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New Zealand bans young people from buying cigarettes for life
- nking 4y agoNo freedom for you! Next!
- newaccount2021 4y agoNZ is in a race to the bottom with Canada, with the winner being able to claim the mantle of ultimate liberal dystopia
- Karsteski 4y agoHow so? What has Canada done to race New Zealand to a dystopia? There's probably a lot, but I'm curious as to what you think specifically
- leeroyjenkins11 4y agoNot op, but the fact that they are expanding MAID(euthanasia) to non terminal patients and people in general. They had a case where a Soldier called the I believe the VA for PTSD and was offered euthanasia as an option. Then there was a Paralympian who was asking for a ramp to be put at her house, they couldn't do that but they offered her MAID as an option. They also plan to loosen the reqs to allow mentally handicapped people to apply. Health Canada says that starting March 17 next year, “people with a mental illness as their sole underlying medical condition will have access to MAID if they meet all of the eligibility requirements and the practitioners fulfill the safeguards that are put in place for this group of people.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/christine-gauthier-paralympian-euthanasia-canada-b2238319.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/christine-... https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/military-veteran-offered-assisted-suicide-while-seeking-help-for-ptsd-report-notes-canada-armed-forces-post-traumatic-stress-disorder https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/military-veteran-offe...
- Karsteski 4y agoHmm I understand why you feel the way you do actually, even though I currently support people being able to end their lives humanely whenever they want. I'm someone who has mental health issues myself, so I can see why having easier access to suicide is a bit weird. A good argument on why MAID leads us further down the dystopian road could easily change my mind I think...
- petodo 4y agoTargetting/locking bank accounts of people protesting against one of the most authoritarian COVID restrictions in the world?
- Karsteski 4y agoThat's a good one. Definitely soured my opinion of Canadians who supported such a thing. Seems as though humans just never expect such things to affect them if they consider themselves "good citizens", up until the point that the microscope is aimed at them. Makes me sad that many people here seem to take for granted that the good life they live is not a given. I'm Trinidadian and while I've lived here for almost 10 years, I'm extremely aware of how government corruption can affect a country in a deep and near irreversible manner...
- slaw 4y agoI still prefer smoking ban over locking my bank account.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoIf you can resist the urge to try and take over the capital city, then you can have smoke and an unlocked bank account in Canada.
- slaw 4y agoI still prefer smoking ban over freedom to roam and protest against fascist/oppressive government. Full disclosure: I am not smoker.
- snapplebobapple 4y agohttps://www.convoylive.com/ https://www.convoylive.com/ Please find the evidence of taking over the capital. That website has every livestream mapped, timestamped etc so you can often look at multiple livestreams for any given time at multiple different spots. I see zero evidence supporting your claim. I do however see people protesting, at least one bouncy castle and lanes purposefully kept open for emergency traffic nearly all the time. You can just link the stream and timestamp url here when you find it.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoAll those videos are evidence of that. What else do you want?
- zmgsabst 4y agoWho here thinks either Prohibition or the War on Drugs has been good for society?
- Jensson 4y agoThose things tend to work well in other countries. USA just did it so badly that they made it worse. New Zealand for example has gone a very long way towards eliminating smoking in their country so far, their laws works.
- Karsteski 4y agoPeople whose livelihoods depend on such policies existing, I imagine.
- hulitu 4y agoI do. Not for society as a whole but for some, selected, societies.
- RunSet 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones
- pydry 4y agoProhibition wasnt quite the abject failure it was made out to be: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...
- refurb 4y agoI was going to say the same, but vaping and other nicotine replacement is still legal. It’s basically trying to push people to “less harmful” forms of nicotine. But yeah, no doubt there will be a black market for real cigarettes, especially when they are still legal for people over a certain age.
- 4y ago
- olivermarks 4y agoMuch as I hate smoking and cigarette smoke, this politically flies in the face of free will in a liberal democracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_New_Zealand
- iso1631 4y agoSo you think that everyone in a liberal democracy should be able to buy Heroin?
- zmgsabst 4y agoI think the War on Drugs has devastated the US to little effect considering how many die of opiate overdose every year. I’m trying to figure out if you’re even serious to suggest banning heroin worked when fentanyl is the leading cause of Millennials dying.
- substation13 4y agoBy default, adults should be allowed to buy heroin.
- Karsteski 4y agoEvery adult, certainly.
- DalasNoin 4y agoHow about fentanyl and how about other theoretical substances with higher addictiveness and mortality rates?
- Karsteski 4y agoI actually do not care about the addictiveness nor toxicity of any of those substances. My opinion comes from my stance that anyone should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies. That same stance informs my thoughts on trans people, gay people, women's rights, vaccines, abortion etc etc. I see all those issues as an extension of one's right to bodily autonomy. Humanity has done an insane amount of damage to society since everyone followed along in the "war on drugs", which stemmed from racial origins and continues to have such disproportionate impact. I'm glad we are (slowly) moving away from this atrocity :)
- eesmith 4y ago> The libertarian ACT Party, which opposed the bill, said many small corner stores, known in New Zealand as dairies, would go out of business because they would no longer be able to sell cigarettes. I heard a similar argument before smoking was banned in bars and pubs. Didn't happen.
- mkl 4y agoBesides, if their shop's existence depends on selling dangerous products to addicts, they should be put out of business. The idea of a ban like this has been floating around in NZ politics for years; the first version of it I heard had the cut-off birth year as 2000.
- dottedmag 4y ago> The law does not affect vaping, which has already become more popular than smoking in New Zealand. Isn't the end result the same for vaping?
- tulio_ribeiro 4y agoWhat do you mean? Tobacco has well known long term adverse health effects and the article mentions "smoke". Whereas vaping (I'm assuming a good brand) has no active substance other than nicotine, which is no more harmful than caffeine which society consumes in copious amounts, and doesn't produce smoke.
- bradwood 4y agoThis. People naively assume it's the nicotine that is harmful in tobacco. It's really not much more harmful than caffeine. The problem with smoking is the tar. Vapour has zero tar.
- idlehand 4y agoNicotine is associated with considerable adverse effects on cardiovascular health. Caffeine has not been found to have any long-term effects on cardiovascular health.
- tulio_ribeiro 4y agoThis is wrong. I don't think you searched, but if you did you probably didn't go very far. What you came up (I'm assuming you did search instead of just parroting what everyone else says) from your search is the result of decades or propaganda to demonize tobacco, and nicotine was simply a practical scape goat to go along with it -- well, for a good demonizing marketing campaign to work I guess you need to manufacture or choose an enemy that is easy to spot. I'm pretty sure there's no double blind, placebo controlled trial contrasting nicotine with cardiovascular health. Simply because for any adverse health effects to come up, it would need to be taken for a very long time, and no one would run such a study. As for tobacco, well, obviously. But it's not really controlled for nicotine, is it?
- mbg721 4y agoHow long until everybody decides marijuana is a public health crisis again but some other drug is perfectly fine? 40 or 50 years?
- Ekaros 4y agoEthanol has been perfectly fine since prohibition ended...
- Hamuko 4y agoWhat's the definition of "perfectly fine"?
- jamesmunns 4y ago"there hasn't been a significant effort to re-ban it wholesale at a state or federal level"? At least in the context of the original parent comment ("doing perfectly fine since prohibition")
- mbg721 4y agoProhibition in the US was pretty easy to ignore; alcoholic drinks are easy to make, and the government largely didn't take it all that seriously. For all the temperance crusading that got the law passed, it turned out to be unpopular. Did NZ even try it?
- rwmj 4y agoCannabis wasn't banned initially because of any public health crisis (but various health and crime crises were created by banning it). The British studied cannabis use in India in the 1890s and found that it was fairly benign when used in moderation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Hemp_Drugs_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Hemp_Drugs_Commission
- spaceman_2020 4y agoI've tried most drugs it's humanly possible to do, except heroin and its derivatives. Cigarettes are the only thing I still get a craving for if I see someone smoking. That, and coffee. Probably the two most practically addictive things I've ever done.
- Traubenfuchs 4y agoI am mostly indifferent to cocaine, meth, meph, but I wouldn‘t do them anymore as I consider them highly harmful drugs. G is nice, if I stumble over it. Poppers are nice too, but they make you go blind. Yet the occasional ecstasy hits I actively do are, as sad as it sounds, the highlights of my life, even knowing it literally melts my brain. And I just love ketamin. Even more pleasant to me: Benzos and benzolikes. I avoid taking them like the plague they are, but I think about them every single day, probably once every hour. They just feel so damn good and they are then only drug I could ever be addicted to. Yet even thoughts of nicotine make me feel physically sick in my stomach and throat. I never want to take it again in any form. I also strongly dislike coffee despite actively trying to start consuming it to become more human and do the "go for a coffee" thing they all love to do. Everyone is different!
- viraptor 4y ago> G is nice, What's G? > do the "go for a coffee" thing they all love to do. Most places these days do chai / chai lattes. It's a perfect social coffee-substitute for me.
- kasperni 4y ago> What's G? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid
- Traubenfuchs 4y agoGHB, a (gay) chemsex staple. It comes in the form of drops you put into water, which makes it easy to overdose. Makes your genitals burn in a good way and makes you want to use them extensively. Naturally, like any drug that provides pleasures beyond our comprehension, it‘s addictive and neurotoxic. I only did chemsex a few times and long ago, but boy do those memories stick (in a good way, besides the STD).
- black_13 4y ago
- CrypticShift 4y agoWhat about vaping? if it is still OK, then it is not just the drug (nicotine) they are worried about, but the health effects. Ok then, next ban alcohol please, then junk food. Are these less of a public health issue? I suppose they are just still socially more accepted, that is all. Isn’t this what laws are anyway, social constructs?
- ceejayoz 4y agoI’m having trouble parsing this. Are you arguing doing this for the health reasons is bad versus just a dislike of nicotine itself?
- CrypticShift 4y agoI'm saying: if you are banning cigarettes because of their addictive effects. Then you should ban every nicotine-based product. If you are banning cigarettes because of their health effects, then why not regulate other similarly devastating products? Then I reasoned that law can only do what is socially accepted. Banning cigarette is socially accepted, so they decided to do it. In the end, it is about social acceptability first, not just addiction or health effects.
- ceejayoz 4y agoCouldn't the ban reasonably be about the combined set of factors? It's addictive, very damaging to health, and highly negative socially, in a way that vaping and alcohol don't match.
- CrypticShift 4y agoOk that is a better argument. vaping? I agree. Alcohol? less so. it is debatable, but I’m not an expert, so I will leave the details for someone else. Junk food? This is the underrated one. In 100 years (I hope earlier), I bet this will be the first on the list
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
- LatteLazy 4y agoBanning them in favour of vaping seems smart. Doing so with an arbitrary cut off seems irrational.
- permo-w 4y agoit’s very clearly not irrational from a practical political perspective
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoWhat would be the process for choosing a non-arbitrary cut-off?
- viraptor 4y agoI think it makes sense for people already addicted. If they can't handle dropping smoking and solutions like nicotine patches are not enough, they're at risk of going broke buying more and more expensive illegally imported cigarettes. Essentially this says "we've already allowed you to mess up your body so we're not going to make your addition illegal".
- LatteLazy 4y agoIf you already smoke, just move to vapes...
- viraptor 4y agoThere's still people who try vapes and go back to smoking. Or do both and increase the nicotine intake https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/cigarette-smokers-trying-to-quit-often-end-up-vaping-and-smoking/ https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/cigarette-smokers-trying-to-... It doesn't seem to be something everyone can just do.
- LatteLazy 4y agoDo they go back to smoking because they're physically unable to use a vape or just because of habit/style/supply etc?
- sys_64738 4y agoI get the desire but if it's legal for some then it has to be legal for all adults. This just is untenable in my book. No I don't and never have smoked but life decisions are not made by a nanny state.
- josephcsible 4y agoThe alternatives are either banning it even for people who are currently physically addicted to it, or leaving it legal for everyone forever. Which would you prefer?
- mytailorisrich 4y agoWhy should it be illegal?
- techdragon 4y agoThe industrialised manufacturing and sale of highly addictive (an important distinction vs alcohol) and highly toxic product that is the source of a wide scale multi decade drain on the public health … yeah I can see why we might want this one banned. After all no one is bitching that they can’t buy their favourite asbestos insulation anymore.
- sarcoplasmic 4y agoHmm, let's see if drug prohibition has been tried anywhere and how successful it was...oh.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoIt will be illegal for all adults eventually. This is just an oddly phrased titled for a ban with grandfathered in exceptions. This isn't a ban for "young people", as there people will eventually be old and it will still be banned.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y agoNext, in the line: make coffee illegal.