It's an absolutely repulsive and disgusting habit that wreaks havoc on its users inside and out BUT if they wanna gamble with their health and hygiene then go for it, it's their right to. It crosses the line once they start smoking in public spaces forcing non smokers to inhale their secondhand smoke.
If they actually tried not smoking in public places and didn't throw their butts on the ground I'd agree with you. But the vast majority don't. I say that as an ex smoker.
In places with universal health care you could make the argument that those who chose to smoke place an extra burden on the health care system which in turn hurts non-smokers (albeit only in their wallets)
Yes but many other things like diet, other drugs, lifestyle choices, extreme sports are also like this. Hard to draw the line. But I agree, annoying af when someone smokes right next to you
I would like to introduce you to a time in American history called Prohibition and another called Yhe War on Drugs. Tell me how well banning things works.
Yeah. And Hamburgers. And Alcohol. And sugar. And skateboards. And weed. And fireworks. And everything else you don't like. Don't worry. I'm sure they won't get around to banning anything you like down the line.
Someone giving an opinion towards something that doesn't please them is the base issue we have with abortion, and the reasons are irrelevant. Tobacco exists, like the abortion procedures, and serves a purpose, for better or worse. The world is big enough for tobacco users and non users, but "banned outright"?...this is simply control born of intolerance. You should never want or try to change another, only yourself.
Cars pollute the environment much more significantly, so should we ban them too? As long as it's done outdoors without affecting others, why should you care? Banning cigarettes/tobacco wouldn't make people quit smoking, it would just move their sales to the black market. Nobody should be making other people's lifestyle choices for them
Banning things has historically never worked, and actually makes problems worse. Prohibition, war on drugs, war on guns all resulted in more getting into peoples hands / higher usage.
I'd say there is one in the US, it's just not gaining a ton of traction, but feel free to disagree. Lots of politicians are vocal about how they'd like to reduce the amount of guns in the US.
Banning them indoors (and some outdoor places), as well as having designated smoking areas works well enough for me. I can't remember the last time I was near anyone who smoked.
To clarify, this is in the UK. I don't fully know the rules abroad.
And they'll still gladly purchase them, and when they can't and their addiction isn't fuelled, a lot of people will consort to getting money for it in other ways that may not be legal.
In the red state I live in, the former governor allocated a minimum cigarette price so that all the taxes generated can prop up our state Medicaid program. Apparently smokers contribute to about 50% of the plans revenue.
So in effect, smokers are paying for my health insurance. I have zero copay zero deductible no pay on medications and medical travel.
Banning never works if what was banned is not the root cause. The problem with banning is not so much that it does not work, it is relying on banning as the only solution without reinforcing it with other positive reinforcements
It's tricky. Banning does usually decrease the use of the thing being banned. Prohibition didn't work well, but it did cause a decrease in the amount that people drank. (Rates of cirrhosis and alcoholism decreased as well). However it also may have driven a spike in crime.
And on the flip side, legalizing weed generally drives increased use.
There are other pros and cons to weigh of course, but banning tobacco would almost certainly decrease overall use.
Isnt it my problem, i smoke i drink i use drugs, i sometines eat unhealty food its my life and i do what i want with, i pay a lot of tax and i pay healt insurance i work my ass off everyday, iam entitled to have some fun too right.
If u dont wanna smoke, dont smoke, but dont try to force it over other people.
Iam cool and i even support smoke free zones but people should have the freedom of choice to smoke if they want
Whats next after an tabacco ban, an alcohol ban, fast food ban....
Because prohibition has worked so flipping well? F that. Dude, banning stuff doesn't work. We've had drug prohibition for 116 years and use more drugs now than ever in our history
Banning things doesnt make them go away, look at guns laws and drug laws. Regardless of the law people will obtain the things they want one way or another if the desire is strong enough. All youre doing by banning things is creating a black market for the things you ban.
It's about freedom and preventing black market sales. People should be free to do as they please if it's not effecting others. It's certainly not polluting in any significance worth banning beyond indoors/near doorways. People shouldn't smoke around others either but none of this is reasons to remove freedoms. Especially when we can't even get rid of far more dangerous legal drugs like oxycontin.
I mean if you're gonna go with that logic you better be consistent with all that apply.
By that logic weed should also be outright banned since it polluted our air and is proven to cause anxiety
I don't smoke cigarettes but I'm not going to be so intellectually dishonest and say I don't understand why people enjoy smoking and even more so being the ass hole that bans something that's widely excepted and used just because I don't like it
Part of the issue with alcohol is that it's really easy to make. Like it's theorized that humanity first "discovered" it on accident, and pretty much every culture has a version. During the prohibition a drink mix was sold with instructions on how to turn it into alcohol so you wouldn't do it "on accident" as a way to get around the bans.
I honestly believe that making cigarettes and nicotine illegal forcing them to become blackmarket and drug trade will kill a lot more people then it will legal. Suddenly they will be mixed with random chemicals by dealers so they can sell more of them from larger quantities (like over illegal drugs) we'll see a huge rise in the price of them and since they are so addictive people will likely sacrifice having food to eat for some cigarettes. Plus all the death through the production, transportation and distribution of them. All drugs no matter how bad are better off legal
Banning eating more than 2000 to 2500 calories per day would save more lives as obesity plummets.
Banning trans fats from all foods
Banning added sugar in any drinks.
Banning processed foods
All would do more for health than banning cigarettes.
Banning all forms of psychedelic drugs.... oh wait.
Banning drinking and driving
I don't smoke, don't like smoking near me, I will leave an establishment where there are smokers. But it's not my place to tell someone else what they can or can't put in their own bodies.
Meh. If you want to do your thing in your own space, and I don't have to breathe it in an enclosed space, I don't care. People should be able to choose what to do with their bodies.
Unfortunately if we banned everything that people enjoyed that aren't good for health and/or the environment, it would eliminate a lot. What about you, anything you like bad for you and/or the environment?
You should read about prohibition lol
Also, it's a plant that grows wild all over. Good luck making wild plants illegal.
Yep like weed, making a drug you can grow illegal just doesn't work.
It's an absolutely repulsive and disgusting habit that wreaks havoc on its users inside and out BUT if they wanna gamble with their health and hygiene then go for it, it's their right to. It crosses the line once they start smoking in public spaces forcing non smokers to inhale their secondhand smoke.
Where I live we have socialized healthcare, so it IS our problem, because it costs taxpayers billions in health spending.
If they actually tried not smoking in public places and didn't throw their butts on the ground I'd agree with you. But the vast majority don't. I say that as an ex smoker.
I see too many people smoking around their kids
When I was a kid my dad fell asleep smoking on the couch and burned a hole in the carpet
Be glad we have fire retardant carpets and furniture now. Back in the day this caused a lot of house fires.
A couch at my father's place used to be full of small holes that got burned by cigarettes
In places with universal health care you could make the argument that those who chose to smoke place an extra burden on the health care system which in turn hurts non-smokers (albeit only in their wallets)
Yes but many other things like diet, other drugs, lifestyle choices, extreme sports are also like this. Hard to draw the line. But I agree, annoying af when someone smokes right next to you
Even if you have insurance and not a publicly funded system, it still drives your rates up
It's none of my business if someone wants to poison themselves.
Time for a ban on Karen's
Obsessed with everyone else's business
In Canada a pack costs 17.50 and the same people smoke still
Who smokes cigarettes?
Poor people
And they smoke no matter what
Who suffers?
Their children, they have less opportunities because it costs 3-5K per year to smoke here
And who profits? The government
They love keeping the little man down and the tobacco companies have no power anymore
If you wanna outright ban it there are going to be some serious immediate heath issues on a scale that hospitals have proven then can't handle.
Let's ban fast food and alcohol too since the bar is number of deaths.
How about we go right to the source and just ban births!
I would like to introduce you to a time in American history called Prohibition and another called Yhe War on Drugs. Tell me how well banning things works.
Yeah. And Hamburgers. And Alcohol. And sugar. And skateboards. And weed. And fireworks. And everything else you don't like. Don't worry. I'm sure they won't get around to banning anything you like down the line.
Someone giving an opinion towards something that doesn't please them is the base issue we have with abortion, and the reasons are irrelevant. Tobacco exists, like the abortion procedures, and serves a purpose, for better or worse. The world is big enough for tobacco users and non users, but "banned outright"?...this is simply control born of intolerance. You should never want or try to change another, only yourself.
Right, because banning alcohol/drugs worked so well, didn't it?
Just like Alcohol.
U forgot what happened the last time alcohol was banned
I didn't forget I was using sarcasm.
And pregnancy.
And vaccines.
yes! let's ban pregnancy!
/s if it wasn't obvious
Cars pollute the environment much more significantly, so should we ban them too? As long as it's done outdoors without affecting others, why should you care? Banning cigarettes/tobacco wouldn't make people quit smoking, it would just move their sales to the black market. Nobody should be making other people's lifestyle choices for them
We should ban banning things
I don't think in the history of ever has "banning" anything actually worked.
How do you reconcile that belief with the examples of prohibition and the war on drugs?
What about alcohol then?
And you should blow me, no exceptions.
No your wrong, if cigarettes didn't exist we'd all be shooting dope into our dicks
You don't currently shoot up dope into your dick?? You're missing out man.
I didn't know that was an option
Banning things has historically never worked, and actually makes problems worse. Prohibition, war on drugs, war on guns all resulted in more getting into peoples hands / higher usage.
If you are in the united states, there is no "war on guns" and there never has been.
If you are outside of the united states*, the war on guns is over, and the guns lost.
(*ymmv in war zones and historically colonized nations)
I'd say there is one in the US, it's just not gaining a ton of traction, but feel free to disagree. Lots of politicians are vocal about how they'd like to reduce the amount of guns in the US.
Banning them indoors (and some outdoor places), as well as having designated smoking areas works well enough for me. I can't remember the last time I was near anyone who smoked.
To clarify, this is in the UK. I don't fully know the rules abroad.
The war on drugs is another great example.
Then keep it legal and raise taxes on it more. Make them pay for more insurance for causing so many heath issue to themselves and others.
And they'll still gladly purchase them, and when they can't and their addiction isn't fuelled, a lot of people will consort to getting money for it in other ways that may not be legal.
In the red state I live in, the former governor allocated a minimum cigarette price so that all the taxes generated can prop up our state Medicaid program. Apparently smokers contribute to about 50% of the plans revenue.
So in effect, smokers are paying for my health insurance. I have zero copay zero deductible no pay on medications and medical travel.
"Smoke 'em if you got 'em Johnny!"
A city cop has their knee on the back of a man in a business suit in a busy downtown plaza.
Bystanders gasp in horror as the man shouts obscenities at the officer.
Charge: possession of a Marlboro.
Banning never works if what was banned is not the root cause. The problem with banning is not so much that it does not work, it is relying on banning as the only solution without reinforcing it with other positive reinforcements
It's tricky. Banning does usually decrease the use of the thing being banned. Prohibition didn't work well, but it did cause a decrease in the amount that people drank. (Rates of cirrhosis and alcoholism decreased as well). However it also may have driven a spike in crime.
And on the flip side, legalizing weed generally drives increased use.
There are other pros and cons to weigh of course, but banning tobacco would almost certainly decrease overall use.
Britain is going to start phasing them out my incremental increases to the age you can purchase them. Should be interesting
Like I couldn't buy cigarettes anywhere at basically any age.
Just go to a random hobo and tell him that you're going to give him a couple ciggies if he buys a pack for you.
Increase in old men dressed as hobos for free cigs....
Because prohibition has such a great track record lol
Exactly.
Ya drug prohibition has been such an overwhelming success every time we tried, so let's add another drug to the list…
Ban career politicians.
i love when people get upset about smoking when alcohol is the real silent friend that nobody criticizes.
Isnt it my problem, i smoke i drink i use drugs, i sometines eat unhealty food its my life and i do what i want with, i pay a lot of tax and i pay healt insurance i work my ass off everyday, iam entitled to have some fun too right.
If u dont wanna smoke, dont smoke, but dont try to force it over other people.
Iam cool and i even support smoke free zones but people should have the freedom of choice to smoke if they want
Whats next after an tabacco ban, an alcohol ban, fast food ban....
Yall really do like having the governement controlling you and don't even see anything wrong with that.
The governement should have very little to no control what someone does to their own body
We either need to ban cigarettes and alcohol, or legalize every other drug.
Because prohibition has worked so flipping well? F that. Dude, banning stuff doesn't work. We've had drug prohibition for 116 years and use more drugs now than ever in our history
I love how prohibition is always forgoten so quickly.
No just execute the peole found smoking them. Same with parking wardens and people dropping litter. Chewing gum also.
I don't smoke, but screw you dude. If someone wants to smoke a plant, go right ahead.
You want to get rid of excess deaths and air pollution, it's not smoking you should be looking at.
Banning things doesnt make them go away, look at guns laws and drug laws. Regardless of the law people will obtain the things they want one way or another if the desire is strong enough. All youre doing by banning things is creating a black market for the things you ban.
Spinach gets pulled off shelves at first sign of listeria ...cigs kill 1,000s a year....crickets. But weed bad. Ridiculous.
It's about freedom and preventing black market sales. People should be free to do as they please if it's not effecting others. It's certainly not polluting in any significance worth banning beyond indoors/near doorways. People shouldn't smoke around others either but none of this is reasons to remove freedoms. Especially when we can't even get rid of far more dangerous legal drugs like oxycontin.
Well yes, because the bans on alcohol and weed have worked so well.
Are you the grandkid of a prohibitionist karen of the 1920's?
Ban deez nuts instead.
My body, my choice.
Not an unpopular opinion, every person from the US will tell you this after spending half their salary on weed
Haven't we learned from the flavored vape bans yet? Banning nicotine products just creates a demand for even more dangerous products.
Yeah prohibition works very well and has no lasting side effects.
Wtf everyone should have the choice to harm their body in whatever way they want. Dont care if its a beer, cigarette or any other drug
I mean if you're gonna go with that logic you better be consistent with all that apply.
By that logic weed should also be outright banned since it polluted our air and is proven to cause anxiety
I don't smoke cigarettes but I'm not going to be so intellectually dishonest and say I don't understand why people enjoy smoking and even more so being the ass hole that bans something that's widely excepted and used just because I don't like it
You should look up statistics on alcohol-related deaths per year. And we're making more alcohol than ever before
Part of the issue with alcohol is that it's really easy to make. Like it's theorized that humanity first "discovered" it on accident, and pretty much every culture has a version. During the prohibition a drink mix was sold with instructions on how to turn it into alcohol so you wouldn't do it "on accident" as a way to get around the bans.
This is just, whataboutism. Alcohol is worth a conversation, for sure, but OP is trying to talk about cigarettes here. Not booze.
I honestly believe that making cigarettes and nicotine illegal forcing them to become blackmarket and drug trade will kill a lot more people then it will legal. Suddenly they will be mixed with random chemicals by dealers so they can sell more of them from larger quantities (like over illegal drugs) we'll see a huge rise in the price of them and since they are so addictive people will likely sacrifice having food to eat for some cigarettes. Plus all the death through the production, transportation and distribution of them. All drugs no matter how bad are better off legal
Your last sentence is an important point. In order for things to be (relatively) safe for consumption, they need to be legal and regulated.
How'd prohibition work out? Or the war on drugs, how's that going? Have you learned nothing?!
There have been many campaigns to make smoking uncool, I wonder how effective that strategy is
If they made cigarettes illegal I'd start smoking.
Banning drugs, and nicotine is a drug, never works. It doesn't work with crack. It didn't work with marijuana. It didn't work with alcohol.
All it does is get rid of the safe options and turn people into criminals.
prohibition called they want their ideas back.
Okay, you've convinced me.
I'm switching to pipes!
Banning eating more than 2000 to 2500 calories per day would save more lives as obesity plummets.
Banning trans fats from all foods
Banning added sugar in any drinks.
Banning processed foods
All would do more for health than banning cigarettes.
Banning all forms of psychedelic drugs.... oh wait.
Banning drinking and driving
I don't smoke, don't like smoking near me, I will leave an establishment where there are smokers. But it's not my place to tell someone else what they can or can't put in their own bodies.
Nahhhhhh.
People are free to do what they want to do
"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits" -Mark Twain
I love that man's style.
Meh. If you want to do your thing in your own space, and I don't have to breathe it in an enclosed space, I don't care. People should be able to choose what to do with their bodies.
Unfortunately if we banned everything that people enjoyed that aren't good for health and/or the environment, it would eliminate a lot. What about you, anything you like bad for you and/or the environment?
Let's ban alcohol and weed while we're at it too. All the vices should be banned. Oh what's that? We've already tried that and it didn't work? Weird
i dislike cigarettes too, but it is a slippery slope once you start banning things. LOL the US can't even ban assault weapons...much less cigarettes.
Ban alcohol, porn, self harm, caffeine, and social media while you're at it.
All of the above are highly addictive stress relief activities that are impossible to police.
And yes. If you are an addict, it is stress relief. Regardless if the person could have avoided being addicted in the first place, they are now.
I disagree, population control is important. We need ex smokers houses.
Would you be okay with government forced food for everyone and forced exercise?