> would have banned cigarette sales next year to anyone born after 2008.
Laws discriminating on age should be repelled everywhere.
Laws discriminating on age should be repelled everywhere.
Would you consider laws saying ‘drivers who predate the requirement for a licence do not require one’ to be discriminatory?
Cigarettes are also a public nuisance, littering the streets and affecting other people with smoke. I can’t open the windows in my house due to chain smoking neighbours. These people have a right to smoke, yet I don’t have a right to breathe clean air in my own home - pretty unfair if you ask me.
I'd disagree.
I think its a good thing that countries have minimum driving ages, minimum drinking ages, minimum age of consent for sex and minimum ages where people can vote and enter into contracts.
sure, fully agree with you but that has nothing to do with the comment I was replying to.
I was responding to this blanket comment.
> Laws discriminating on age should be repelled everywhere.
I disagree with that and gave various examples as to why I consider that to be a bad idea.
I stand by the comment as do many other people based on the upvotes.
I could be born in 2008 or 2007 either way I need to be 16. But I could be born in 2007 and buy smokes.
If anything it might have a backfire effect.
Unless you think that smoking can come into vogue again. Like a cycle.
The numbers are way down on thirty years ago, but I don’t think it’s ever going to go to zero on its own. Especially when the image of smoking is so embedded into parts of popular culture that aren’t likely to become less cool over time.
In 2028, the minimum age to buy cigarettes would be 20.
In 2048, it would be 40.
In 2093 (70 years from now), it would be 85.
So in 70 years, with this law, smokers would basically not exist. It ages people out of smoking. Without the law, the percentage of the population who smoke will remain relatively constant as people who turn 18 start smoking.
... all be criminals.
Prohibiting addictive substances that have a sufficient penetration doesn't eliminate use.
No, that’s exactly how I understood it... which is categorically different from laws like a minimum voting age.
The point is to eliminate cigarettes over a long time period and many generations, so I don’t see how it would backfire. How would there be more smokers in 2093 if the minimum age to buy cigarettes is 85?
If you want to change your argument, that’s fine, but my comment was in response to your original argument.
Don’t pivot. You claimed that I didn’t understand the law. Then you explained the law to me (thanks, by the way) exactly as I understood it.
> Your original argument wasn’t about minimum voting age; you claimed the law would backfire due to the current generation.
> The point is to eliminate cigarettes over a long time period and many generations, so I don’t see how it would backfire. How would there be more smokers in 2093 if the minimum age to buy cigarettes is 85?
Oh I see: if the law is implemented and there is no backfire effect for 65 years then how could there be a backfire effect! This is like arguing in 1920 that Prohibition won’t backfire since people in 2020 won’t remember what alcohol being legal was like.
> If you want to change your argument, that’s fine, but my comment was in response to your original argument.
Oh give me a break! I am not changing my argument! I corrected your “correction” of how I “don’t understand” the law. That was the whole point of my comment.
You can have your “argument victory” for all I care.