New Zealand to ban tobacco

[Mercedes]

If you’re a smoker who wants to indulge your habit while gazing over the mountains of the South Pacific, you’d do well to move fast. New Zealand last week announced plans to become the first nation in the world to ban tobacco.

Prohibition won’t happen overnight. Instead, the country will raise the legal smoking age each year, so that people born after 2008 will never be allowed to puff. That will eventually mean that tobacco smoking — a practice that’s been prevalent in the Americas for thousands of years, and spread around the world after Christopher Columbus introduced it to Europe — may finally start disappearing from one corner of the planet.

This may be a taste of things to come. The Netherlands will ban supermarket sales of tobacco starting in 2024, and the Medical Journal of Australia last month called for a New Zealand-style phaseout policy in that country. One in four Americans supported a total smoking ban in a 2018 survey by Gallup.

I dare say there will be a new black market to contend with but such a move is overwhelmingly prolife.  What do you think?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-13/new-zealand-is-banning-tobacco-should-the-world-follow

 

[Winchester]

Imagine being the sort of psychopath that would get violent over someone smoking tobacco.

[Nunsuch]

2 hours ago, Winchester said:

Imagine being the sort of psychopath that would get violent over someone smoking tobacco.

Where is there any reference to violence?

[Winchester]

44 minutes ago, Nunsuch said:

Where is there any reference to violence?

How do they enforce laws where you live? Where I live, there are men with guns, and they will arrest you. If you don't submit, they will escalate violence.

I'm pretty sure the rules in New Zealand won't be treated like suggestions.

[Nunsuch]

4 minutes ago, Winchester said:

How do they enforce laws where you live? Where I live, there are men with guns, and they will arrest you. If you don't submit, they will escalate violence.

I'm pretty sure the rules in New Zealand won't be treated like suggestions.

I live in a place governed by law, not violence. This is simply ridiculous. And, of course, you seem entirely ignorant of how law enforcement operates in New Zealand, much less the rest of the civilized world.  Violence is not only not a last resort, it isn't a legal one.

 

[Mercedes]

33 minutes ago, Winchester said:

How do they enforce laws where you live? Where I live, there are men with guns, and they will arrest you. If you don't submit, they will escalate violence.

I'm pretty sure the rules in New Zealand won't be treated like suggestions.

It's going to be phased in to let people get used to it, but it'll just be like the roll out of any new law.  Fines issued for non compliance until smokings social unacceptability will be its own monitor. 

[Luigi]

When certain drugs were illegal in the US, the proponents of the drugs said, "Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, and it won't work for drugs." Medical marijuana is being legalized in more and more states. Recreational marijuana is not far behind. Just recently, New York opened the first - I don't even know what to call it - Drop-in Drug-Use Clinic? That way, if people overdose on opioids, medical personnel are right handy to administer Narcan or other live-saving drugs. (One drug to fight another - that sounds sensible, doesn't it?) It reminds me of Chinese opium dens, which BTW, Mao Tse-Tung eliminated immediately upon coming to power because the Communist Party considered drug addicts unproductive citizens. 

Is New Zealand also banning the smoking of marijuana, hashish, heroin and other drugs? Tastes change, times change, and government approval/support of drug addictions changes - it just depends on who's in charge. 

[Winchester]

12 hours ago, Mercedes said:

It's going to be phased in to let people get used to it, but it'll just be like the roll out of any new law.  Fines issued for non compliance until smokings social unacceptability will be its own monitor. 

Yeah. Violence.

Slowly ramping up the violence is still violence. I can't imagine getting violent with someone for them using tobacco, and if you can, then you're screwed up in the head. It's not remotely pro life to employ violence to combat vices.

12 hours ago, Nunsuch said:

I live in a place governed by law, not violence. This is simply ridiculous. And, of course, you seem entirely ignorant of how law enforcement operates in New Zealand, much less the rest of the civilized world.  Violence is not only not a last resort, it isn't a legal one.

 

So prohibitions in your area aren't really enforced? That's great, but it's unusual. In every country apart from yours (apparently) the police employ violence to enforce laws.

In my country, people are regularly arrested (that's a violent act you've apparently never heard of. It involves retraints, body searches, and confinement in holding cells) for violating prohibitions. You might have heard of Breonna Taylor. She was gunned down in her own home because the police merely suspected she was violating drug prohibitions. They found no drugs in her home.

I'm glad in your country that police don't arrest people for violating prohibitions. What do they do for real crimes, like assault and battery, though?

I guess that people from countries where the police don't use violence don't know what a gun looks like. That's a gun the New Zealand police officer is carrying, and I promise you it doesn't shoot flowers and rainbows at people.

[Winchester]

And there are also tasers. Tasers a pretty violent, as anyone who has seen or experienced one can attest. 

[Anomaly]

1 hour ago, Winchester said:

And there are also tasers. Tasers a pretty violent, as anyone who has seen or experienced one can attest. 

Does virtue signaling really help you boost your perception of self worth since you’ve garnered your livelihood from terrorist graft?

[Winchester]

3 hours ago, Anomaly said:

Does virtue signaling really help you boost your perception of self worth since you’ve garnered your livelihood from terrorist graft?

No, not really.

Yes, I work for the worst sort of mafia. But I don't lie to people about its nature, and I don't back it becoming more powerful.

I wonder if it's even worse to be in one of the jobs that actually helps people, since that provides cover for the jobs that no one would pay for if they weren't forced.

The fact that the state makes it possible for people like me to live upper middle class should motivate a lot of people to stop supporting the power of the state.

[Peace]

9 hours ago, Winchester said:

Yeah. Violence.

Slowly ramping up the violence is still violence. I can't imagine getting violent with someone for them using tobacco, and if you can, then you're screwed up in the head. It's not remotely pro life to employ violence to combat vices.

So prohibitions in your area aren't really enforced? That's great, but it's unusual. In every country apart from yours (apparently) the police employ violence to enforce laws.

In my country, people are regularly arrested (that's a violent act you've apparently never heard of. It involves retraints, body searches, and confinement in holding cells) for violating prohibitions. You might have heard of Breonna Taylor. She was gunned down in her own home because the police merely suspected she was violating drug prohibitions. They found no drugs in her home.

I'm glad in your country that police don't arrest people for violating prohibitions. What do they do for real crimes, like assault and battery, though?

I guess that people from countries where the police don't use violence don't know what a gun looks like. That's a gun the New Zealand police officer is carrying, and I promise you it doesn't shoot flowers and rainbows at people.

Is there anyone on Phatmass who can take this seriously?

[little2add]

14 minutes ago, Peace said:

I can't imagine getting violent with someone for them using tobacco

 Emphysema, lung cancer caused by tobacco use is a violent painful way to die too!

tobacco really is a nasty, disgusting, highly addictive habit and the world would be better off without it.

just saying...

[Winchester]

29 minutes ago, little2add said:

 Emphysema, lung cancer caused by tobacco use is a violent painful way to die too!

tobacco really is a nasty, disgusting, highly addictive habit and the world would be better off without it.

just saying...

I agree that it is a harmful vice. I don't believe that getting violent over it is moral.

[Luigi]

19 minutes ago, little2add said:

 Emphysema, lung cancer caused by tobacco use is a violent painful way to die too!

tobacco really is a nasty, disgusting, highly addictive habit and the world would be better off without it.

just saying...

So are addictions to cocaine, heroin, pain killers, alcohol, pornography, prostitution, gambling, and betting on sporting events. But if the government can tax it, it will be legalized, and never mind the consequences to individual citizens or the larger society. And then if we consider societal addictions to coal, oil, cars, pleasure vehicles (motor boats, snowmobiles, et alia), racism, abortion, and the like, we can see that tobacco - that nasty, disgusting, highly addictive habit - is really among the least of society's worries. 

And in theoretically 'free' societies, governments would be better off to persuade their citizens to quit smoking, and offer support & perhaps incentives rather than dictating, "You VILL do DIS und you vill NOT do DAT." Some people prefer the word "mandating" but it's really the same thing as dictating, although I'm willing to coin the word "mandatorship" for the current American society.