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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

If you banned cigarettes, you'd save many lives, and it's also pretty much sustainable for everybody except the tobacco industry.

I'm not sure which country (NZ?) implemented a law, that everyone born after some year, will not be able to buy cigarettes anymore, so old smokers can still buy them, but kids just turning 18 can't anymore, and never will be able to.

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Yes, NZ is in the process of changing the tobacco retail laws to slowly increment the age at which is it legal to sell a buyer any tobacco product.

The net effect if which is that it will never be legal to sell someone born after ~2006 any tobacco products.

Uncertain if that's true. Prohibition of substances hasn't worked for alcohol or illicit drugs in general. Unlikely to work for tobacco specifically, especially given how easy it is to grow.

Banning cigarettes is not something that is comparable to banning people from traveling and gathering with their friends...

But it saves lives.

In my country (Slovenia), cigarettes kill more people than covid did (in the last 2 years)... we had huge lockdowns, and pointed the fingers at anyone who ignored some of the rules (even though our constitutional court ruled afterwards that most of the lockdowns were unconstitutional), but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.

> but just banning smoking would save more lives than covid took away.

... Assuming people wouldn't buy on the black market, drive down to Croatia, Italy or Austria to replenish their supply, etc.

If you did an age-ban (anyone born after 2003 can't buy them), there'd probably be less younger smokers, because driving across the border takes time and money.

You may know this, but smoking is being banned in New Zealand.

People can travel without cars just fine. Feet, bicycles, public transit, there are tons of options for every scenario.

Not in most places. If you don't live in a big city, it's probably too far to walk or bike, and there is no public transit.

That only goes for countries that consider public transit to be for the poor or extremely dense urban environments where cars couldn't work. It's far from the case worldwide. ( Of course I'm not talking about small villages with a population in the hundreds, but towns in the thousands should have public transit connections).

It goes for most of the US, and the US is too big to just ignore.

We can travel and see friends. It’s harder, but we can.

… that’s us here in New Zealand too.

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