Tobacco 21

Nah, raising the tobacco age wouldn't do anything. Just raise the prices of cigarettes, make them more expensive and costly to buy one pack.

Cigs are a useless dump of money. No benefits and a shitload of downsides.

Sadly it's just another useless addiction that does nothing but thin out the masses and make the rich even richer! The only perk I've ever heard people speak of is it helps them relax (which I think isn't anything to do with the actual cig, just a mental comfort anyways) but I mean just go smoke a J! It's probably better for your body than all the shit in a cig anyways!

Rant aside, I think they should tax the living fuck out of cigs so they're less able to be afforded. I saw in Australia they have some grotesque pictures of conditions you can develop from cigs on every box as well so lets do that too!

Get cigs off the street and get those big tobacco companies into bankruptcy!

Arsenic said:

Cigs are a useless dump of money. No benefits and a ****load of downsides.

let's drop the price and all those idiots will smoke themselves to death! Problem solved!!

Sadly it's just another useless addiction that does nothing but thin out the masses and make the rich even richer! The only perk I've ever heard people speak of is it helps them relax (which I think isn't anything to do with the actual cig, just a mental comfort anyways) but I mean just go smoke a J! It's probably better for your body than all the **** in a cig anyways!

Rant aside, I think they should tax the living **** out of cigs so they're less able to be afforded. I saw in Australia they have some grotesque pictures of conditions you can develop from cigs on every box as well so lets do that too!

Get cigs off the street and get those big tobacco companies into bankruptcy!

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I happen to be one of those idiots. And I have my reasons for why I smoke, and honestly, it doesn't make me an idiot, I just simply don't care. I have a stressful job and a stressful life. I see people die every day, and I'm the one taking them to the morgue after their family is done crying over them. Shootings, fights. I restrain mental health patients daily, see nurses getting assaulted for just trying to help people. Forgive me if I need a break from the world for five minutes to smoke. It doesn't hurt anyone else, I smoke alone away from others. It helps with stimming and my depression. As for its downsides, I understand them, and since I figure my life won't be worth living in a few years anyways, cancer doesn't scare me.

Trust me, people that smoke know the downsides. They aren't ignorant, and I can't speak for all, but not all of them are idiots. So please, knock it off with the insults.

Phantom said:

Trust me, people that smoke know the downsides. They aren't ignorant, and I can't speak for all, but not all of them are idiots. So please, knock it off with the insults.

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Like Esper says though, the people who eventually become sick from too much smoking, become a burden on the healthcare system. That's a big reason for why we put so much tax money on tobacco in Sweden, I think. Can you still have a health insurance if you are a smoker? Is it much more expensive than if you weren't one?

I think the 21 rule sounds good on paper, but like some here say, it might make it worse if it's illegal rather than if it's legal but super taxed and having these interestingly nauseating pics on them.

adventure said:

Like Esper says though, the people who eventually become sick from too much smoking, become a burden on the healthcare system. That's a big reason for why we put so much tax money on tobacco in Sweden, I think. Can you still have a health insurance if you are a smoker? Is it much more expensive than if you weren't one?

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I pay more for health insurance because I smoke, yes. I pay, not taxpayers. My premium is about 10 percent more than if I didn't smoke. It's only that low because I work FOR the place that is my insurer, otherwise it would be a lot more.

I do go occasions with quitting. I'll quit for a few months, then something will happen and I will start up again. I could quit if I actually wanted to.

Ivysaur said:

The solution is taxing the hell out of tobacco, not banning it (there are studies that for each extra dollar of taxes, consumption of cigarrettes falls markedly). Banning will only make it become just another mafia-traded illegal drug.

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I agree here. Taxing them will help but it isn't the only solution.

Hands said:

If you're old enough to die for your country you're old enough to decide if you want to smoke or not.

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No. This isn't about denying people the right to smoke when they should be able to. This is about public health. It's about keeping anyone who can smoke out of reach from kids who want to smoke but are too young. It's also especially important to remember that in order to curb smoking overall, we need to make sure people really are mature enough to make that decision.

Being able to join the armed forces need not entitle you to smoke. That argument has been around for ages, and it's as fallacious as it was then.

Melody said:

Being able to join the armed forces need not entitle you to smoke. That argument has been around for ages, and it's as fallacious as it was then.

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Except it's not... either way you're undertaking an action that's liable to see you dead in the next five years.

gimmepie said:

Except it's not... either way you're undertaking an action that's liable to see you dead in the next five years.

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Regardless, the argument is completely irrelevant and fallacious

I'm mostly agreeing with the "public health" side of this argument. Secondhand smoke is really dangerous to others, including children and pets. My grandparents have smoked my entire life and I know it's affected my already-affected breathing even further.

Melody said:

Being able to join the armed forces need not entitle you to smoke. That argument has been around for ages, and it's as fallacious as it was then.

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we need to make sure people really are mature enough to make that decision.

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So you think it takes more maturity to decide whether you should smoke than whether you should sign up to go to war?

You can serve without parental consent at 18 in America (17 with)
You can drive (depending on state) at 16
You can marry (depending on state) at 16
You can own many different firearms at 18

You see where I am going with this? There's nothing fallacious about thinking that if the Govt deems you old enough to ship you off to fight for their interests and possibly die in doing so, or sees you as mentally old enough to decide you want to marry another person, or trusts you on the roads with other road users in one of the deadliest tools invented by man or trusts you to own deadly weapons then they have no place telling you that you aren't mentally old enough to decide if you want to smoke or not.

The new French Government is increasing the price of cigarrette boxes to 10? in order to cut smoking. Glad to know that someone pays attention to my posts.

Ivysaur said:

The new French Government is increasing the price of cigarrette boxes to 10? in order to cut smoking. Glad to know that someone pays attention to my posts.

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They're more than that here in most shops as is. Pack of 20 Benson and Hedges is like ?10.50 now

I would just like to quit smoking completely. :(

The legal age didn't matter for me, I smoked my first cigarette that me and my friend found in a gutter when we were 14.

The problem is that until people see its potential health problems first hand, they don't want to believe they exist. I'm aware of the problems, but I can't seem to care enough about myself to quit, and I have nobody to quit for. I've tried the whole 'Higher Power' thing, and I love Her, but that's just not cutting it. :/

For years, NZ has had bipartisan support towards aggressively pushing to have smokers comprise less than 5% of the country's population by 2025, so this is in the news pretty often. What bothers me isn't the legislation itself, though I wish it would focus more on the monetary aspect rather than legislating where and when someone can smoke - but the latter is with interest in reducing the strain on our medical system due to secondhand smoke, so I understand.

What bothers me is how the inevitable gargantuan pushback from the tobacco industry forces the government to throw endless amounts of money into legal battles which the companies know is a lost cause/a fruitless effort, but serve as a targeted warning towards smaller/poorer countries attempting to do similar processes: fuck with us and we'll go for your coffers, knowing we will lose anyway. It also serves as free advertising on their end - they can't do it directly so any chance to pull out the hidden cabinet is welcome. Every angle of the argument is ugly, really.

being someone who is between the 18-20 age group and also uses e-cigs/vape pens, this type of movement kind of scares me a little. i'm not a proponent of teen smoking. i think cigarettes are very unhealthy. however, i use nicotine (since vape pens don't have tobacco in them) as a form of self medication for my bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. i also don't see how doing this would stop teen smoking. when you turn 18, you're automatically considered a legal adult anyway. and there's nothing stopping teens who have older friends from bumming cigarettes off them. same thing goes for alcohol and underage drinking. as someone who managed to get past 21 and over laws myself, doing this won't fix much unfortunately.