And most research I’ve seen suggests that if people don’t start smoking young, they won’t pick it up.

Finally, it’s easier to make booze illegally in small batches than it is to grow and cure tobacco, so illegal tobacco requires a lot more effort to pull off.

Also, remember in Scotland, the plan was to ban smoking on the public streets, but then the Fossil Fuel lobbies argued against that, as if the ban went through, and people still died of respiratory problems, they would find out where the problems really came from...

Also moves like that make the Legalisation of Weed and the others further away, which is the wrong way.

Precisely right. What works is education not regulation. Which is why we need more education about the AI mental health crisis.

How to smoke

I used to love to smoke. If it weren’t for the whole lung cancer, emphysema, death thing, would you recommend smoking?

(buttondown.com)

I'm not saying drug cartels don't exist. But they don't have the same acceptability, reach and organisation as Tobacco has and has had. It's a uniquely awful beast.

If we compare Tobacco to anything, I think it can only really be Oil.

yeah... i'll predict much more prevalence of even more unsafe products...

the human race is really bad at learning from history.

"those who ignore history doom the rest of us to reliving it..."

Also when the first misuse of drugs act arrived in the 1920s (here in the UK) 50-60% of the heroin and cocaine addicts initially registering in the UK were doctors and pharmacists. So much for "socially respectable".

I had a great many Internet arguments with people about this around that time.

It's phased because Tobacco's in is the curious young, who start early and then can't stop and continue because it's easy to do so.
It's about raising the barrier.

Nobody is out grabbing packs out of the hands of the 30+es who keep trying and failing to quit, or aren't interested in quitting.

The only problem is that you can grow it here so import control doesn’t really work.

You can buy loose tobacco from any corner shop at 10% of official prices. Profits going mostly to bikie gangs who are handling the distribution effeciently.

Government is paralysed and has no idea how to handle it.

They never fucking learn

Outright bans without a general attitude change is a gift to criminals.

I prefer the gradual squeeze approach, making it socially unacceptable, punishing vendors who break the rules, raising duty and treating the addicts. An age lock may work if the other methods have already had a big impact, otherwise it's pointless.

This also goes beyond age discrimination, into generational discrimination. In the USA, framing smoking as an 'adult thing' made it very attractive to teens, *reinforcing* the 'teens get hooked before reaching adulthood' pattern.

Since Gen Alpha is already angry that older cohorts used up so much of the fun and easy possibilities, this will reinforce 'you're hogging all the good stuff' with 'you're turning us into a disempowered permanent underclass'.

And for tobacco?!?