ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
It's a great policy. First time I've ever said that about anything the Conservatives have done!
Sunak wants to phase out legal smoking
- Thread starter Brainaddict
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skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
As this will have very little real world impact on anything, I'm personally much more interested in banning disposable vapes.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
This is quite a Sunak driven bill from what I can tell, with a fair amount of conservative opposition. You can bet if Labour had introduced it, the Tories would have opposed on principle.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
PR1Berske
Alligator in chains by the park gates.
They did; a right wing government repealed it.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Yep, part of the coalition negotiations and a concession to the conservatives there.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
To be fair, 10-year-old me was smashing open the cigarette machine that was in the street outside the paper shop, then legging it with a stash of Park Drive. The machine was removed soon after.
Silas Loom
Man with glasses
I think you have to go back to 2013 and the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act. And that was a sop to the LDs to buy their support for various barbarities.
WWWeed
Bandwidth Bandit
All of this is a bit of a waste of time if there is not the resource to enforce this properly. If there is a thriving blackmarket then this will just be pushed underground and the problem will get worse. In my opinion it is always better to give people the safer option of being able to obtain tobacco and nicotine based products from a safely controlled source.
I actually stopped smoking completely just after the pandemic and it was a direct result of vaping. However I do admit there is next to no helpful information out there and can quite easily see how easy it is to get more addicted to vaping through the use of nicotine salts and a lack of information/understanding. As far as I can tell nothing in these regulation changes addresses that.
I strongly support a ban on disposable vapes as they are awful from a environmental and safety point of view, but think the regulation surrounding vapes is an absolute joke. I swear governments are bordering on useless and much like drug policy it has been a complete and utter failure.
The flavour thing really gets to me as it was a big part of getting me to quit. Yes it makes it more attractive to people underage but it also makes it more appealing to those trying to quit tobacco. If children are obtaining vapes then surely it is because enforcement of the current rules is not working - will adding more help if the enforcement is not working well enough?
I actually stopped smoking completely just after the pandemic and it was a direct result of vaping. However I do admit there is next to no helpful information out there and can quite easily see how easy it is to get more addicted to vaping through the use of nicotine salts and a lack of information/understanding. As far as I can tell nothing in these regulation changes addresses that.
I strongly support a ban on disposable vapes as they are awful from a environmental and safety point of view, but think the regulation surrounding vapes is an absolute joke. I swear governments are bordering on useless and much like drug policy it has been a complete and utter failure.
The flavour thing really gets to me as it was a big part of getting me to quit. Yes it makes it more attractive to people underage but it also makes it more appealing to those trying to quit tobacco. If children are obtaining vapes then surely it is because enforcement of the current rules is not working - will adding more help if the enforcement is not working well enough?
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
For me vaping was a terrible way to quit. I suspect it's the same for many.
I think it's a good form of harm reduction though and shouldn't be overly penalised for this reason.
Silas Loom
Man with glasses
I’d like to see vaping denormalised, but amendments to that effect will be proposed to the bill currently being debated as a wrecking tactic in the hope that it can’t go through in this parliamentary session. So those should be resisted. One for Starmer to look at next year, hopefully
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
I must say, I'm a bit surprised to see the level of support for prohibition here on urban, and not even simple prohibition but something that only prohibits smoking to a section of the population. Yes, smoking is bad and yes there needs to be encouragement to help people to stop - and to some degree this is quite successful with the number of smokers now lower than ever. But we all know where prohibition leads to.
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
Agree, I don’t want anyone smoking within 100m of me if possible and would happily extend the smoking ban to include on the street if I had the power, but I’m not convinced this ban makes sense.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
It's not a ban on smoking though. It's a ban on the sale of tobacco to those born after 2009. I think the difference is important, as I don't honestly see some prohibition era underground industry springing up to supply the youth with black market fags. They'll just be gotten via existing means for the most part. It'll barely register IMO.
What I absolutely do agree with, and I don't honestly see any argument against it, is the banning of disposable vapes.
souljacker
innit
The underground industry is already there though and some of the fake fags are much nastier than real ones.
I’m pretty ambivalent. However, I can’t see any coherence behind current policy on cigarettes versus cocaine, heroin and other narcotics. I think either there is value in banning them all or there is no value in banning any of them. I can see valid arguments in both directions, but not the half way house we currently have.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
That's symptomatic of the price of fags though. I don't think the impending legislation will have much impact here WRT young people. Young smokers are already in terminal decline. It's all about vaping now.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Pressure from the National Party , and a concession by the others in forming a coalition government IIRC.
maomao
普費斯
Ban fags and legalise everything else would be my chosen policy. At least heroin and cocaine have positives.
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
I think my approach to this is that it's wrong / counterproductive to ban drugs outright, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't ban, heavily restrict or discourage particularly problematic forms/delivery methods. So no to a ban on nicotine but perhaps a ban on tobacco is justified - or a price hike so extreme it amounts to much the same thing.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
It's a complex one isn't it? When I was younger I thought legalising everything was the only way really. The came mephedrone and I'm not really sure anymore.
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
Was it so bad when mephedrone was legal? Surely the main issue was it being a new drug with little in the way of harm reduction advice etc? I think there would be models of legal mephedrone availability that would probably work.
Silas Loom
Man with glasses
Sensible policy has to take the status quo into account, so even if a unified approach to addictive harms were feasible, progress towards it would happen at varied speeds.
And it’s not clear that there is consensus on what we would count as narcotics. Should chocolate be in scope? Coffee? If not, why not?
souljacker
innit
Yes, but the industry is there so it's easy for them to go from selling them under the counter to avoid the high prices to selling them under the counter because they are banned.
Remember, there is a LOT of tobacco smuggling happening in the UK. There is a guy in my local who supplies the whole pub with their baccy. He does a turkey trip every month to restock.
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
Yeah I'm not sure. I partly agree with that but also to a degree with UOS - the meph situation did make me question things a bit. I can think of a few points on that:
- People were taking a lot of meph and the availability of it definitely did help. It was really easy and cheap to get and incredibly compulsive, I certainly couldn't knock it on the head when I was on it. And I knew others who went a long way past what I was doing.
- It's fine to say 'harm reduction' but getting there takes a fair old time, you don't know what the medium/long term effects are and there's no guarantee there'll be a reasonable safe level of use that's identifiable. It certainly felt bad for you anyway.
- I think it pretty much disproves that 'banning stuff will have no effect' line. Of course people are still doing it but use dropped off a cliff after the ban, I think that's pretty clear.
Not saying that makes a conclusive 'ban it' point but just some thoughts.
girasol
Addicted to handstands!
I think it'd be great if people never started smoking in the first place, I wish I never had when I was a teenager - but I don't think this is the way to do it. The sale of tobacco/vapes for under 18s is already banned. Why not enforce that appropriately? Instead of introducing a law that will also be broken AND will drive tobacco sales underground and result in teenagers buying terrible quality tobacco.
Tobacco is already pretty fucking expensive, that's a good deterrent. Also, alcohol kills shit loads of people every year - is that going to be banned as well? etc etc (I'm sure it's been covered). Lots of people who smoke do it socially and don't become full-time smokers, in particular if they don't start smoking as teenagers.
Tobacco is already pretty fucking expensive, that's a good deterrent. Also, alcohol kills shit loads of people every year - is that going to be banned as well? etc etc (I'm sure it's been covered). Lots of people who smoke do it socially and don't become full-time smokers, in particular if they don't start smoking as teenagers.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
I think the majority of people I knew who used it had what we'd probably call problematic use. It was incredibly compulsive and easy to get. It also got very cheap towards the end.
The only form of harm reduction I could think to reduce use might be very high prices.
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