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> would have banned cigarette sales next year to anyone born after 2008. Laws discriminating on age should be repelled everywhere.

• chollida1 3y ago
  > Laws discriminating on age should be repelled everywhere. I'd disagree. I think its a good thing that countries have minimum driving ages, minimum drinking ages, minimum age of consent for sex and minimum ages where people can vote and enter into contracts.
  • sickofparadox 3y ago
    This was not adding a minimum age to smoking, it was enforcing a permanent ban on people born after 2008 from ever purchasing tobacco products.
    • chollida1 3y ago
      > This was not adding a minimum age to smoking, it was enforcing a permanent ban on people born after 2008 from ever purchasing tobacco products. sure, fully agree with you but that has nothing to do with the comment I was replying to.
      • junaru 3y ago
        It has everything to do with the comment you replied, you just chose to purposefully ignore the obvious point.
        • chollida1 3y ago
          I quoted the comment i replied to. I was responding to this blanket comment. > Laws discriminating on age should be repelled everywhere. I disagree with that and gave various examples as to why I consider that to be a bad idea. I stand by the comment as do many other people based on the upvotes.
          • chucksta 3y ago
            You changed the context from rules that apply to people born after a certain year, to rules applied to everyone regardless of year. I could be born in 2008 or 2007 either way I need to be 16. But I could be born in 2007 and buy smokes.
• avgcorrection 3y ago
  A smoke ban for that age group would be pointless where I live because no one (“”) that young smoke. They use other tobacco products (ones without any second-hand effects). If anything it might have a backfire effect.
  • shortcake27 3y ago
    The point isn’t to stop that particular age group from smoking; it’s to eliminate cigarettes in the long term (eg 70 years).
    • avgcorrection 3y ago
      What distinction are you making? In 70 years time all the current smokers are going to be dead. Unless you think that smoking can come into vogue again. Like a cycle.
      • xanderlewis 3y ago
        It already seems to be somewhat more fashionable than it was, say, ten years ago here in the UK, and in France it still seems like all the young people smoke. The numbers are way down on thirty years ago, but I don’t think it’s ever going to go to zero on its own. Especially when the image of smoking is so embedded into parts of popular culture that aren’t likely to become less cool over time.
        • trilbyglens 3y ago
          An absolutely ungodly number of people smoke in Europe. I feel like in the us it's sort of become trashy to smoke traditional cigarettes.
      • shortcake27 3y ago
        You aren’t understanding the law. The idea was to prevent people born after 2008 buying cigarettes. In 2028, the minimum age to buy cigarettes would be 20. In 2048, it would be 40. In 2093 (70 years from now), it would be 85. So in 70 years, with this law, smokers would basically not exist. It ages people out of smoking. Without the law, the percentage of the population who smoke will remain relatively constant as people who turn 18 start smoking.
• xanderlewis 3y ago
  But it’s not arbitrarily discriminating based on age; it’s using age as a (reasonable) proxy for whether or not you might have an existing dependency on nicotine. Would you consider laws saying ‘drivers who predate the requirement for a licence do not require one’ to be discriminatory?
  • sickofparadox 3y ago
    If it was permanent, as this law was intended to be, then yes. I think that when someone born after 2008 hits their country's decided upon age of majority, they should be able to smoke, drink, or take part in any other of societies vices should they so choose.
    • shortcake27 3y ago
      The problem with smoking in particular is that it costs taxpayers obscene amounts of money compared to the other things you listed, in addition to straining the healthcare system which affects people who didn’t intentionally poison themselves. Cigarettes are also a public nuisance, littering the streets and affecting other people with smoke. I can’t open the windows in my house due to chain smoking neighbours. These people have a right to smoke, yet I don’t have a right to breathe clean air in my own home - pretty unfair if you ask me.
      • trilbyglens 3y ago
        Preach