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Comment by beardyw | Hacker News Reader

I fully support this, but sadly there will be kids to whom possession and the smoking of cigarettes will be even more a sign of the utmost coolness. And, as I understand it there will be a time when a 35 year old can buy cigarettes but a 34 year old can't. That's going to be interesting.

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I can't support any legislation that so blatantly discriminates against a whole class of people. People should be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

And yet they aren’t in a large number of ways. Driving, drinking, voting, gun ownership, the ability to consent to various things, the ability to own some things.

This is different. 'You can't vote because you are currently 17' is VERY different than 'You can't vote now or ever because you are 17 right now.' Or 'You can't drive because you are currently 14' is VERY different than 'You can't drive now or ever because you are 14 right now.'

I think lots of countries have changed their pension rules in a way that treats people born after a certain date differently from people born before a certain date, whether or not they express it in those terms. Is that fundamentally any different from the proposed smoking rule?

Theoretically that is based on actuarial data which says people are living longer and can work longer.

If you can find one where people born before a certain year get a pension and people after it will never get one, then it's a like to like comparison.

It's certainly unfair that the older generation end up with worse health because they aren't protected by this law, it's true.

Whether the law is well intentioned or not, it discriminates against those born after a certain year.

If it is truly necessary to ban people born after 2007 from smoking for their entire lives, this law should not create two groups, it should ban all people smoking at any age.

A drug preference ins't a "class of people". It's just a preference (or an addiction).

People born after a certain year is a class of people. Born on one side can smoke, born on the other side can never smoke.

But it's good for them! Sure. They also speak about smoking being a problem for the Maori. Maybe they should start by banning them from smoking.

They aren't banning a drug preference. They are banning it from a specific group of people.

This is fundamentally broken. There has to be a better way of accomplishing it than setting terrible precedent of yanking privileges for life from a group which can't even vote yet.

How many upper-middle class people do you know who smoke cigarettes?

A lot of them surely snoke hookah or vape, and laws rarely make difference between that and smoking.

Do you support cannabis being illegal? This is a pretty similar stance. Personally, I don’t think tobacco should be illegal. Do I partake? No. But I certainly don’t want to jail people for partaking.

You fully support criminal penalties for people who voluntarily consume tobacco? The repeated catastrophic failures of prohibition laws makes it impossible for me to support a move like this.

Here’s the problem with tobacco. It becomes a public expense when the community has to pay the health bill. The same arguments that people who refuse COVID vaccines should be cut off from the community (jobs, commerce, etc) applies to tobacco. Tobacco costs lives and can inflict damage on those not personally using.

"Here’s the problem with tobacco."

Funny how that is the exact same problem as with exercise, diet, driving, and just generally existing in a society.

Smoking is addictive. This makes it more difficult for a person to change their behavior compared to exercising more, eating healthy, and driving better (I'm assuming you meant people who drive poorly?)

Well, everybody is going to die, and therefore have some kind of end-of-life healthcare cost. If it isn't lung cancer from smoking, then it will be heart disease or Alzheimer's or some other form of cancer.

> Here’s the problem with tobacco. It becomes a public expense when the community has to pay the health bill.

Depending on how you measure it, New Zealand may well be taking in more tax than the use of tobacco is costing.

It all gets quite murky quite fast (eg how much tax would the dead person have paid if they had lived longer?).

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m somehow supportive of more restrictions on tobacco and alcohol while keen on more liberal drug policies. It would seem that I need to think this all through.

https://www.health.govt.nz/about-ministry/information-releas...

Slippery slope. Soon it's those who eat hamburgers and french fries are a public expense, therefore ...

Social welfare should be a means to promote personal liberty, not an excuse to take it away.

So does heroin. Decriminalizing its use with treatment works while prohibition never does. You're barking up the wrong tree if you believe outlawing tobacco is a valid solution.

I don't know man, "refusing a vaccine" is not nearly as addictive as tobacco, and isn't advertised anywhere near as much.

It's not a strong argument by the way. I don't own a car yet I still have to "pay" if someone has an accident, I don't do any risky sports but have to "pay" for someone else's skateboarding injuries, I don't eat fast food often but must "pay" for people who went full diabetic on McDonalds or whatever.

>The same arguments that people who refuse COVID vaccines should be cut off from the community (jobs, commerce, etc) applies to tobacco.

When was the last time an ER or ICU was closed to new patients because of lung cancer? The problem with COVID denialism isn't that they impose the usual sort of healthcare costs but that they produce correlated emergencies which strain the hospital beyond its usual operating capacity.

Once the ERs slow down can people who didn’t get the shot have jobs or leave their homes? Many on the Left say no.

I expect that vaccine mandates for employment (a la Biden) will go away eventually, yes. But that won't happen "once the ERs slow down"; rather, it happens when we are confident they won't "speed up" again. One operationalization: I would figure that when we are at 95% vaccinated or so, and when it is no longer a major news item, the mandate will be repealed.

>or leave their homes?

I do support continuing the vaccine mandate for as long as people continue to say ridiculous things like this. Government policy has rarely been so funny.

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