New Zealand passes legislation banning cigarettes for future generations
bbc.com
bbc.com
Yes.
Read the history of Teddy Roosevelt & the Food and Drug Administration. https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-history
If you're familiar with the political culture of Australasia, you'll realise it's an overwhelming "nanny state" culture.
Also, you'll realise that Australia/New Zealand have the highest HDI indicators of any nation globally with mean winter temperatures above 10 degree Celsius.
Why?
Because Australia and New Zealand have a particular cultural value others don't.
They trust technocratic experts to know what's best for people. And implement.
I think reasonable people could object to Australia's internet censorship laws, COVID response, climate activities, etc.
There's a big difference between being an expert & representing the will of the people (aka policy).
Victoria recently had an election wherein the government which was responsible for implementing the lockdown was re-elected. Notably, the state government’s pandemic response was dictated by facts, indeed the chief health officer responsible for informing politicians and implementing policy was a medical practitioner and undeniably an expert in public health matters.
During lockdown and even still, there continue to be protests against the government for their pandemic response, despite the re-election being a clear sign that the will of the people is that they want a government led by (or at least informed by) experts who know what they’re doing.
It’s important to note that there are examples within the Victorian government which show the opposite, though. They have aided logging of old-growth forests, despite saying they won’t allow it to continue. They’ve repeatedly and demonstrably used tax dollars to fund infrastructure projects in electorates where the ruling party has a slim majority (so-called marginal seats).
My point is the Victorian government is far from perfect. It’s been a year since the last lockdown ended, yet the lockdown is still the thing people discuss when it comes to policy. It’s the most invasive action a state government has taken, affecting so many people. It’s what people remember. And it mattered at the polling booth last month, when people voted the government back in. They even saw an increase in the seats they hold, from last election.
Again: technology or science experts deal with facts (or implications of setting policy), not setting policy or the will of the people. As an example: COVID can & did kill people, but where to set the threshold for acceptable mortality is a policy issue that is orthogonal. Not dissimilar to actuarial accounting.
Dictated by culture. To say that everyone else was dictated by things-that-weren't-empirical is nothing short of a naive reading of how laws and social policy are set. There are values.
I would heavily challenge this just because the opposition is utterly incompetent in Victoria. I am as against the lockdowns as they come and think they border on criminal as an action taken by the state against citizens. A disgusting violation of human rights I never thought I would see in Australia in my lifetime and honestly changed permanently how I viewed the moral compasses of my fellow citizens.
However they were done and now I have to vote based on what is going forward and the policies put forward by the liberals in Victoria are, frankly, moronic. Matthew Guy is a buffoon who has no place in leading the party.
So I gritted my teeth and voted Labor. But using that as an endorsement of lockdowns or Victoria covid policy is absurd. I know many who feel the same as me and acted similarly.
I'll never vote Greens again until Lidia Thorpe is gone, shagging the heads of outlaw motorbike gangs is disgraceful behaviour for a member of parliament and completely disqualifies Greens as being a serious party from my point of view (at least while she remains a part of the party). And honestly the longer she remains the more I have to question the judgement that the members of the Green party show at all and makes it more likely that even if she eventually leaves I will never vote for them again.
Reason I do like the look of tbh and will consider them going forward. I can't say I am the most hyper-engaged voter so can't pretend I was fully aware of them or what they stood for. But looking them up now I like a lot of what they say and prefer their general policy stances over Labor.
Hear hear. The Victoran Liberals are a bunch of muppets. I disagree with a lot of actions of the Andrews government, however there was no functional alternative.
By no means do they always get it right.
Remember, much of the fourth estate innately will be crassly negative, for commercial reasons. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_wars. New Zealand for example has some remarkably shrill national news stories about remarkably petty crime.
> There's a big difference between being an expert & representing the will of the people (aka policy).
Yes, and the technocrats don't always get it right, at all.
Democracy works because nobody actually trusts the technocrats. Just like nobody trusts the investment bankers, politicians, real estate developers, police, lawyers.
However, Australasia has had a remarkable run of success via eventually doing what the technocrats tell them to do.
The will of the people supports the technocrats.
If you want to look into temperature vs productivity you should note these populations overwhelmingly have ancestry from colder weather climates
It helps to be small & pragmatic. People (mostly) follow the rules and politicians (mostly) only implement rules with broad support. Police have wide discretion to apply laws and (mostly) do this to benefit public good.
That's not to say we don't have problems, of course, but this particular law is seen as a compromise approach to public health that more-or-less works for everyone.
Australia/New Zealand have a... very, very, very deep-seated feeling of inadequacy, comparing themselves to large Anglophile nations.
There's a genetic urge to "impress Mother England."
For Australia, also a deep seated desire to prove they're not an island of criminals.
For New Zealand... a deep seated desire not to be left off maps.
It's not so much size... there's just a culture of needing to be a better place to live than America. To stop people moving away.
Edit: root cause. Not benefit.
The idea that there is a genetic urge to impress England is bizarre, typically about 50% of people support becoming a republic. Some recent data in [0]
Australia's original status as a penal colony seems to be held onto as trivia externally but is entirely irrelevant in modern discussion (as it should be as it stopped 150 years ago). Thinking that this is something Australians think about suggests that you have a very outside perspective.
I don't know what a culture of needing to be a better place to live than America means. I don't think being a good place to live is a culture, I think it's an objective of a society.
[0] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/support-for-republic...
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Australian_republic_refer...:
"With republican models of one form or another winning a majority in opinion polls prior to the referendum, it was expected that the republican referendum would pass. However, the question put was for a particular model of republic with a head of state appointed by Parliament. This was opposed by some supporters of a republic, who preferred a directly elected head of state. Some of these, such as Phil Cleary, advocated that republic supporters vote "No" in order that a future referendum could be put on the directly elected model. Some commentators—including the president of the Australian Republican Movement, Malcolm Turnbull—identified this split within the republican camp as a key reason for the referendum's failure."
Australia is culturally downstream from America though, so you're right about that.
With 100% devolved individual responsibility, you create market failure.
Nicotine based addition is a pure example of market failure.
To advocate for 100% unhindered individual responsibility, is to advocate against economics.
No rule-free economic market, free of arbitrary constraints, is ever truly rational.
That's because market failure is the default state of nature. The rich take from the poor, the incentive to economically specialize is lost due to theft.
"Personal responsibility" is a gross simplification of the complexities of political and economic science.
I would never simplify the enormous complexities of human computer interaction and UX, fields I know nothing about.
Don't over-simply how difficult a decision regulating nicotine was, and how many decades of academic careers have been sacrificed to come to this consensus.
Cable news slogans can never summarize the efforts of thousands of doctorate wielding technocrats arguing endlessly over the solution to nicotine.
It sounds like you're saying that their freedom to inflict harm on you was more important than your freedom from the harmful health effects of secondhand smoke. Can that be true?
[0]https://businesstech.co.za/news/trending/468724/governments-... [1]https://www.africanews.com/2022/06/17/cigarette-smuggling-th...
Is spanking harmful? It seems close to one of those things that get one into trouble with CPS
What about letting a kid walk home from school on their own? We've seen parents get into trouble for that.
How about letting the kid watch tv or eat too much junk food?
What about teaching them certain ideas, ranging from racism to creationism to socialism to Amish-like beliefs?
If you presume that parents love their children and want to do what's best for them and you inform the population of the collective belief on what is good or bad for them, parents will do their best to make careful trade-offs and are in the most informed and most invested position to make those decisions.
Obviously some people are just terrible parents, but if there's any doubt at all I think we should err on parental sovereignty. Likewise, when considering what is beneficial or harmful to one's self, for the same reason, I think we should err on the side of individual sovereignty.
There are cases where individual or parental authority should be overridden, but to my mind those should be chosen very, very carefully.
Red meat: https://www.healthdata.org/research-article/health-effects-a...
Saturated fats: Nina Teicholz: A short history of saturated fat: the making and CURRENT unmaking of a scientific consensus
I do not understand why so many adult people favor a nanny state; it means to be treated like a child or an idiot and to promote that all people get forcefully treated like this. One should fight this with all means.
Edt: I forgot, that a moderate amount of alcohol each day (i.e. 1 glas of wine) reduces the probability of dementia when one approaches death.
Maybe not every personal decision, but certainly decisions that scale should be handled by actual experts. And yes, actual experts exist who actually know more than you and I, and can make better decisions based on the actual data they have gathered and knowledge they have gained, vs our 5minute Internet search.
And much of what you see as a "personal decision" is actually decided by corporate money. When smoking was completely unregulated, corporations advertised and distributed at will. Smoking rates declined dramatically when advertising and distribution was constrained. Yes, we can make a decision collectively to not make certain kinds of harmful activities readily available and pushed on the people by sophisticated influence campaigns.
From the article: >>"Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be NZ$5 billion (US$3.2 billion) better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking,"
Personally, I'm not thrilled to be paying into the insurance system to support the massive healthcare costs of smokers. If they can be made to pay in their FULL cost, then that is fine.
Otherwise, go make your personal decision - grow and cure some tobacco, and roll your own. Nobody is stopping you. The only thing they are stopping is every corner store selling it.
The tobacco companies agreed to have TV cigarette ads banned because there is no real reason for cigarette preference other than what you started smoking (this is why you see ads that were targeted at youth), and they couldn't not advertise when competing with so many others. They figured that if they were all forced to the same level they would save a lot of money while gaining the benefit of a PR win as well as removal of the mandated 1:1 anti-smoking ads.[1]
You can see the same kind of techniques in play with recycling and fire-retardants in corporations getting together to work to legislate things that people think are pro-public-interest but are really pro-corporate with effects on the public ranging from benign to actively harmful.
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/01/congress-bans-airi...
I would disagree. Multiple studies have shown that moderate alcohol consumption lowers HDL cholesterol and reduces strokes. Also, if you use alcohol in a social setting, then you are getting added benefits from human-to-human social interactions where you are likely to have more conversations, talk more, smile more. Obviously those benefits are not directly connected to alcohol - but they pair well together.
Source(s)? And who paid for the studies?
>Also, if you use alcohol in a social setting, then you are getting added benefits from human-to-human social interactions where you are likely to have more conversations, talk more, smile more. Obviously those benefits are not directly connected to alcohol - but they pair well together.
Come take a walk through my home town on a Friday and Saturday night at chucking-out time, there's plenty of "human-to-human social interactions", and with a lot less of the "smiling" part.
How about we compare two bottles of wine every day with a whole pack of cigarettes. I think that's comparable and both would be terrible for you.
I hate smoking, I had a really hard time quitting 8 years ago and in general I dislike being in a room where people are smoking.
However my grandmother smoked 1 cigarette every day with her morning coffee after breakfast her whole life and it did her no harm whatsoever. I think with most substances moderation is always an important factor.
How many cigarette smokers have the willpower to only smoke one a day?
I get that this was probably a tongue-in-cheek question, but like many other things, drinking follows a power law distribution. there are many more moderate drinkers than heavy ones.
Presumably even if it's illegal to sell tobacco in a store it could still be legal for someone to possess and use tobacco in a private setting.
To top that off, Crime in NZ post covid has been pretty high, and Ram Raids (driving a stolen car through a shop front) are becoming more and more frequent. With cigarettes being so expensive, they are usually a pretty common target. A dairy worker was stabbed to death a few weeks ago by people who were probably intending to steal cigarettes [1]. I can see less and less retailers stocking cigarettes as the risks outweigh the benefits.
Also, the price of groceries in NZ is extortionate [2] and combined with crappy wages (every man and his dog are moving to Aus to double their salary), no one can afford to buy cigarettes.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Sandringham_dairy_stabbin... [2] https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-drink/128200443/how-...
Crime in NZ has been trending downwards for over a decade. There has been an increase in certain types of crime, so if cherry picking, increasing crime can be made a thing. Not true tho.
> . A dairy worker was stabbed to death a few weeks ago by people...
They stole the cash register, not the cigarettes.
> Also, the price of groceries in NZ is extortionate
Yes. Far too high, a very profitable business with many barriers to entry
> combined with crappy wages (every man and his dog are moving to Aus to double their salary),
This man and dog is not leaving! That was true for many decades. Ever since the neoliberal reforms that were introduced in NZ with no planning or intelligence (cratered , but it has started to turn around recently. Wages going up in NZ and Ozzie is entering some sort of very strange twilight zone.
Is this a good law? It depends. Prohibition has a very bad history. This is a different approach, so maybe
Reported crime does not equal actual crime. With police response time in the hours range, and a lack of prosecution, people increasingly don't bother reporting crime at all.
I remember once the emergency operator pretty much said "look it's going to take a couple of hours, do you really want to bother going through with this?". This was in a city about 2km from the police station.
Lived in Auckland in 2014 and again in 2020. The difference was massive. Suddenly every convenience store had plastic barriers protecting the workers from stabbing. Places in the CBD that used to be OK to hang out were suddenly not.
But we're constantly gas-lighted into being told we're all imagining it, as police presence has all but disappeared (lots of "community officers" though).
Some things have gotten worse, some better.
Where I live in Ōtepoti a "one way door" policy on local bars at night has made a huge difference
The data is clear, crime is going down. It is possible to cherry pick the stats and find parts of crime going up, but generally down
Yes.
There is much more reporting now. Many domestic assaults for example.
Albeit an anecdote you have....
That has prevented some people taking up smoking. I think it's fair.
This could very well be biased, as you would never notice people who smoke in private.
> It's nobody's right to pollute our air for the sake of their bad habits, thus regulations
Should driving a gasoline-powered vehicle for leisure be illegal?
As things are going, it will be in time.
First, aren’t smokers paying for it through the high taxation of cigarettes?
Second, wouldn’t this argument also apply to people that drink themselves to death? Or eat themselves to obesity? Or snack on sugar to diabetes? Should we not cover someone’s medical bills if they attempt suicide or drive at high speeds and crash?
I’m saying this as a non-smokers who hates the smell of cigarettes.
The absolutism here doesn't sit with the NZ government.
Politicians generally reflect their societies' attitudes. (In the US in the past, too, before the Citizen's United decision.)
if this was accomplished without prohibitions, how many negative consequences (black markets, organized crime, smuggling, adulterated cigarettes) is NZ willing to tolerate to get to zero? One would think that at some point, you get down to a hard core that will never stop.
I doubt that there will be a black market for tobacco as, by the time you smuggle them in, they still won't be that cheap.
Also, MPI (Ministry for Primary Industries) are even more strict on importing organic materials (or any biological for that matter) than Customs are on drugs.
In saying that, there was a big cigarette bust a couple of years back: https://www.customs.govt.nz/about-us/news/media-releases/cus...
Source: I'm Kiwi
Me too.
Last year I saw the first high quality black market tobacco.
Grown and processed locally.
Edit: It hit me that over the next few decades they are probably going to invent some really nasty things to put in vapes, like they did with cigarettes (that were made to be a lot worse than the "mere" nicotine and smoke inhalation of tobacco smoking), so don't read this in 20 years thinking that people in the past thought whatever they're doing in the future is safer that cigarettes, it could eventually become worse for all we know.
PEG is a common vehicle; some molecular weights are so safe they aren't even regulated (called GRAS -- "generally regarded as safe") and some are quite toxic. If you were making the drug delivery device for some pharmaceutical your delivery system would be closely regulated to make sure both drug and vehicle were safely administered at all times. But these drugs are not regulated and neither are their delivery systems. You can sell whatever the hell you like.
It's similar to tattoo inks -- some are OK some are really bad (like copper or sooty inks), but all the FDA can do is post some web pages rather than require safe inks.
To be clear I find this absolutely horrifying. As someone with chronic respiratory limitations, it is distressing to see people damage themselves this way. It is their right, but you can't make me like it.
My aunt smoked heavily, she always said "I might as well enjoy my life, even if there are fewer years of it" or something like that. The problem with that is that you lose capacity to enjoy life and then you generally die horribly. I know there are exceptions to this - smokers with no severe impairment - but they are relatively few.
I'd be very interested in reading more about this. Do you have any info on hand? Thanks.
> It will be accompanied by a slew of other measures to make smoking less affordable and accessible, including dramatically reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products and forcing them to be sold only through specialty tobacco stores, rather than corner stores and supermarkets.
It's especially awkward given that people's interest in tobacco has already fallen to new lows without it (the article suggests only 8% of the adult population smokes now), so it feels like it could be completely counterproductive, while doing nothing could have caused interest to crash even more.
In 2 generations, I'm not sure why anyone would be making cigarettes...when they could make alcohol easier.
This is in the short term. This is also a slightly different situation, which is beyond the land-access. High taxes are an implicit indication it's still ok and for the wealthy, making it a status symbol. Banning cigarettes in NZ will put pressure on future generations to not start at all. This will not be 100% effective, granted for the next generation. From a cost-benefit perspective, if you are going to bring in black market products, why not get people started on meth? Meth has become quite prevalent in much of africa and partly because it's cheap.
Any data on it having counter effect on the actual consumption and prevelance? I believe are the negatives were secondary but it was effective in primary goals.
Is that true? That is astounding. I am inclined not to believe it
1. A bunch of dumb, young adults.
2. Sent away from home to live together, with only their peers for role models.
3. With few responsibilities, and not enough schoolwork to do to keep themselves busy.
I'm not sure why anyone would expect any outcome that didn't include way too many drugs and way too much partying. The drinking age isn't a problem, that set of inputs would produce the exact same thing, whether it was 18, 19, or 35.
If you actually want to solve college binge drinking, kill the frat life, close down all the dorms for local students, and have them commute to school.
Doubtless there are many people here who personally dislike tobacco and thus think it's just fine that others should be banned from using it, but remember, where one set of laws tries to ban some personal way by which a person uses their body, its guiding principle can be expanded widely to include all sorts of other things you do support being able to do.
As a basic notion, the whole idea of the state acting as if people should be treated like little children in situations where their actions don't cause non-voluntary damage to others is just plain toxic in so many ways.
It's almost like the government is abdicating their own responsibility for regulating markets and protecting public health, and instead sanctioning criminal activity to handle the issue.
In reality, people will be buying illegal, possibly tainted cigarettes that are sold by organized crime groups. Same as any drug.
8% among general population but 19.9% among Maori.
That link of thinking has always gone very well in the past.
Young people are still taking up smoking in large numbers.
It is not uniform: The children of smokers are much more likely to smoke.
I am unsure this is the correct approach, but the health and economic impacts are huge.
Not a Kiwi, but in Germany and Poland there's no prosecution for that
I'm not totally against government regulating vice, I do wish it was done at a local level so that in the spirit of federalization we can see what works and what doesn't in small experiments before other states would voluntarily adopt it. NZ is a small state so not too many people will be impacted.
I do think in an environment where the government is responsible for health outcomes it makes sense to pass mitigating regulation to minimize the costs of health outcomes. Though I do worry we may end up with mandatory exercise and a Canadian style widely encouraged assisted suicide model.
Canadian here; we're pretty much the polar opposite of our southern neighbours and I'd argue both of us are too extreme in our approach to health care, but I don't think you can accurately argue we have a "widely encouraged" model for ending your own life; except maybe compared to some states where life starts at ejaculation. There's a big difference between "access to" and "encouraged to".
Personally I'd love for more research into ME/CFS and Long Covid but I'm pretty sure it'll get pushed into the too hard basket and MAiD will be over used as the easy solution.
We see this type of abuse everywhere it is legalized.
Is that really the case though? The example you've highlighted there is indeed pretty crappy, but it's not evidence of the problem occuring "everywhere it is legalized".
Especially now that we see suicides line up with date specific tax penalties in the EU… (/morbid laugh)
> humanity probably can’t handle this responsibility.
Again, evidence please. Assisted Dying stuff seems to be actually useful for people in very bad situations, where death is "actually better" (for various measures :p).
That other people are not working with it in good faith isn't (by itself) an indication of humanity not being able to handle the responsibility. At least, it doesn't seem that way so far (to me).
Again, wtf?
Why on earth should we "know it will be abused"?
You're acting like you're in "the right", when it doesn't seem to be the case at all.
"Guns" have significant evidence showing abuse. The only example I've (personally) seen of abuse of assisted dying, is this Canada thing.
There are other places with assisted dying laws, and they don't seem to be having the same problem. Maybe they indeed did have a period of crappiness like this (but fixed it), maybe they didn't have it go bad, (etc).
Many old people tend to get cranky and are a pain, plus they have expensive medical problems and gambling habits. It’s extremely common for their children to wish them dead before all semblance of an inheritance and possibly their last hope at a middle class life is gone. Many people will be left with the choice of watching their middle class life disappear or successfully convincing their parents into assisted suicide. Some people even take matters into their own hands. Killing people for your own benefit is murder but if you convince them to suicide ether by persuasion or making their life unlivable then now it’s legal. A lot more people will take that option. You might think people are nicer than that but you’d be wrong. I used to have access to search logs and the percentage of people looking to covertly drown their disabled child is crazy pervasive. And we know how many went threw with it as they later search for funeral arrangements. No one wants to do anything about it because it is seen as an effective solution to a hard problem.
The real issue is that we’re on the cusp of major medical breakthroughs that will vastly improve the lives of many chronically ill people. But instead of spending on research though it’s considered easier to convince people to kill themselves via gaslighting. The fact that disabled people are expensive is the major impetus for researching treatments. Give medical insurers and governments an option to gaslight people into a cheaper ‘treatment’ and they will take it instead and the little money spent on on such research with dry up. Seriously research the history of chronic fatigue.
Can you please name some?
But, I think this is a very intriguing way to construct a prohibition. I'm very aware that trying to regulate away vices in my country (the U.S.) has a spotty history at best. If people want it, they're going to get it, and the alternative black market and its attendant criminality is often worse than the initial problem. But, this is a new wrinkle that (I assume) is also aware of that phenomena and is trying to mitigate it. I'm very, very interested in seeing how this plays out. Obviously, hoping for the best!
Imagine if the approach to getting rid of ICE cars was to say 'nobody born after this date will ever be permitted to drive one, but a person born one day earlier can' - there'd be massive outrage.
>ICE cars
Common narrative is smoking is bad, whereas ICE cars still bridge a gap. ICE cars also aren't an addiction. The comparison is completely off the mark.
Given how difficult it is to find places in the US where you can have a car-free lifestyle, I would say they are, at least in the US.
It was talked about for a day or two when it was announced a while back - I haven't seen a single news article about it recently, nor has anyone talked about it. The opposition political parties haven't made a big deal out of it either that I've noticed.
I don't think anyone really cares. With vaping still being allowed - it's all a bit moot. Anyone born after 2008 is going to be buying a vape.
We don't have the same culture of personal freedoms at any cost as many commenters here. It's gross so get rid of it.
What will people die of when rates of COPD and lung cancer go way down? will we actually be any healthier?
Edit: I know talking about down voting is discouraged, but since I'm being downvoted, why not go further? Alcohol is also objectively bad, why not implement this for alchohol? You would presumably even avoid all the rum running and speak easys and mass organized crime you had with the US doing the first time around if everyone who already enjoyed it got to keep doing it. Would you also find this law but for alcohol reasonable?
Interestingly, so is its inversion: "How thoughtful of the grown ups to prevent harm to other people, even knowing it won't save themselves."
A fairer way might be to say "people that don't already have an established history of smoking can never buy cigarettes going forward", but that immediately creates an unhealthy incentive for everyone to go out and buy their first pack right now.
seems like a pragmatic decision
(and... "sets a horrible precedent" for what?)
I’m not sure of the specifics. Does the law prevent you from growing and curing your own tobacco? There might be something important there - I don’t think folks would make their own cigarettes, but they would make their own alcohol. Feels like there is a difference.
Which makes it seem different, like cigarettes are this highly addictive thing that gets pushed on you because it makes some one else wealthy but otherwise would not have much demand. Which makes comparisons to alcohol feel flat.
That is the point I was trying to make when asking about laws about growth/personal production.
That is the thing, people start at a young age because it is "cool", when they get old, they wish they never started. I never meet a longtime smoker who has never tried to quit. Eventually many just give up trying to quit.
I wonder how enforceable this law is ? I suspect illegal markets are already being planned :)
One thing I suspect is potentially operative is that the long term health of people in general is much better.
Previous generations could happily write off the last 5 or 10 years of their life, and that's just not as true today.
The idea that he's still smoking because "he chooses to do so" and "he likes it" makes me fucking laugh.
This law doesn't even try to wean addicts off cigarettes, accepting that many of them have no hope of giving up or even just moving to vaping. It seems like a fair approach to treat this population of addicts as something to be managed as they age out.
Well we both know that will never happen. But yes, alcohol is harmful but I think smoking is even more so.
If Cost is NZ only concern, they can always charge more for healthcare for people who drink/smoke, price depends upon length of use. But we all know that will never work. Where I work, just about everyone when signing up for healthcare always ticks the "I do not smoke" box to get a cheaper rate. And I doubt there is a sure fire way to verify how much people smoke or imbibe over their lifetime.
I think that's more due to the relative ease of tracking the harmful effects of smoking. I don't think the majority of harm caused by alcohol ends up on death certificates as "alcoholism" and there are much more non-fatal negative outcomes from alcohol.
It's not that difficult to track lung cancer deaths relative to smoking population and find the excess deaths but tracking road fatalities, spouses abused, kids dropped out of school and even the secondary effects like children of alcoholics not receiving help with schoolwork are much harder to track. Second hand smoke is bad but your chain smoking dad can still help you with your math homework.
That would be unpopular in a country that has free healthcare, making 'free' conditional will scare everyone with sliperly slope arguments that it will lead to a US-style system
I disagree. Also alcoholics harm many other people around them
The "smokers are expensive in the healthcare system" argument worked when cigarettes were cheap, but hasn't been true in the last decade.
Alcohol is a wonderful drug in low doses. It is a social lubricant, relieves stress, lowers inhibitions.
It is possible to use alcohol without it being very bad for you.
The younger generations are (correctly) panicking over climate change, but the octegenarians in congress are working tirelessly to make sure that we'll continue burning the planet down for decades after they've kicked the bucket.
How very appalling. Smoking is a human right. Pipes smell wonderful; tobacco generally tastes great and has a positive effect on one’s mood and attention.
Sad day for New Zealanders.
From what I heared, anti-drug laws may be construed is that selling is a different matter and possession and production are accessory. That's why possession of small amounts of cannabis for example is decriminalized while traffiking is still prossecuted where I'm from.
This is arguable because addictive substances will be sold with the intention of creating dependence, not unlike the loot box topic, thus it cannot be argued that they act under good intentions.
And to be real, the wonderful smell acts on your parasympathic nervous system because of appetite, for the smell is associated with roasted food. Add to that the childish reflex of sucking on a nipple. So it is pretty much an eating disorder, in my humble opinion.
Even Freud once said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". There is no scientific basis for the whole "oral fixation", so calling it "childish" is pretty ignorant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_stage
Edit: "Contradicting the Freudian psychosexual development concept of oral-stage fixation, the Duration of Breast-feeding and the Incidence of Smoking (2003) study of 87 participants reported no causal relation between the breast-feeding period and whether or not a child matures into a person who smokes."
The suckling reflex is obvious. But I didn't mean to say grow out of it. Just don't give in.
Industrial manufacturers add tons to improve the taste like honey, licorice, probably stuff to negate the bad smell, like menthol.
I'm convinced this contributes to the primary pathway because it's a primary instinct and this thought allows for a better comparison to alcohol - drink, dehydrate, drink more, repeat ad nauseam.
Most of us just grab an espresso. It's the people that were already smoking that go for the nicotine.
And if it were that harmless, why wouldn't they put it in drinks?
You’re complaining that spraying crops with DDT was banned because “corn is actually tasty”.
It might be more comparable if NZ were banning some more dangerous way of getting drunk that also gave bystanders cancer.