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New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 11 months ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives

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[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 7 points 11 months ago

Awful reason, but fuck these laws. Declaring a person forever disqualified from what other people will still be allowed to do is obviously not the same thing as 'you must be 18.' It is infuriating how many people pretend there's no difference.

Ban smoking for everyone or don't ban smoking. Trying to be "clever" about equality under the law is just fresh discrimination.

You want money? Tax the companies, not the customers. Take as much as you like. The alternative is, they don't get to exist.

[-] Landsharkgun@midwest.social 24 points 11 months ago

It makes perfect sense. Cigarettes are cancer death machines in an addictive package. They should be banned. However, we've learned from hard experience that making addictive drugs harder to get just leads to addicts trying even harder to get them. So what's a practical solution? Grandfather in the current addicts and try like hell to keep everyone else away from it.

Equality doesn't come in to this. You do not, in fact, need to protect people's right to addictive cancer sticks.

[-] Frittiert@feddit.de -2 points 11 months ago

As a human being with my own rule over my own body I have the right to do with it as I please.

If I want to consume addictive cancer sticks until I die a slow, painful death, I have the natural freedom to do so, and laws, taxes or fines won't stop me until I'm really locked away.

So I support other peoples freedom to smoke. It is just inhaling smoke from burning plant matter, which may be an irrational choice, but is my choice.