aside from the issue of ‘prohibition still doesn’t work’, i don’t think giving kids or “underage” adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone
Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.
TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.
Incorrect.
A black market is created, kids still smoke, but poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail.
It doesn’t fix the issue and syphons poor people into prisons.
How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.
I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it’s “cool”, making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.
Please, oh dear god…
Please tell me what FFA means and how it doesn’t amount to “send poor people to prison”.
FFA just means “free for all” (it’s a term from competitive games, in case you shouldn’t know), in this context I used it as another word for ‘legal’.
how to create a blackmarket with health issues
Sunak should start publicly smoking all the time, then it will be the lamest thing and teen smoking will crater.
This is an amazing, for the sole reason that everyone who is 17 and change now will turn 18, be able to smoke, the law will bump to 19, they won’t be allowed to smoke any more, but then they’ll turn 19 and they’ll be able to smoke again until the law raises to 20…
I believe they passed a similar law like this in New Zealand. You could be 50 and still too young to smoke lol.
Smokefree action plan: Cigarette sales to be banned for younger generations
Why adjust the law annually? Why not just write it as “no person born after Jan 1, 2005”?
This is the better way to write the law of course, but the ham-fisted way it’s proposed by Rishi would look more like what I wrote, because he said specifically that the age should rise one year every year.
So the age is going to get risen to 19, then the Tories are going to lose the next election (basically the only reason to have the election at this point is to find out by how much they’re going to lose so we know how much to laugh at them), and then the law stops getting updated because it’s a dumb and badly written, and then Labour don’t implement it any more.
If anything they will probably just rewrite the law to the above version.
You can just make it a “born before this date” and it just solves this entirely. That date just doesn’t change. Everyone who sells darts memorizes it. Then it actually changes every day by a day. Fuck it, let’s give it an hour too, just to fuck with those kids born an hour later
…how do 14 year olds get smokes now?
Making it illegal to buy at certain ages has never worked…banning them outright also won’t work. You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
Has the war on drugs not been a thought to these people? It is useless and does nothing.
I agree that prohibition doesn’t really prevent a thing from being consumed. However, I don’t think an age limit really counts as prohibition. Selling substances to those who are underage is bad and there should be potential consequences for doing so.
Underage in this scenario could be 40, 50, 60. They will just drive to an Indian reserve and buy cigarettes.
I assume you’re talking about teens though…I’m fine with the current age limits, but increasing the age by 1 year ever year won’t do anything.
Um, you do realize that Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the UK? It’s a long and arduous drive to the nearest Indian reservation.
Why have laws against drunk driving or speeding? You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
It’s true, you can’t stop people from doing what they want to do with laws, but smoking doesn’t smear a child down the street for everyone to see. What a terrible comparison
Fine, why have laws against littering, or smoking in public buildings, or jaywalking, or embezzlement? People are just going to do those things anyway, no matter what is written on paper.
We have laws to provide an enforcement mechanism for behavior that is unacceptable in our society. You’re right, in that laws written on paper can be ignored, but you do so at a risk of the penalties laid out in the law. Your argument essentially invalidates the purpose and effectiveness of every law. Clearly, we have laws and they work, so your argument is frivolous and empty.
The war on drugs can’t work because the CIA uses illicit drug running to fund off-the-books projects.
Maybe if they stopped fucking doing that?
Sure on a global scale, but on a more macro level, the war on drugs failed because people want to buy and consume drugs… if there is no legal, regulated, safe method to buy them then the black market will fill that gap… same under rationing, same under prohibition, same with drugs and in the future cigarettes…!
The war on drugs succeeded, because it was actually a war on black people. It was never meant to stop drug abuse.
There is a legal, regulated, mostly safe method to buy cigarettes. It is inaccessible if you are under a certain age, but only the seller/provider is punished for violating regulations. It’s okay to have restrictions on what children can consume.
While current laws on illegal drugs do not work, arguing against any regulation whatsoever is similarly silly, the laws obviously work. Smoking rates have dramatically declined since those laws and public education campaigns began.
True, but the want of cigarettes is much lower than recreational drugs. One of the reasons they’re still so popular is because they’re legal and easy to get.
I don’t smoke and never have, but I can’t imagine anyone starting smoking in order to get some effect like with marijuana.
I think you’re wrong. The market isn’t magic, it needs supply to meet demand and there is a steady supply of drugs to fulfill the demands because of state intervention in the market. The CIA isn’t the only government entity that uses the drug trade to raise illicit funds for off-the-books jobs, it’s just the biggest. If it weren’t for bad state actors, the war on drugs probably would have worked to a large extent; maybe not eliminate the drug trade completely, but at least reduce the volume of trade substantially.
The war on drugs can’t work because people want drugs. Has literally fuck-all to do with anything or anyone else.
