Bold move limiting gambling ads to just three per hour. Next up light-touch bans on cigarettes where you can only smoke during ad breaks.
As a consequence there is a quiet crisis in young people, 18-30, deeply in debt, working second and third jobs so that they have a bit more money to gamble.
Do you have a source for this?
Set the purchase birth year to the current age 18. So DOB 2008 if done today, if you're born 2009 or later you can't buy smokes at all ever.
Within two generations we'd largely eliminate smoking. Within three cigarettes would be amongst impossible to get. Great public health initiative.
Maybe split the difference and raise the purchasing age for cigarettes 6 months every year. Takes longer to get to nobody can smoke, but you'll get there eventually.
(I did not vet anything, I just googled your words because I wanted to know more)
Also, they tried taxing cigarettes to the moon in Australia and created a multi billion dollar black market for them instead.
People generally start smoking by their teens or not at all. Making it hard for kids to get exposed to nicotine will stop a lot of addiction.
Also way fewer parents have cigarettes in the house so it’s harder for kids to grab them at home. And there are pretty strong taboos nowadays about giving random kids stuff they’re not supposed to have.
They can, they will be available on the black market along with every other widely used illicit recreational drug.
Banning tobacco won't make the problem disappear, people want their poison, including sensible rational people who accept the risks and use in moderation.
Banning tobacco will push it underground, giving criminals a new revenue stream which can fund more harmful activities.
Not only will the govt lose out on tobacco tax, they may have to ramp up law enforcement expense to crack down on the now illicit tobacco trade and ever more empowered criminals.
Users of the black market products will have no guarantee of quality assurance, products may contain additional harmful additives.
There's an optimal level of tax and regulation to keep distribution out of criminal control, educate the general public, and offer support to the serious victims, all the while collecting tax to fund these activities.
This is precisely what many countries are already doing to varying degrees.
And the same argument can be made for many vices, including gambling and alcohol.