Sunak wants to phase out legal smoking

[UnderOpenSky]

Personally I am in favour of pricing people out of smoking, which is what's happening in Australia, some people will buy those horrible fake fags, but they are not very nice at all, some people will get smuggled stuff in from Belgium or the Canaries, but the majority will just have to move to vapes or stop.

I suspect what's already happening with teenagers. They're far likely to vape then smoke.

 

[danny la rouge]

Why the scare quotes?

Because he’s old. #GeezerPunctuation #DistanceIsAnInvertedComma

 

[brogdale]

Really this is so New Labour

 

[Silas Loom]

It’s only getting through because New New Labour support it wholeheartedly, of course.

 

[kabbes]

People are getting hooked as teenagers before they are 18, I'm not suggesting they start at 30.

Most people start around the age of 13, for all my life the age to buy fags was 16, now moved to 18, so clearly the age restriction thing is no bar to younger people starting.

When you can’t buy fags under 25, who is going to be buying the 15 year-olds their cigarettes? The reason that 15 years-olds can get them at the moment is largely because they know other young people that are just a little bit older, who are willing to buy the cigarettes on their behalf. It will inevitably become much harder for children to get hold of cigarettes as the minimum age increases.

It’s a mistake to think of this kind of policy as some kind of cliff-edge that 100% stops all undesired behaviour. Instead, it just makes the general environment more and more unacceptable to smoking, so that it gradually becomes phased out through a hundred little socioeconomic impacts.

 

[Silas Loom]

I tend to use them whenever I hear governments talking about saving; aside from that there was no implied meaning.

Fair, there’s usually smoke and mirrors in HMG savings announcements. But stopping people from dying horribly well before retirement age is definitely a net benefit for HMT, even if the beneficiaries cost the NHS extra by surviving for longer.

 

[kabbes]

It’s weird to hear Tory grandees go on about how removing the choice to smoke is unconservative, because choice is all. Those same people would have a fit if Sunak suggested the full legalisation of heroin and cocaine.

 

[klang]

We should def make single ciggie sales to minors socially acceptable again.

 

[Silas Loom]

It’s weird to hear Tory grandees go on about how removing the choice to smoke is unconservative, because choice is all. Those same people would have a fit if Sunak suggested the full legalisation of heroin and cocaine.

Heroin importers and distributors really should see the bigger picture and offer directorships and public affairs consulting contracts to MPs out of their budget for bribing bent coppers.

 

[Silas Loom]

We should def make single ciggie sales to minors socially acceptable again.

We should not do this.

 

[brogdale]

It’s weird to hear Tory grandees go on about how removing the choice to smoke is unconservative, because choice is all. Those same people would have a fit if Sunak suggested the full legalisation of heroin and cocaine.

That makes me wonder if Sunak's advisers might also have sold the policy on the basis that it offers some counter to the idea of legalising weed.

 

[PR1Berske]

That makes me wonder if Sunak's advisers might also have sold the policy on the basis that it offers some counter to the idea of legalising weed.

Slaps forehead

Oh of course.

 

[kabbes]

That makes me wonder if Sunak's advisers might also have sold the policy on the basis that it offers some counter to the idea of legalising weed.

Imagine the irony — weed gets legalised but young people can no longer buy loose leaf tobacco to roll a joint with.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

When you can’t buy fags under 25, who is going to be buying the 15 year-olds their cigarettes? The reason that 15 years-olds can get them at the moment is largely because they know other young people that are just a little bit older, who are willing to buy the cigarettes on their behalf. It will inevitably become much harder for children to get hold of cigarettes as the minimum age increases.

It’s a mistake to think of this kind of policy as some kind of cliff-edge that 100% stops all undesired behaviour. Instead, it just makes the general environment more and more unacceptable to smoking, so that it gradually becomes phased out through a hundred little socioeconomic impacts.

I've worked with parents who will do so, although luckily I accept that's unusual. Plus there will always be dodgy folk who are happy to make a small amount doing so.

I do take your point and mine about 30 years asking us to go the shop was slightly light hearted. However whilst nictotine addiction is awful, there's something that makes me quite uncomfortable allowing adults of a certain age to do something, whilst others can't, even if it is for their own good.

 

[Silas Loom]

Imagine the irony — weed gets legalised but young people can no longer buy loose leaf tobacco to roll a joint with.

A lobbying victory for Big Bong.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

It’s weird to hear Tory grandees go on about how removing the choice to smoke is unconservative, because choice is all. Those same people would have a fit if Sunak suggested the full legalisation of heroin and cocaine.

Well quite. Who would have thought 20 years ago the US would be further ahead then us when it came to legalised cannabis?

 

[PR1Berske]

Section 1, part 1 of the Act has taken on a new meaning with the weed comment above.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Imagine the irony — weed gets legalised but young people can no longer buy loose leaf tobacco to roll a joint with.

Take it you never went to an Amsterdam coffee shop after they banned indoor tobacco smoking then? That's exactly what happened there.

 

[Silas Loom]

Legalised cannabis manifests as gummies, anyway.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Legalised cannabis manifests as gummies, anyway.

That's how I consume these days, don't smoke anything at all.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Legalised cannabis manifests as gummies, anyway.

Or vape pens, vaporisere, pipes etc.

In the US it's not that common to use it with tobacco.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

It's performative bollocks.

Nobody buys ciggies legally (in fact, given the price of them nobody can afford to buy them legally). In terms of vaping there is already a massive black market which will quickly and effectively fill any void created by government bans/taxes on vaping.

Banning the regulated market is therefore both a) stupid in a lost tax revenue sense and b) spectacularly counterproductive as it is guaranteed only to drive the market further towards the unregulated sector. The idea that people will pack up - when they can get what they want in the local pub or shop - because the government tell them to is the type of dumb logic only the British political class possesses.

So, in reality, it’s giving it too much credit to describe it as performative bollocks, I prefer performative shite.

 

[Serge Forward]

I tend to use them whenever I hear governments talking about saving; aside from that there was no implied meaning.

Whatever the government 'saves' they then blow it on a fighter plane or aircraft carrier... or just give it to their mates via a VIP lane, the cunts

 

[Yossarian]

I'm all for this legislation, if there's any chance it will help bring youth smoking rates down, though I worry it might end up as a rarely enforced tool that police mostly use to harass Black teenagers.

 

[Silas Loom]

I'm all for this legislation, if there's any chance it will help bring youth smoking rates down, though I worry it might end up as a rarely enforced tool that police mostly use to harass Black teenagers.

The police would harass shopkeepers, not smokers. Minority ethnic groups are probably overrepresented in retail microbusinesses, to be fair.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I'm all for this legislation, if there's any chance it will help bring youth smoking rates down, though I worry it might end up as a rarely enforced tool that police mostly use to harass Black teenagers.

You think young people will stop because the government says so? Remember when you were young? What would you have done? Personally the more illegal it was the more I wanted to try it/do it.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

You think young people will stop because the government says so? Remember when you were young? What would you have done? Personally the more illegal it was the more I wanted to try it/do it.

With the price they'll cost they can save their money for THC gummies and DMT vapes.

 

[Yossarian]

You think young people will stop because the government says so? Remember when you were young? What would you have done?

I would have probably bought - or sold - dodgy imported fags and smoked anyway, though I'm not sure I would have persevered with the habit when I was 14 if there hadn't been a nearby shopkeeper who sold singles.

Hopefully it's on the way out anyway - as far I understand it, most young people already see smoking actual tobacco as something reserved for gross, stupid old people

 

[kabbes]

Young people don’t want to smoke out of some kind of innate genetic impulse. It’s a social norm associated with positive imagery. If nobody smoked, 13 year-olds wouldn’t move heaven and earth to seek out one of these precious fags that their grandparents go on about. Nobody is buying snuff any more, are they?

 

[Elpenor]

It’s giving your enterprising local weed / coke dealer a new business line

Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them already sell baccy and vapes