7 ms·

Denmark proposes ban on selling cigarettes to people born after 2010

48 points by caaqil 5y ago

dane-pgp 5y ago
Obviously when 2029 comes, there are still going to be some 18 year olds who started smoking when they were 17 (despite the existing rules trying to stop that), but the new law would mean that those early smokers will never reach an age where their habit becomes legal. I don't know how rationally a 17 year old thinks about the relative difficulty of obtaining cigarettes for just a year until they turn 18, compared to having to obtain them illegally for the rest of their life, but with each passing year, the gap between {current average age of first cigarette} and {average age of smoker} will increase, making young smokers look more and more conspicuous.
- waste_monk 5y ago
  After enough of the older crowd die (which the act of smoking inherently accelerates, so it probably won't take too long, just a few decades) there would not be enough smokers left for most places to profitably stock tobacco products. Dedicated tobacconists would probably collapse, larger stores in high-population areas may still stock tobacco products, but for the most part I would envisage smokers would be driven to specialist stores with online ordering and firm age verification. Additionally, it would be far easier to monitor and audit the limited number of places that do stock tobacco ("secret shopper" stings and similar) to make sure they aren't being lax in their age verification. Essentially, by making it impossible for youths simply pay someone a few bucks + the cost of the cigarettes to purchase them, the effort barrier could be made high enough as to prevent new smokers due to lack of easy availability.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I think it only leads to smuggling. This is already seen with snuff in Finland. Which is illegal to sell here, but legal to sell in Sweden. So some people will just go to other country and then bring back bunch and sell it for some profit. State losing taxes and so on... Occasionally someone gets prosecuted.
- kazinator 5y ago
  > early smokers will never reach an age where their habit becomes legal That is obvious; the expression DOB > 2010 is constant for any given individual. It doesn't get any falser with time.
prirun 5y ago
They should read about Prohibition. We were really succcessful with that. Oh, and our War on Drugs - another success story. Maybe Denmark can pull this off because they are a small country compared to the US. I hope we never try it, because we need to be going in the other direction: if people want to kill themselves, let them do it legally, tax it, and deny them health insurance. At least that will cut down on "crime" and all the court, legal, and police infrastructure that goes with it.
- Spivak 5y ago
  > and deny them health insurance Okay so literally ban it but make the punishment worse than fine or jail, that'll go over well. The difference compared to prohibition is that, en masse, young people aren't clamoring to start smoking. I know a few people my age who vape, none who smoke cigarettes.
  - niij 5y ago
    > I know a few people my age who vape, none who smoke cigarettes. Then why is the law necessary?
    - Spivak 5y ago
      Because you don't want people to start? And because the law is on the sellers you take away the power from huge megacorps trying to push it on people. Like I don't know anyone who doesn't use their seatbelt anymore but it's still a law.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  I'm not a fan of the "deny them health insurance" clause. What's next, would you deny someone health insurance because they swam in a river occasionally, drove a car every day, or did any other dangerous thing?
  - prirun 5y ago
    I think it's unreasonable to compare a person driving a car with a person smoking cigarettes every day of their life. If it were up to me, I'd also deny health insurance for people more than 100lbs overweight. Why should society pay for someone who wants to be a glutton or chooses to destroy their body with toxins that everyone knows are bad for your health? Either that, or maybe the grocery stores could give out coupons based on soft drink purchases. The coupons provide health insurance discounts and are paid for by the soft drink companies. They're the ones making money by getting people addicted to sugar so IMO they should be the ones paying for the costs. Russia and China aren't America's big problem. Our lack of personal responsibility is a much bigger problem IMO.
kazinator 5y ago
Why would you still be talking about gradually raising some age limit, after tabling the simpler idea of tying it to a 2010-or-later birth date? Bureaucrats ...
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Because 17 year olds getting addicted and being unable to get their fix for a year is different from a 40 year old begging the 16year old behind the counter to just sell them one carton.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ccakes 5y ago
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064212737/new-zealands-cigarette-ban-model https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064212737/new-zealands-cigar... New Zealand has already implemented this.
linuxdeveloper 5y ago
Laws that forever affect only one portion of the population, should be illegal, full stop. We should have equal freedoms under law.
- eesmith 5y ago
  You want to abolish Denmark's inherited monarchy? And have the U.S. break all treaties recognizing the special laws that apply to Native Americans? Yeah, not going to happen. I don't even see how it's a worthy goal.
  - anshorei 5y ago
    No, I don't want new laws that create arbitrary divisions to be introduced. Removing old ones is up for consideration, but avoiding introducing bad new laws is a higher priority.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      linuxdeveloper's statement was categorical about all laws, not "new" laws. Even so, your view appears to be that that US must not pass new laws that grant Native Americans more self-determination than they currently have.
xg15 5y ago
Making something illegal for an arbitrary group of people is hugely problematic, no question about that. On the other hand, I understand the intention. I wonder if the same could be archived by moving the threshold slower than the speed with which people age. Currently, the age threshold is increased by one year, every year - which effectively locks people born after a certain date out forever. Instead, you could increase it by one year, e.g. every two years. This would allow the next few generations to cross the threshold eventually, while still "aging out" smoking in the long term.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  This is basically prohibition and I don't think it will work. I also don't understand the incentive to act as smoking got more unpopular with younger generations. I don't think this will pass judges if anyone who smoked illegally will demand his right to do as they wish in reference to older people.
LocalH 5y ago
Power hungry politicians always looking for the next thing to control. It’s like unabashed capitalism - it doesn’t matter if profits maintain, the expected trajectory is that they increase, so executives do that, and ultimately become evil in the process. Think about it this way - if we had the “perfect” set of laws for a given region, there would be no work for the legislators to do!

48 points by caaqil 5y ago

Obviously when 2029 comes, there are still going to be some 18 year olds who started smoking when they were 17 (despite the existing rules trying to stop that), but the new law would mean that those early smokers will never reach an age where their habit becomes legal. I don't know how rationally a 17 year old thinks about the relative difficulty of obtaining cigarettes for just a year until they turn 18, compared to having to obtain them illegally for the rest of their life, but with each passing year, the gap between {current average age of first cigarette} and {average age of smoker} will increase, making young smokers look more and more conspicuous.

waste_monk 5y ago
After enough of the older crowd die (which the act of smoking inherently accelerates, so it probably won't take too long, just a few decades) there would not be enough smokers left for most places to profitably stock tobacco products. Dedicated tobacconists would probably collapse, larger stores in high-population areas may still stock tobacco products, but for the most part I would envisage smokers would be driven to specialist stores with online ordering and firm age verification. Additionally, it would be far easier to monitor and audit the limited number of places that do stock tobacco ("secret shopper" stings and similar) to make sure they aren't being lax in their age verification. Essentially, by making it impossible for youths simply pay someone a few bucks + the cost of the cigarettes to purchase them, the effort barrier could be made high enough as to prevent new smokers due to lack of easy availability.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I think it only leads to smuggling. This is already seen with snuff in Finland. Which is illegal to sell here, but legal to sell in Sweden. So some people will just go to other country and then bring back bunch and sell it for some profit. State losing taxes and so on... Occasionally someone gets prosecuted.
kazinator 5y ago
> early smokers will never reach an age where their habit becomes legal That is obvious; the expression DOB > 2010 is constant for any given individual. It doesn't get any falser with time.

prirun 5y ago

They should read about Prohibition. We were really succcessful with that. Oh, and our War on Drugs - another success story. Maybe Denmark can pull this off because they are a small country compared to the US. I hope we never try it, because we need to be going in the other direction: if people want to kill themselves, let them do it legally, tax it, and deny them health insurance. At least that will cut down on "crime" and all the court, legal, and police infrastructure that goes with it.

Spivak 5y ago
> and deny them health insurance Okay so literally ban it but make the punishment worse than fine or jail, that'll go over well. The difference compared to prohibition is that, en masse, young people aren't clamoring to start smoking. I know a few people my age who vape, none who smoke cigarettes.
- niij 5y ago
  > I know a few people my age who vape, none who smoke cigarettes. Then why is the law necessary?
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Because you don't want people to start? And because the law is on the sellers you take away the power from huge megacorps trying to push it on people. Like I don't know anyone who doesn't use their seatbelt anymore but it's still a law.
notreallyserio 5y ago
I'm not a fan of the "deny them health insurance" clause. What's next, would you deny someone health insurance because they swam in a river occasionally, drove a car every day, or did any other dangerous thing?
- prirun 5y ago
  I think it's unreasonable to compare a person driving a car with a person smoking cigarettes every day of their life. If it were up to me, I'd also deny health insurance for people more than 100lbs overweight. Why should society pay for someone who wants to be a glutton or chooses to destroy their body with toxins that everyone knows are bad for your health? Either that, or maybe the grocery stores could give out coupons based on soft drink purchases. The coupons provide health insurance discounts and are paid for by the soft drink companies. They're the ones making money by getting people addicted to sugar so IMO they should be the ones paying for the costs. Russia and China aren't America's big problem. Our lack of personal responsibility is a much bigger problem IMO.

kazinator 5y ago

Why would you still be talking about gradually raising some age limit, after tabling the simpler idea of tying it to a 2010-or-later birth date? Bureaucrats ...

HWR_14 5y ago
Because 17 year olds getting addicted and being unable to get their fix for a year is different from a 40 year old begging the 16year old behind the counter to just sell them one carton.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ccakes 5y ago

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064212737/new-zealands-cigarette-ban-model https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064212737/new-zealands-cigar... New Zealand has already implemented this.

linuxdeveloper 5y ago

Laws that forever affect only one portion of the population, should be illegal, full stop. We should have equal freedoms under law.

eesmith 5y ago
You want to abolish Denmark's inherited monarchy? And have the U.S. break all treaties recognizing the special laws that apply to Native Americans? Yeah, not going to happen. I don't even see how it's a worthy goal.
- anshorei 5y ago
  No, I don't want new laws that create arbitrary divisions to be introduced. Removing old ones is up for consideration, but avoiding introducing bad new laws is a higher priority.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    linuxdeveloper's statement was categorical about all laws, not "new" laws. Even so, your view appears to be that that US must not pass new laws that grant Native Americans more self-determination than they currently have.

xg15 5y ago

Making something illegal for an arbitrary group of people is hugely problematic, no question about that. On the other hand, I understand the intention. I wonder if the same could be archived by moving the threshold slower than the speed with which people age. Currently, the age threshold is increased by one year, every year - which effectively locks people born after a certain date out forever. Instead, you could increase it by one year, e.g. every two years. This would allow the next few generations to cross the threshold eventually, while still "aging out" smoking in the long term.

raxxorrax 5y ago
This is basically prohibition and I don't think it will work. I also don't understand the incentive to act as smoking got more unpopular with younger generations. I don't think this will pass judges if anyone who smoked illegally will demand his right to do as they wish in reference to older people.

LocalH 5y ago

Power hungry politicians always looking for the next thing to control. It’s like unabashed capitalism - it doesn’t matter if profits maintain, the expected trajectory is that they increase, so executives do that, and ultimately become evil in the process. Think about it this way - if we had the “perfect” set of laws for a given region, there would be no work for the legislators to do!