool. Especially the part where it devastates your body before killing you in the most terrible way possible, drowning in your own fluids. Kinda hoping on the world ending so I can say fuck it and pick it up again.
Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.
-Brooke Shields
Hey, but you get to gorge on morphine before drowing in your own fluids /s
Although vaping is far more popular and at least better than smoking, it’s still actively bad for health. I’d be interested to see how a similar policy to ban vapes would go over in the west like they’re trying in Taiwan.
Fast food, alcohol, motorcycles, and Instagram are also bad for your health. I’m not sure how vaping compares. Vaping is definitely easier to demonize.
That is indeed true, but don’t forget that vaping addiction comes from the nicotine inside it that gets into your body physically. Riding a motorcycle or being on Instagram are still addictive but they don’t “force” it upon you
We get it, you vape.
I actually don’t vape. I just see a vice that seems relatively harmless and I don’t think we should demonize it. Even if vape people are annoying.
We should perhaps demonize some parts of it.
www.bbc.com/news/health-65614078
It seems we might be heading to another lead-based catastrophe. Fortunately more limited than the previous one, but still.
This article is why I’m against demonizing vapes.
Regularly, you see these news articles about illegal vapes getting people sick. Because they are illegal and unregulated.
Regularly, governments and media try to use those revelations to attack the legal vape industry, which works quite hard to make sure not to ever release vapes with high lead, nickel, or (the famous one) Vitamin E. The whole popcorn lung thing was practically an ad campaign where I live. They kept (accidentally I’m sure) leaving out that NOT A SINGLE ONE vape pen in my area that had Vitamin E in it came from our smoke shops or legal dispensaries.
Why? To demonize vapes.
I have a sister who vaped for a year before she got bored of it. I am grateful that we had a regulated industry that made sure the vapes she got her hand on weren’t going to really hurt her.
Motorcycles aren’t bad for your health. Crashing them is, but just driving them isn’t, even doing it a lot. Unlike the other things you mentioned where doing them a lot is unhealthy.
Vaping isn’t bad for your health, it’s what you put into the vape that might be. There are already commonly used medical technologies that are adjacent to vaping, and many researchers think we will be able to use vaping in the future to replace hypodermic needles in some situations.
They are statistically bad for your health.
By your own argument, you would agree with the statement: “Smoking cigarettes isn’t bad for your health. Lung cancer is.”
Nope, doesn’t need to end in lung cancer for it to be bad.
Take it this way:
You can drive motorcycle for hours every day for years and not take any health casualties from it.
You can’t smoke cigarettes every day for years and not take any health casualties from it.
No. You are another pedantic commenter. Stop.
Lmao. Just because I disagree with you? ^^
Interesting turn of phrase. What is “actively bad for health”, really? Experts seem to be pretty convinced that as bad as Vaping might be, it’s not as bad as alcohol. And we in the US know what happens when you try to ban alcohol. I have Prohibition to thank for the incredible Whiskey industry of today.
Have you been literally anywhere in Europe? Smoking is not a dinosaur waiting to die
I keep hearing this and yet when I’m in Europe the amount of people smoking seems to go from tiny to slightly less tiny. Sure there are more smokers, but it’s not a significant portion of the population anymore in most places. I just traveled all over France, which I thought was famous for being a smoking country and I noticed how seldom I was even around a smoker. Outside of Belarus I don’t think smoking is even that significant anymore in Europe.
Not sure where you’re comparing to but compared to the US the difference is stark. I expect to see the occasional smoker on your average US city block, but in Europe it feels like I cannot go outside any building without the doors being surrounded by smokers. Anecdotally my experience is very different to yours and also this map indicates my experience is not isolated. Compared to the US just about all the European countries have a higher density of smokers …wikipedia.org/…/Tobacco_consumption_by_country
I will say that in the rural US the smoking rate “feels” higher than even the European countries I’ve visited. Maybe you’re from the rural US? It feels like the rate in US cities is extremely lower than in the rural south
I was going to link the same wiki to argue the opposite. Twice as much as tiny is still small. What that wiki article shows to me is that tobacco use is way way down, the 12th country on that list only has double the tobacco use of the US. Considering 60 years ago about half of adults smoked in the westernized world it’s way down and it’s been on a constant decline. Several European countries are only marginally higher than the US and ~4 are lower.
Though I must admit, looking at more data, it’s still higher than I would have guessed, about 12% in the USA when I would have guessed 5%. I live in a city.
I don’t know why suddenly the bar for comparison is the world generally decades ago. We were comparing countries. My point stands, most European countries have higher smoking rates than in the US. Even if there are a few exceptions.
Europeean countries are thick with anoke compared to where I live. I can walk the streets and never smell tobacco smoke (except the areas in Oslo where many people from other countries in europe or from the middle east lives).
If you walk in the street in Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warzaw etc, people smoke more and you can smell it everywhere.
Finally something sensible from this guy. Last week it was all big auto lobby nonsense.
Broken clock right twice a day type of deal with Sunak
I loathe Sunak, his political party and their ideals… but this is pretty good actually Maybe he’ll manage to do a single worthwhile thing
Great goal but like with all other narcotics, wouldn’t this just create a huge black market and thus massively fund criminal organizations?
I don’t think they’re going to give people twenty years for selling cigarettes to minors.
I’m not so sure
Cigarettes are not often seen with the same attraction as other drugs
The draw from younger potential customers is greatly outweighed by far less harmful stuff like weed or even shrooms
And the best way to change that is by making them illegal.
Yeah if smoking is due to infuriate the grown-ups then someone will pick it up!
For something to be attractive on the black market it’d have to be attractive on its own.
Cigarettes have abjectly lost that race ever since the campaign of trotting every lung cancer patient able to be found in front of the cameras was normalized.
Especially when the supposed upshot of it is something you can get for much cheaper and way less dangerously with weed.
I think chances are we are at a stage where most would-be smokers would just opt for vaping, given that while it sounds like he wants some restrictions on that as well, it doesn’t like that’d be subjected to the year over year age increase?
Or do it like Germany: make vaping extremely expensive so people go back to smoking. Stupid.
So are you for or against Sunak’s proposal?
Absolutely obscene and short sighted what the German government have done. Everything is taxed per ml, even if it has no nicotine in it. As you say it’s cheaper to actually smoke.
Imagine turning 18 (or whatever the smoking age is in the UK) and starting to smoke during the year this rule takes effect. Then, every year from that point forward, you’d have to wait for your birthday to start smoking again.
Oh, the horror!
Or just… don’t smoke?
I don’t and never have, but this doesn’t make the proposed rule less ridiculous.
Most people who “start smoking” don’t just pick up a pack and BOOM addicted. It’s a psychological conditioning over many months or even years that leads to full on addiction. It starts with a drag or two off a friends cig, then it’s a pack purchased for weekend partying, then it’s “I’ll have a cig with my coffee”, then it’s “I smoke half a pack a day”. A public awareness campaign coupled with the “one more year” approach to smoking laws would basically eliminate all new young smokers. Vaping on the other hand is actively being pushed onto kids. Kids don’t want actual tobacco anymore.
Thanks, I’m well aware of these issues. My point is that they should just prohibit what they think should be prohibited, and that they should do so for everyone, not just those that sit below an arbitrary age threshold. The sole point of this proposal is to pass laws selectively so that they don’t affect age groups with whom they would be unpopular, and I don’t think this is how laws should be passed.
If a rule were implemented it would most likely be "no one born before 2005 can purchase cigarettes.
Then 18 year olds born on January 1 or December 31st of 2005 can purchase cigarettes for the rest of their lives but if you were 17 when the rule was implemented you’re banned for life.
It is 18.
But this law will be designed to target current 14 year olds. In theory they will never legally be allowed to smoke.
If you’re smoking now, this will not affect you.
It’s DOB not age.
I don’t know if that’s feasible given that adults are adults after all. But maybe just restrict the sale of cigarettes and make it so burdensome to sell them in shops so most don’t even bother. And do the same for vapes. Vapes are ridiculously easy to buy so stick them in the same locked cabinet that other nicotine products go in and ban all advertising and signage.
I think that might help. Increasing friction for an activity makes it less likely to happen (like when your TV remote is in another room).
That needs a bit more differentiation, no? After all, there are vapes without nicotine. I would also differentiate between single-use vapes (just ban these, wtf) and refillables. They’re also (most probably) much less unhealthy compared to smoking tobacco.
In my country (Germany), vapes are only available in shops, and most sadly only offer single-use vapes. Cigarettes were (are?) also sold in vending machines, on streets or in bars. So from my point of view, vapes are already harder to buy than cigarettes. What situation did you have in mind?
All in all, I think it would make sense to make access to these things harder / price higher based on how harmful they are, and how addictive they are.
All for it!
I think this is deeply illiberal. There are some cases where bans make sense like the XXL Bully dog ban that has been mooted. But I don’t think the government should be able to decide what an adult puts in their own body.
My dad was an oncologist for years and he said that one of the reasons we’re having trouble in the NHS is that people have stopped smoking. Unfortunately if you are stricken with lung cancer then your prognosis is not good - and while this is a tragedy - you potentially could end up costing much more money in terms of social care and hospital visits if you carry on to live to a later age but get stricken with a more complex degenerative disease.
This is disappointing. Honestly I has found Sunak to be a relief on the whole after our previous few Prime Ministers, probably on par with Therasa May. In my opinion this is a cynical attempt to steal a policy that Labour’s Wes Streeting was going to announce soon in order to take the wind out of his sails.
So the NHS would be better off if more people just died and didn’t waste your dad’s time. Nice.
He’s retired now but one of the arguments being put forward for the ban is that it will help the NHS. Purely actuarially, his anecdotal experience was that people living longer has been one of the biggest factors in the budget being squeezed over the years. Interestingly the other huge money sink was litigation by patients but that’s a separate thing to what we’re discussing.
Edit: Not that it should be relevant but he also smoked for the majority of his career as a doctor. The observation is more about how wider behaviour of the population affected their budgets.
What if nicotine is legal, and only the smoking is illegal?
I think that is what’s being proposed by the policy. I suppose I have two objections to that: Firstly, I think people should be able to make bad choices provided they aren’t harming others. Secondly, it could be counterproductive creating an artifical scarcity for younger generations; like it could end up making smoking cool again like cannabis (arguably) is.
Second hand smoke is very harmful.
From someone who has smoked and quit, I was really blind sided by how addictive nicotine was. People talk about adults and what they put in there body but nicotine really is a different monster
Huh. I gave it a try, and while drunk, i just went on and on, but overall it just smelled so bad that it never became a habit. I guess i’m lucky
Some people definitely don’t respond the same and it real does take 1-3 days to really start to notice for some people
I never felt the same buzz after my first cigarette, it felt like I was fucking drunk after my first smoke lol.
After that I was basically just chasing the dragon, I was smoking about 15-30 cigarettes a day for about 1-2 years. Never again.
What I don’t see is why smoking should be the main nicotine delivery device when it can easily be done without the cancerous smoke.
Isolated nicotine is apparently not cancerous. We just choose to enforce the continued coupling of nicotine and cancer, and refuse to permit alternatives that decouple if from cancer if their dosage isn’t pitiful.
“Either get the weak alternatives, or the cancerous ones.”
The moderate non-cancerous alternatives are illegal.
We must save people from themselves! Don’t let them make any decisions since they could make bad ones!
I’d be more sympathetic if the harm was self contained. It isn’t, so your choices should automatically come with restrictions.
So should we limit how much food one is allowed to buy because it’s a drain on the NHS? How about banning alcohol, because alcoholism creates innumerable problems for people other than the alcoholic in question as well? Hell, might as well make them apply for home-cooking licenses so we make sure they don’t give their relatives salmonilla this holiday, otherwise how can we know your grandma can trust you to cook for her? Can’t trust you OR her to make their own decisions without
daddy’syour figurative abusive husband’sthe government’s approval. Cor, blimey!Fuck it, might as well hold people’s hands their entire lives, wouldn’t want them to make mistakes and possibly even grow and become better people would we? No wouldn’t want that, better round down the edges of life until it’s barely worth living, that’ll do the trick.
Trash take. The “bad decision” in this case is severely detrimental health effects, including painful forms of death, that put a tax burden on the rest of the general public with increased health care costs.
No u. The “bad decision” resulting in “honk and blarg [Variables for generic bullshittery]” is moot, the decision to imbibe in a substance is the decision of the imbiber alone, you are not their daddy, you have no authority to decide what is “in their best interest.”
Also, that whole “The NHS is an excuse for the government to further intrude on bodily autonomy, something which they seem more than willing to do with this abortion horseshit, as well as fingerprints not being covered by the 1a, not having the ability to do drugs unapproved by the state (the ones they sell are fine though, want a drink?), etc” thing is something I haven’t thought about before. “Higher taxes” is one thing, but tbh I don’t want free healthcare that comes at the price of more of my civil liberties.
Yeah I don’t think so.
Afaik NZ has already implemented such a rule.
It has.