this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
260 points (98.9% liked)

World News

38979 readers
2836 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LotrOrc@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

So I'm a little torn on this

In general I'm very left leaning, and I was a fan of most policies adern put in. This one I thought was a weird one and really harsh. You want to raise the smoking age to 25 or 30 sure. But banning it entirely is to me like banning weed entirely or when people tried to ban alcohol, etc.

I understand smoking isn't healthy for anyone. But it's still someone's choice to do so or not. Drinking isn't healthy either. Lots of people die every year from drinking entirely too much. You can't ban that entirely either.

[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 11 points 11 months ago

Bans work better on tobacco because unlike alcohol or drugs, they’re used habitually but generally not recreationally. That is, the role of cigarettes in society and individually is different from those of alcohol, cannabis, and the like.

I am going to hazard a guess that tobacco industry lobbying is responsible for this. They went into Eastern European nations and pitched the idea that tobacco control was bad for the country’s economy because without smokers they’d have to deal with more people who live to retirement age, and killing them earlier makes things cheaper.

Banning cigarettes removes them from convenience stores, making them much harder to buy. The work they’ve done so far has pulled the smoking population down to 8% from over 16% ten years ago, although it’s still 20% among Māori.

I would not be surprised if the ban cut that in half or more.

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I guess the difference is you have a right to smoke, the 6 people sitting next to you have 6 rights not to. Maybe that was the consideration at the time?

[–] SirVer@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Then just ban it in public spaces and let businesses have private smoking areas if they want to. That's what was done here in India and it seems to have worked out okay in my state at least.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

2nd hand smoke isn’t someone’s choice and the difference between banning cigarettes and banning a full class of a drug is that people aren’t going to turn to the black market for cigarettes (barring poverty) when vaping is still legal

[–] LotrOrc@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Banning in public spaces or in specific areas something would be fine