That does seem to be the rather sad basis for this.
Isn't the tax there to pay for the long term healthcare costs associated with smoking?
If that's the case, it doesn't even make sense economically. Long term at least, which probably tells you all you need to know about the people voting for it.
Grab the money now and **** the future generations.
As a nurse pretty much any non motoring criminal offense gets you struck off. Shoplifting would for example. So if smoking was illegal i think it highly likely it would be a striking off offense
So if smoking was illegal i think it highly likely it would be a striking off offense
Underage smoking isn't illegal though, is it? It's supplying the cigarettes that's illegal.
I'd imagine the control would be on the seller's side (tobacco only sold through specific tobacco shops, from what I understand) so if a 21 year old managed to get hold of some cigarettes but the cut off was 22 I'd imagine they wouldn't be committing any offence but the person who supplied them would be.
But yeah, if people were going to be criminalised for smoking I'd be against any sort of ban. But I don't believe that's what we're talking about here.
That does seem to be the rather sad basis for this.
Its a weird place for the non-prohibitionists to inhabit though. How on the one hand can you support a ban on smoking tobacco and on the other, insist that other drugs should be de-criminalised? I can see it from a harm-reduction perspective - kind of; I accept that tobacco is the most harmful, but other drugs are not harm free. But from a libertarian perspective its somewhat a confused position.
You're either in favour of letting people decide what drugs they want to take, or you're not, surely?
For me its all about harm reduction and evidence based practice. Tobacco kills thousands a yrar. MDMA virtually no one. Tobbacco and heroin are addictive . Other drugs are not
Thus to me each drug need a different approach
How on the one hand can you support a ban on smoking tobacco and on the other, insist that other drugs should be de-criminalised?
It's fine to believe things in principle but it's better to adjust your position based on reality rather than to try to get reality to fit perfectly with your principles. So yes, I'm in favour of decriminalisation of all drugs but since most countries are a long way away from doing this I don't see anything wrong with introducing this type of graduated ban on tobacco products and see what happens.
And I don't think there's anything to suggest the users of tobacco products would have been criminalised, anyway.
For me its all about harm reduction and evidence based practice
So in @tjagain world, alcohol is going to be banned then? because by any measure (harm to self, harm to others) its by far and away the most harmful.
So in @tjagain world, alcohol is going to be banned then?
Again, why do you want everyone to pick a single position and stick to it religiously with no exceptions?
Tobacco is not alcohol, which is not weed, which is not heroin, which is not valium...
Tobacco is a shit drug which causes a great deal of harm and is very addictive. Alcohol is a better drug which causes harm and isn't as addictive as tobacco.
Why do you insist they be treated the same?
Personally I think the reason is the graduated tobacco ban is very difficult to argue against so people insist on arguing about banning other drugs instead and pretending it's the same thing.
I don’t see anything wrong with introducing this type of graduated ban on tobacco products and see what happens.
no me neither, that seems a reasonable approach, I think most of these discussion come down to "where is the line drawn" I don't see that legalising other drugs is going to make the 'problems' [of those drugs] go away - despite being legal there's a roaring trade in both cigarettes and alcohol, both real and counterfeit, for example so presumably that would carry on for other drugs, it's certainly the experience of countries that have part-decriminalised them. I think the only drug that seems its "without harm" is magic mushrooms
Once you decide that some drugs - Heroin, crack, methamphetamine (the most harmful - for both users and society) should be illegal; you create a market for it.
Again, why do you want everyone to pick a single position and stick to it religiously with no exceptions?
I'm not, its a discussion to see what the positions are. Alcohol is by far and away the most harmful drug that humans have come up with, its deadly. and yet...
It shows that none of these positions can be the one way forward. If you look at harm reduction as a basis Alcohol has to go, but of course you'd never be able to do that, same with fags, they're pretty deadly but even if you try to reduce them (good) you automatically create a black market (bad)
Why do you insist they be treated the same?
That's not my position, that's @tjagain. He's the one that wants them legalised on a harm basis, not me.
Alcohol is by far and away the most harmful drug that humans have come up with, its deadly
By what measurement?
In the western world tobacco kills 10 times as many people as alcohol each year and worldwide it's still twice as many.
you automatically create a black market (bad)
If they were banned entirely overnight, sure.
With the NZ approach, we don't know that.
By what measurement?
As a component of other harm.
On individuals Alcohol is a component cause of easily more than hundreds of diseases, injuries and other health problems, of which tens of which are wholly attributable to booze. Alcohol is carcinogenic and toxic and kills at younger ages and in some different ways to tobacco, including through violence associated with being drunk.
At a societal level; alcohol is responsible for any number of problems, including the need to fund healthcare and social services. In England the costs to the NHS and wider society are approximately £2.5 and £11 billion respectively for tobacco, compared to £3.5 and £21 billion for alcohol.
With the NZ approach, we don’t know that.
But the position of the anti-prohibitionists is that anything like this which is attractive will find its market, and if young kids can't get hold of it legally, they'll look at other avenues. Slowly banning fags may very well create a slowly increasing black market. As you say, we just don't know.
If they were banned entirely overnight, sure.
With the NZ approach, we don’t know that.
The "black market" in the case of New Zealand would presumably have been perfectly legal cigarettes illegally supplied to underage smokers.
Since these cigarettes would have had tax applied to them, and the new New Zealand government now says that they are scrapping the scheme because they want tax cuts, you have to assume that they thought the scheme would have led to a drop in tobacco consumption.
In other words they are worried that it would be successful.
On the issue of tobacco v alcohol, I would consider moderate alcohol consumption incomparably safer to health than moderate smoking.
There is no safe level of smoking.
Hmmm, I’m all for doing everything that we can to reduce smoking.
However the lesson from history and from the current war on drugs is that prohibition never works, it just encourages crime.
I can’t help thinking that there are better ways to approach this
OK, go on tell us what those are. Your objectives are to stop young people starting smoking and incurring the resulting health risks. What are your better ways?
It’s weird how this conversation concerning the effectiveness of banning tabacco is rambling on when the New Zealand government appear to have made clear that this is about tax cuts.
In other words they need young people to become addicted to nicotine to provide them with a new source of revenue.
No one interested in that angle?
Ernie, its interesting because whilst some of mefty's point is nonsense, he is correct that its no longer "cool" at 14-21 to smoke - vaping has replaced that as a way to mark yourself out as being "radical" (by conforming!) like smoking use to; so as a future source of revenue they are not going to get that much from the post 2008 births anyway. BUT wrapped up in the same legislation where a number of initiatives to reduce smoking in the already addicted: restriction on which shops could sell it, reduction in strength etc. Those created a negative sentiment from the everyday peddlers of these drugs. Whilst I am sure they had no intention to promote canabis use, did they also get a backlash from those who like to enjoy their weed mixed with tobacco?
So I 100% support the policy of a rolling age limit increase (whilst also supporting decriminalisation of a number of drugs), but if you've spent the last 100 years encouraging businesses to exploit your population and harvest taxes on your behalf - don't be surprised if they take the hump if you decide to "switch off" their revenue stream. Given that smoking is no longer "cool" with the very young, it might all be a bit of a waste of time - like banning a tamigochi, or fidgit spinner.
OK, go on tell us what those are. Your objectives are to stop young people starting smoking and incurring the resulting health risks. What are your better ways?
Please read the thread, where I've already answered this.
other potential measures (taxation, properly funded smoking cessation, medicalisation etc)?
I would consider moderate alcohol consumption incomparably safer to health than moderate smoking.
Define "moderate", and honestly, both are pretty awful long-term. Both of these are going to do irreparable damage to you. Like I said, I think the only one that doesn't do some sort of harm is magic mushrooms.
If we use a harm reduction basis for our drugs policy, which is a perfectly reasonable position to take; it gets blown out of the water on day one, because you have either ban alcohol, or ignore it...So there has to be a position at which you say "These drugs, although they do harm, it's at a level we're prepared to accept" and if that includes booze, well then it includes fags as well, becasue at just a basic economic level, the harms from fags are less expensive than the harm from booze. Which is a pretty nasty position to be in
Current drugs policy is clearly all over the shop, but any policy you choose to replace it with will be as well.
Define “moderate”
There's various definitions, both with daily and weekly limits. It boils down to a couple of drinks a day and not every day.
Again, tobacco and alcohol are not the same drugs.
You could quite easily go the rest of your life drinking 'moderately'. Sure, it might have a negative impact long term but the effects are negligible. Or at least, no one has proven that the effects aren't negligible yet.
And of course, there's the addiction factor. Alcohol is simply not as addictive as nicotine. You are generally either a smoker or you aren't. The only question is how much nicotine you need to avoid going through withdrawal.
Becoming addicted to alcohol is, of course, possible but the number of people who consume alcohol but aren't addicted is huge compared to the number of addicts.
With nicotine, the number of people who consume nicotine but aren't addicted is tiny.
Once again, it's almost like we are talking about two completely different drugs that are so dissimilar it's almost impossible to make any kind of meaningful comparison between them.
Define “moderate”
Ten cigarettes one pint of beer?
I know which one will do more damage to my health.
To claim that alcohol is much more harmful than smoking is totally misleading.
Excessive water intake will kill you much quicker than heavy smoking, are we to conclude that water is therefore much more dangerous than tobacco?
You could quite easily go the rest of your life drinking ‘moderately’. Sure, it might have a negative impact long term but the effects are negligible. Or at least, no one has proven that the effects aren’t negligible yet.
Haven't they?
As a nurse pretty much any non motoring criminal offense gets you struck off. Shoplifting would for example. So if smoking was illegal i think it highly likely it would be a striking off offense
That's not quite true*. The NMC has a list of offence that they consider and those that they don't, as well as considering the sentence/disposal imposed by the courts. https://www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/understanding-fitness-to-practise/fitness-to-practise-allegations/criminal-convictions-and-cautions/ you would not be struck off for not paying your TV license, and realistically if its not related to your nursing duties then a single shoplifting with well presented mitigation shouldn't either. I don't think anyone has proposed making smoking illegal (or as far as I know even making possession of tobacco under the age limit illegal) so its a bit of a hypothetical argument.
* I think people have probably been struck off for stuff like shoplifting - but perhaps not because of the offence, but failing to declare the offence, or the circumstances surrounding the offence.
I know which one will do more damage to my health.
Over the long-term, if you're doing those daily, I would say it'd be evens to see which one killed you first.
To claim that alcohol is much more harmful than smoking is totally misleading.
At a societal level it really isn't. The economic cost, the harms to self and others, alcohol is right at the top along with heroin, meth and crack, in a way that fags aren't. There are any number to studies to show this.
At a societal level it really isn’t.
With the exception of the number of people killed by each product.
That and the fact that it's not really possible to be a 'moderate' smoker. You are an addict almost regardless of the number of cigarettes you smoke per day. If you stop you are going to go through withdrawal.
You can be a moderate drinker.
Once again, not the same drugs. Not really comparable in any meaningful way.
I agree that its hard to justify aalcohol being freely a ailable while mdma is not given the addiction and harms each engender
Yes, if you're "starting from now" alcohol is just a non-starter, but here we are. And I totally agree that there are prohibited drugs that by comparison to fags and booze shouldn't be, you're absolutely right.
But any drugs policy has to be a blend of harm to society and self vs individual freedoms, and I think that as a society given how we can't even managed a healthy food environment introducing more drugs that although less harmful still have the capacity to harm, is a non-starter.
Over the long-term, if you’re doing those daily
No, not imo. If I was to smoke 10 cigarettes this evening the negative effect on my health would be greater than if I was to drink a pint of beer.
Please read the thread, where I’ve already answered this.
If you did it was lost amongst the bickering about heroin, alcohol and other distractions! but:
other potential measures (taxation, properly funded smoking cessation, medicalisation etc)?
Taxation doesn't seem to be a massive success. It might be a slight disincentive, but its really a penalty on the already addicted. Its also hugely non-progressive. If you are poor and smoke (perhaps as some sort of belief it makes your crap life seem better) then it has a far harsher penalty on your than if you are affluent. In terms of discouraging initial adoption, which the rolling age increase is intended to do, does price (tax) have that big an impact? or infact does it being an expensive / luxury product add a degree of allure?
Smoking cessation and medicalisation are options for those already on the drug not as ways to stop people starting. You'll not get me objecting to funding smoking cessation, but there's no reason that a rolling age increase prevents that. Medicalisation with nicotine is already essentially available - nobody is talking about removing access to nicotine to people who are existing users.
So I put the question back to you, how else can you stop the adoption of smoking amongst people born in 2008 or later. Have you actually understood the plan they had (which we look set to follow)? Or have you just decided that its basically prohibition so bound to fail?
If I was to smoke 10 cigarettes this evening the negative effect on my health would be greater than if I was to drink a pint of beer.
Yes, probably, but smoking isn't really done like that is it?
In this society, where self-moderation is not something that is in any way compatible with late stage capitalism, introducing any more drugs into it would IMO be a disaster. Like I said, we can't even produce a healthy food environment, and the disease cost associated with that is just an absolute shit-show, and to introduce other drugs? No thank you.
So now we're bringing food into the discussion?
Can we just accept that humans have a special relationship with stuff that gets us high* and accept that it has to be treated differently to everything else?
*for the purposes of this discussion I'm not counting nicotine as something that gets you high. Consuming nicotine is more about avoiding withdrawal symptoms rather than the high associated with it.
&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=c3f5bf1537790a8445bcefc5eff351081e6ddddf9c334428da9b3f180678c542&ipo=images" rel="nofollow" >If you say that we've (as a society) chosen the wrong drugs to make legal. I would totally agree with you.
But here we are; busy making our food addictive. So given that we can't go back in history and make better informed decisions, we are where we are. Introducing more into our society, the way that its shaped currently. I don't think you could justify it. When hypertension and diabetes is killing people at the rate it does. At what point do you say? "You people can't be trusted with this shit, so you don't get to play with it"
Yes, probably, but smoking isn’t really done like that is it?
'Social smoking' is probably much more common than you might imagine. I certainly would be doing it if wasn't for the negative effect on my health.
Having a drink with mates in a pub, going through the ritual of rolling up a fag, leaving it on the table until you decide it's time to go outside and smoke it, lighting up inhaling deeply and getting that first hit.....bliss.
Having a packet of cheese and onion crisps instead doesn't quite do it for me.
Anyway the point remains, whether you smoke 3 or 35 cigarettes a day it is harmful to your health. Low levels of alcohol almost always have no significantly negative effect on health.
Can we just accept that humans have a special relationship with stuff that gets us high* and accept that it has to be treated differently to everything else?
Fair enough, I agree we do want to get out of our heads, but we also live with folks who can't moderate that behaviour.
All the drug policy is shaped to help those people. The folks that smoke @ernielynch 10 fags isn't a drain, and neither is the one that just drinks a pint, but the ones that smoke 40 a day or drink 10 pints, and those will be the same folks who won't be able to cope with an environment that has other ways of harming themselves (lower effects thankfully) and society more widely, and given that any time "big corporations" get in on the act of making things very very addictive will absolutely go way beyond anything we can cope with (see, every tobacco firm ever, but also Purdue for example) The damaging effects to us may be incalculable
Ironically the previous labour govt decided that prohibition on smoking was the way forth, but they also put forwards a referendum on legalising weed, so they could accept that the war on drugs failed for weed, but they felt they could win the war on drugs on tobacco. Ya can't have it both ways. New govt is not making it easier to get ciggies, but they just canned a project that would have failed anyway (the last govt was great at talking a big story, then failing to deliver).
The last govt decided to borrow $90B and then sprayed the $$ everywhere with bugger all to show for it, so the new govt has to rein in govt spending and attempt to deal with the debt mountain they inherited.
The voters decided that the previous govt was pretty pants and from the labour victory with 52% of the vote in 2020, they crashed on the current election to 26%. This is the biggest crash in voting in the 30 year history of MMP in NZ, so shows how unpopular the previous govt was.
Unfortunately many younger New Zealanders have decided to move overseas with ~2% of the population leaving in the last year. They are many young people 20-30, skilled and qualified and maybe they will go back, but maybe they won't. Not good for NZ in the long term.
Fair enough, I agree we do want to get out of our heads, but we also live with folks who can’t moderate that behaviour.
Most people can partake of psychoactive substances and not get addicted. Often when people talk about drug addiction (outside of genuinely addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine) what they are really talking about is a mental health condition where one of the symptoms is abuse of substances. Alcohol comes under this category.
Cigarettes will make anyone addicted to them, regardless of the state of their mental health.
Anyway the point remains, whether you smoke 3 or 35 cigarettes a day it is harmful to your health. Low levels of alcohol almost always have no significantly negative effect on health.
In the short term, yes, that's true Over a longer term, no its not.
But drugs policies aren't there to deal with you @ernielynch, you're not the problem, the folks that can't moderate their behaviour are the problem, they're the ones that add to the costs and have life changing effects on themselves and wider society through their addictions. Those folks are for whom our drug policies are designed.
In the short term, yes, that’s true Over a longer term, no its not.
Yeah, but where are the studies that prove drinking within recommended levels has serious long term effects to anything like the same extent even a few cigarettes per day will?
> https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/5/315 <
Yeah, but where are the studies that prove drinking within recommended levels has serious long term effects to anything like the same extent even a few cigarettes per day will?
Scroll down for the long term disease risks
Scroll down for the long term disease risks
I did. The first thing it said was:
Drinking large amounts of alcohol for many years will take its toll on many of the body's organs and may cause organ damage.
I asked for medical studies showing the effects of long term moderate drinking, not heavy drinking.
you @ernielynch, you’re not the problem
That's great to hear. For the record I started smoking regularly at the age of 13, for decades I smoked approximately 35 fags a day. I gave up years ago and then after a long break I started social smoking in the evening only, I relished the fact that I could control my smoking to 2-4 fags in the evening, I actually did that for several years, it was like I was on a mission to prove that I could be in control.
I eventually stopped because it became very obvious that it was having a negative impact on my health.
I also stopped drinking alcohol some time back. I have never been an excessive drinker but I was brought up to drink alcohol from a young age.
I never miss alcohol but I will always miss smoking for the rest of my life. If it wasn't so dangerous I would definitely have a fag later this evening. But I wouldn't drink alcohol. Alcohol free Guinness is nice though, I would have one of those.
I asked for medical studies showing the effects of long term moderate drinking, not heavy drinking.
They're the same. There's no safe quantity of alcohol. You'll be at risk if you drink the recommended 14 units of alcohol over an extended period of time.
but I will always miss smoking for the rest of my life
I gave up over 20 years ago, and still dream about post-dinner ciggies, one of the finest small luxuries there is.
