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Comment by gloosx | Hacker News Reader

Do you have data do back it up? From quickly looking at historical records online, I can't see any unfathomable amounts reduction, It's levelled on 20-30% of smokers among kids, and it remains a core challenge for child and adolescent health to the current day (according to 2020 WHO report[0]), plus they started to smoke vapes. So did the bans you sampled really work, or do they just smoke more discreetly and use tricks to buy cigarettes now, making the whole thing more inaccessible and desirable for an average child?

[0] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/05-06-2020-smoking-stil...

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Well, in Australia at least, the number of smokers in the 18-54 age cohort has almost halved in the decade upto 2022 (older smokers still tend to smoke), and more than halved in the 15-24 category.

A "national tobacco strategy" was introduced in 2011/2012 that brought plain packaging, increased taxation and a bunch of other measures.

Official data is here if you're interested: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/insights-australian-smokers-...

There's also Wikipedia and any number of other resources that go into more detail on the history of decline: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_in_Australia

Smoking used to be at much higher levels (50%+) and absolutely everywhere.

Also vaping is probably better than smoking, and don't worry, vaping is next on the ban list. It just takes time to build the case.

I might be wrong but I read the OP’s comment as sarcastic.

You are wrong. Banning smoking worked.

People were already moving away from smoking. The aggressive policies don't deserve all the credit.

There are many articles and documentaries about the impact of smoking adoption due to tobacco companies advertising primarily to kids.

Even if we disregard all the science, the fact that the very companies themselves were targeting kids shows that they knew where their money was coming from.

They mean the root of this comment tree, not your parent comment.

How do you know?

At least in the US, smoking rates dropped substantially by the 1980's, long before many anti-smoking laws were in effect (you could still smoke on planes in the 80's!).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184418/percentage-of-cig...

> In 1970, Congress took their anti-smoking initiative one step further and passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, banning the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio starting on 2 January 1971. In April 1970, President Nixon signed it into law.

Can you guys research this stuff before posting, please?

Can you please look at links before commenting?

Do you think the US government passed a law in a vacuum?

The health issues with smoking became well known by the 60s and the number of people smoking was already dropping by the 70’s.

Please don’t make the amateur mistake of confusing correlation with causation.

Only worked for Australian politicians to pat themselves on the head. They are still getting money from tobacco companies, and they know where it is coming from. Kids in Australia still smoke a lot, exploring other ways of inhaling addictive substance, and no ban can really solve this problem

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