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Comment by walthamstow | Hacker News Reader

The only defense is parenting. And no, I'm not one of those childless people who tells parents to parent better.

Its not the only defence, important and necessary, but also I think educating children about these risks in school is important (my kids' school does okay at this), and government regulation and criminalising such activity is useful too.

"Parenting" is a nebulous concept and at least to me, it also includes pushing for better laws for children. Nobody would think it's reasonable to allow stores to sell cigarettes to children and tell parents "if you don't like it, just don't let your kids smoke".

Nicotine is probably the worst example possible to argue that laws prevent children from using and becoming addicted to something.

There's also heroine and fentanyl, both are regulated by the law.

Heroin is illegal for people of all ages, and those laws don't work either.

Fair enough. Alcohol is regulated for children.

Laws don't have to be enforced perfectly to be effective in most cases.

Why is it the worst example? Sure, the laws don't 100% prevent children from smoking, but certainly they have an effect. I'm not using it as an example of a perfectly effective law, I'm using it to make the point that it wouldn't be reasonable to say "parenting is the only defense against smoking" and scrap the law.

It's a bad example because the last 5+ years in UK/US have seen an epidemic of child vaping and nicotine addiction when it was illegal for them to have it, while the Tobacco companies fight tooth and nail against regulation on fruity flavours and bright colours.

I don't want to scrap laws. In Britain we're 20 years ahead of the US on this (see Gambling Act 2005). Gambling laws are written by the gambling industry so no parent should think that the law will do anything to help their child.

So, in summary, the laws against nicotine are useless, which is why tobacco companies are fighting against introducing new laws?

And the UK is 20 years ahead of the US in regulation, by having introduced a law against gambling that's useless?

Okay...

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