Everyone here is arguing the benefits of prohibition. I’m just interested to know how much money Rishi (and/or his family members/friends/donors) have invested in vaping and nicotine alternatives.
It always confuses me to learn that when people want to ban smoking it somehow means ban “cigarettes” and not “nicotine”
Because smoking is WILDLY more harmful than vaping.
Yes vaping has SOME health risks, but it’s like saying drinking tea and drinking four loko are just as bad because they both have caffeine
Bro what tea are you drinking that has nicotine
I can only imagine they meant caffeine, another common drug that’s heavily abused but a little more socially accepted
How much did big coffee pay you to make this comment? I bet that link installs covfefe!
Wait, they pay for this? And I’m out here sharing medical info for free. Sign me up!
Yes, because not all drugs are bad for you.
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I mean lets not pretend it’s risk free, it raises blood pressure, causes headaches, can trigger arrhythmia in those at risk, etc. As far as drugs go it is probably the least risky, but it’s not like it comes with zero health impacts.
I don’t think anything is risk-free, including the vital molecules that we need to live. But caffeine has way a longer and significant list of health benefits that offset the risks at even moderate doses. So much so that there’s enough evidence to encourage people to drink more as a prophylaxis. That list includes protection from gallstones, cancers, asthma, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular disease among other thing like a potential aide in weight loss and even a significant performance boost in sports. What’s more, there have been large cohort studies that have found a 3% decreased in risk of developing arrhythmia per daily cup even when controlling for genetics. So the risks shouldn’t be used to discourage or scare people away from a proven benefit when the therapeutic window includes up to 4 cups a day. Would I risk the occasional insomnia, headaches, and temporary increase in blood pressure for all the other positive effects given such a lenient margin? Absolutely.
So, really, the public perception that caffeine is somehow dangerous for being labeled a drug is on par with the belief that other substances are inherently dangerous. I think it spills over from the war on drugs, and the delusion of clean eating that often emerges from the dregs of misinformation on the internet and those who perpetuate those beliefs for monetary gain within the wellness communities, ironically enough.
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but it being pushed as “healthy” is also a stretch
With so many health benefits and mild side effects, it’s hard to say that it’s unhealthy when it protects you from various serious conditions. It can most definitely be part of a healthy diet.
However, the amount regularly consumed by US adults on average is 135 mg or 1.5 cups, which is well below the maximum recommended dose of 400 mg or 4 cups of coffee per day, which is in itself a conservative estimate as with all official guidances. To put that into perspective, but by no means to compare it with long-term consumption, you’d need to drink about 10 g in 100 cups in one sitting to reach toxic levels.
Surprisingly enough, and just to entertain the idea, there are some instances of increasing returns from a higher caffeine intake. A modest calorie burn for weight loss from caffeine would require 6 cups on average, which–although a large amount and not generally recommended–is still clinically safe to consume. An increased intake is also associated with a lower risk of gallstones. Even the American College of Cardiology has published a note encouraging users to drink more than the average nationwide to reap the benefits. Other sources put that number at 3 cups daily. And although moderate drinkers of 3-5 cups per day show a 15% reduction of cardiovascular disease, heavy drinkers of 6 cups or more per day are neither associated with an increase nor decreased risk. I even remember reading at some point that heavier users become more resilient to caffeine’s cardiovascular effects than casual drinkers but my Google-fu was not strong enough to recover the source but I’ll edit if I stumble across it.
So there you have it. The window of what’s considered a low risk or healthy intake of caffeine is much wider than what’s generally expected. In fact, it can be used and it’s recommended as a prophylaxis for certain conditions without a significant tradeoff in healthy adults, and there’s plenty of evidence to support that.
And no, this wasn’t paid by big coffee, but if you know that they’re hiring, send them my info.
Nicoteane 😉
Lmao, ironically I made that comment before I had my morning tea.
In the US it’s the opposite, which is absolutely bizarro land. Want to ban vapes but not cigarettes.
Well, nicotine isn’t the part of smoking that causes cancer
The full effects of vaping are not well understood, and while they’re almost certainly not as bad as cigarettes, they’re also almost certainly still bad for you, and they are indeed still addictive for the same reasons as cigarettes because they still use nicotine.
Further, one main reason their risks remain as poorly understood as they do is that (again, because of the same active ingredient) people who vape often also use cigarettes. The two are closely linked, I don’t think my confusion should be so easily dismissed as that.
Oh sorry, I was thinking nicotine supplements like gum and patches. In my mind, smoking and vaping are the same thing. “Don’t inhale particulate matter of any kind” is an excellent rule of thumb for all humans in all situations
Exactly my point. It always throws me for a minute when I realize people are treating them so separately.
So you’re against smelling flowers, too? And scented candles?
The problem is that we “inhale particulate matter” all the time. Every day of our lives.
Yes, and it kills people.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8140409/#:~:text=The World Health Organization estimates,PM2.5)%20in%20polluted%20air.
You’re not that stupid. You know the difference between inhaling concentrated particulates from a cigarette or vape and smelling a fucking flower. (Which, by the way, pollen grains are average 10-20 microns, not 2.5.)
You’re not that stupid. You know the difference between inhaling concentrated particulates from a cigarette or vape and smelling a fucking flower
And you’re not that stupid. You know that fine particulate matter in the air every breath we take is different from someone vaping sometimes. There’s a reason your linked study doesn’t mention vaping AND why scientists are still saying the risks of vaping are unclear.
Your second study is more useful, but it really is not intellectually defensible to take it results as saying vaping is unhealthy. Instead, its results are saying that we need to keep regulations to control air quality with regards to vaping.
I’ll reiterate my original critique.
“Don’t inhale particulate matter of any kind” is an excellent rule of thumb for all humans in all situations
…is something I disagree with, like most extreme naive generalities.
The full effects of vaping are not well understood, and while they’re almost certainly not as bad as cigarettes, they’re also almost certainly still bad for you
That used to say that about artificial sweeteners. The question shouldn’t be “is it bad for you” but “is it worse for you than 99 other things you do in a day”. And vaping nicotine is “almost certainly bad for you” because of the nicotine, and nicotine is a known quantity - we know how bad it is and isn’t. We don’t have evidence that the mechanism of vaping is bad for you, and there’s no “almost certainly” on that.
And the truth is, I have problems with people who lean on “poorly understood” for vaping. Evidence shows vaping as a mechanism (for THC as it were) going back over 2000 years to ancient Egypt. Widespread use of hookahs started in the 19th century and has tons mechanically in common with modern vaporization. There are some differences, but short of a few badly-designed vapes that let air reach the lungs while superheated, it looks a lot like people are saying “not well understood” because they cannot seem to “understand” bad things and they don’t want to say good things. We have TONS of research precedent around room-temperature air with vaporized herbs in it.
If I were going to imbibe nicotine (or CBD or THC for that matter), I would probably prefer to vape it. I think the stigma against vaping needs to step aside for the vaccine research considering using vapes as an alternative to needle injection.
Hookah is pretty bad for you too, my friend. From Wikipedia, emphasis mine:
The major health risks of smoking tobacco, cannabis, opium and other drugs through a hookah include exposure to toxic chemicals, carcinogens and heavy metals that are not filtered out by the water,[3][8][9][10][11] alongside those related to the transmission of infectious diseases and pathogenic bacteria when hookahs are shared.[3][9][12][13] Hookah and waterpipe use is a global public health concern, with high rates of use in the populations of the Middle East and North Africa as well as in young people in the United States, Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia.[3][8][9][10][11]
If the best you can say is “it’s pretty much a mini hookah, don’t worry”, then I’m going back to the best you can say for it is that it’s poorly understood. Vaping doesn’t burn anything, unlike a hookah, but the vaporized oils still contain toxins and novel toxins not in the smoke from cigarettes or hookah. The health consequences of that are not well understood, but are probably not as bad as cigarette smoking. That’s the best we’ve got.
I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said we have a lot more context than people want to pretend about vaping in general.
And I’m not trying to say “it’s a mini hookah”, nor am I trying to say you should vape.
Vaping doesn’t burn anything, unlike a hookah, but the vaporized oils still contain toxins and novel toxins not in the smoke from cigarettes or hookah
If they contain toxins, we probably know quite a bit about those toxins right now. But what about pure vaporized solids? In the CBD and Cannabis community, dry herb vaporizing is the hot new thing specifically because 99% of complaints about vaping being unhealthy are irrelevant. All they do is get the herbs hot without burning it, run it through cooling, and inhale it. I laugh, but I used to do that with lavender with an aromatic herb heating unit.
The health consequences of that are not well understood, but are probably not as bad as cigarette smoking. That’s the best we’ve got.
Despite your incredulity, you really haven’t shown that. The consequences are not perfectly understood, but we understand enough to start making educated opinions about vaping. Even your points about hookahs work towards that, with the worst cons being that you still get Carbon Monoxide and the intensity of Nicotine is high. The problem is that we don’t want to tell people that the educated opinion is “probably better for you than that glazed donut”
Nicotine is one of the safest stimulants we know, up there with caffeine in terms of safety. There’s little meaningful reason to ban nicotine. You’re more likely to harm yourself with any number of other things we readily allow.
The addiction potential of nicotine alone is also far lower than people assume, because smoking is highly addictive both due to the rituals and the other substances involved. I tried to get used to nicotine via patches years back to use as a safe stimulant, and not only did I not get addicted, I couldn’t get used to it (and I was not willing to get myself used to smoking, given the harm that involves). That’s not to say you can’t develop addictions to patches or vapes etc. too, but much more easily when it’s as a substitution for smoking than “from scratch”.
Restrictions on delivery methods that are harmful or not well enough understood, and combining nicotine with other substances that make the addiction and harm potential greater, sure.
Nicotine is one of the safest stimulants we know, up there with caffeine in terms of safety. There’s little meaningful reason to ban nicotine.
this is from a 2015 article i found on the NIH library:
Nicotine poses several health hazards. There is an increased risk of cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal disorders. There is decreased immune response and it also poses ill impacts on the reproductive health. It affects the cell proliferation, oxidative stress, apoptosis, DNA mutation by various mechanisms which leads to cancer. It also affects the tumor proliferation and metastasis and causes resistance to chemo and radio therapeutic agents. The use of nicotine needs regulation. The sale of nicotine should be under supervision of trained medical personnel.
source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/
in case you think i might be cherry picking, here’s something from johns hopkins, and here’s a source from the cdc. here’s something recent from harvard for good measure.
edit: i should be clear that the other sources don’t say exactly the same things as the NIH one, but they do talk about how nicotine itself is very addictive, and they talk about some of the harm it can cause
The links from John Hopkins, the CDC and Harvard all focus on vaping, and so are irrelevant to the question of nicotine rather than the delivery methods.
The first link has nothing wrong in it. It’s correct nicotine is toxic. So is caffeine - the LD50 of caffeine in humans is reasonably high, many grams. To the issue of ingestion, the issue is toxicity at doses people are likely to deal with.
To the cancer links, again without looking at delivery methods, this is meaningless. To let me quote one small part:
Thus, the induced activation of nAChRs in lung and other tissues by nicotine can promote carcinogenesis by causing DNA mutations[26] Through its tumor promoter effects, it acts synergistically with other carcinogens from automobile exhausts or wood burning and potentially shorten the induction period of cancers[43] [Table 2].
This makes sense. Don’t inhale lots of particulates combined with nicotine in other words. There are also many other parts of the article that are useful. E.g. it’s perfectly reasonable to accept that e.g. if you are on chemo you should stay off nicotine, and if you breastfeed you should stay off nicotine.
What the article does not show is that nicotine, as opposed to delivery methods like inhalation, is much worse than other drugs we’re perfectly fine with.
I’ll note that the article also includes things in its conclusion that it has categorically not cites studies in support of. E.g. it just assumes the addiction potential is proven (it is, but putting that in the conclusion of a paper without citing sources is really poor form, especially in a paper claiming to set out the issues with nicotine in isolation rather than smoking).
It also tried to drive up the scare factor by pointing out its toxicity at doses irrelevant for human consumption (e.g. as an insecticide; if wildly irrelevant doses should be considered, then we could write the same paper about how apples should be banned because they contain cyanide).
The “Materials and methods” section also goes on to say “Studies that evaluated tobacco use and smoking were excluded” but then goes on to make multiple arguments on the basis of harm caused by smoking (e.g. “Nicotine plays a role in the development of emphysema in smokers, by decreasing elastin in the lung parenchyma and increasing the alveolar volume”) and cites a paper focused on smoking, in direct contradiction of the claim they made (“Endoh K, Leung FW. Effects of smoking and nicotine on the gastric mucosa: A review of clinical and experimental evidence. Gastroenterology. 1994;107:864–78.”)
So, yes, if you make claims about how you’re going to address nicotine rather than smoking, and then go on to address smoking and other means of inhalation intermingled with the rest, and if you leap to conclusions you’ve not cited works in support of, and if you throw out risks without linking them causally to nicotine, you can make nicotine look very bad.
They also end with subjective statements they’ve not even attempted to support properly. E.g. they’ve gone from “here is why it’s dangerous” to “it should be restricted”, but if that was valid logic, we should restrict sales of apples too, most cleaning agents, all caffeinated products, housepaint, paint thinners, and a host of other things, it’s a specious argument and fitting that such a badly argued paper ends with it. That this passed peer review is an incredible indictment of the journal which published it.
That doesn’t mean nicotine is risk-free, but compared to other things we’re happy to ingest, I stand by my statement. But don’t inhale it.
The links from John Hopkins, the CDC and Harvard all focus on vaping, and so are irrelevant to the question of nicotine rather than the delivery methods.
they do focus on vaping, that does not mean they are irrelevant to the question of nicotine. from the cdc link:
Nicotine is highly addictive and can harm adolescent brain development, which continues into the early to mid-20s.
there are also sections of that page titled “Why Is Nicotine Unsafe for Kids, Teens, and Young Adults?” and “How Does Nicotine Addiction Affect Youth Mental Health?” that focus only on nicotine.
from the harvard article:
Nicotine is highly addictive and can affect the developing brain, potentially harming teens and young adults.
from johns hopkins:
Nicotine is the primary agent in regular cigarettes and e-cigarettes, and it is highly addictive. It causes you to crave a smoke and suffer withdrawal symptoms if you ignore the craving. Nicotine is a toxic substance. It raises your blood pressure and spikes your adrenaline, which increases your heart rate and the likelihood of having a heart attack.
Both e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes contain nicotine, which research suggests may be as addictive as heroin and cocaine.
to your second point
To the cancer links, again without looking at delivery methods, this is meaningless.
i agree that it would be better to focus only on nicotine. i disagree that ignoring delivery methods is “meaningless”. form the johns hopkins article:
And, getting hooked on nicotine often leads to using traditional tobacco products down the road.
this is only to say that the cancer bit is not irrelevant.
This makes sense. Don’t inhale lots of particulates combined with nicotine in other words.
the part you quoted says that nicotine acts as an accelerator for the development of cancers from other sources, including things like car exhaust. these carcinogens are widespread in the modern world, so accelerating the development of cancer associated with them is a bad thing. eg, car exhaust fumes are everywhere.
I’ll note that the article also includes things in its conclusion that it has categorically not cites studies in support of.
i agree, this is bad. the problem you brought up with the “materials and methods” section is also bad. i’m not trying to defend the article holistically, i’m even particularly attached to that source (which is why i included a few different ones). the only reason i picked that article was that it explains some of the harmful effects of nicotine, and then backs them with citations. the article did this by reviewing “90 relevant articles” from PubMed and Medline, then discussing what those articles found - and these are the parts of the article i was interested in. i probably wouldn’t use this approach if i were writing an academic paper on the subject, but i think it’s fine for arguing on the internet that nicotine isn’t “one of the safest stimulants we know”. (i also included a few different sources to counteract the limitations of this approach.)
That doesn’t mean nicotine is risk-free, but compared to other things we’re happy to ingest, I stand by my statement.
your statements were
Nicotine is one of the safest stimulants we know, up there with caffeine in terms of safety.
and
The addiction potential of nicotine alone is also far lower than people assume,
i think the second statement was thoroughly debunked by the sources i’ve included: they all say nicotine is highly addictive, and one of them says it’s “as addictive as heroin and cocaine”. i think the sources i’ve shared also discredit the idea that nicotine is “up there with caffeine in terms of safety”. i’m not trying to say nicotine is extremely dangerous, but rather that its danger is underestimated.
they do focus on vaping, that does not mean they are irrelevant to the question of nicotine. from the cdc link:
To this and your subsequent points, these claims are not backed up by sources in the pages you linked to, and as we’ve seen from the other paper as well, there’s good reason to be cautious about assuming their claims are separating the effects of nicotine from the effects of the delivery method, especially given every single source actually cited by the CDC article is about smoking. Neither the Johns Hopkins or Harvard article cites any sources on nicotine alone that I can see.
i disagree that ignoring delivery methods is “meaningless”. form the johns hopkins article:
And, getting hooked on nicotine often leads to using traditional tobacco products down the road.
A claim that is not backed by sources, and has divorced this from delivery method. E.g. how many people starts with gum or a patch and goes on to tobacco? I can certainly see there being some transfer from vaping to tobacco, but that is very different from the blanket claim and illustrates the problem with these sources that fail to disambiguate and extrapolates very wide claim from sources that looks at specific modes of use.
the part you quoted says that nicotine acts as an accelerator for the development of cancers from other sources, including things like car exhaust. these carcinogens are widespread in the modern world, so accelerating the development of cancer associated with them is a bad thing. eg, car exhaust fumes are everywhere.
Yes, inhaling nicotine is bad. That we can agree on, and the source supports the limited claim that if you get nicotine in a way that binds to cites in your lungs, that is bad. The sources do not provide evidence that this risk is present for other modes of use. Maybe it is, but they’ve not shown that.
i agree, this is bad. the problem you brought up with the “materials and methods” section is also bad. i’m not trying to defend the article holistically, i’m even particularly attached to that source (which is why i included a few different ones).
But that article is the best of the sources you gave. The others cite nothing of relevance to the claim I made that I can see after going through their links.
the article did this by reviewing “90 relevant articles” from PubMed and Medline, then discussing what those articles found
But the problem is that not nearly all of those “90 relevant articles” are relevant to their claim, and so they start off by misrepresenting what they’re about to do. They then fail to quantify their claim in any way that supports their conclusion. They back up some specific claims without quantifying them (e.g. I can back up the claim that apples can be lethal, but you’d need vast quantities to get enough cyanide from an apple to harm you, so a claim they can be lethal in isolation is meaningless) or unpacking whether they are risks from nicotine in general, or nicotine via a specific delivery method. This is an ongoing problem with research on this subject.
They have not provided an argument for how any of those “90 relevant articles” supports their conclusion.
i think the second statement was thoroughly debunked by the sources i’ve included: they all say nicotine is highly addictive, and one of them says it’s “as addictive as heroin and cocaine”. i think the sources i’ve shared also discredit the idea that nicotine is “up there with caffeine in terms of safety”. i’m not trying to say nicotine is extremely dangerous, but rather that its danger is underestimated.
The say that, but they don’t back it up. Ironically, pointing to heroin is interesting, because the addiction potential of heroin has also been subject to a lot of fearmongering and notoriously exaggerated, and we’ve known this for nearly half a century – a seminal study of addiction in Vietnam war vets found the vast majority of those with extensive heroin use in Vietnam just stopped cold turkey when they returned to the US and the vast majority didn’t relapse, the opposite of what the authors assumed going into the study. A study that was commissioned as part of Nixons then-newly started politically motivated and racist War of Drugs with the intent of providing evidence of how bad it was.
(see https://www.mayooshin.com/heroin-vietnam-war-veterans-addiction which gives a reasonable account of Robins study, and gives full reference to the paper)
That’s also not to say that heroin isn’t dangerous or seriously addictive because it is. Nobody should use heroin. But it’s also frequently used as a means of exaggerating by implication because peoples idea of the addiction potential of heroin is largely way out of whack with reality and heavily context-dependent. So when someone drags out a heroin comparison without heavy caveats, that’s reason to assume there is a good chance they’re full of bullshit.
In other words: It’s perfectly possible that some ways of taking nicotine can be as addictive as heroin, but that doesn’t tell us what most people think it does. E.g. UK hospitals sometimes use heroin (as diamorphine; its generic name) for post-op pain management because it’s far better than many alternatives.
The sources you’ve given do not present any support for claims that nicotine considered separate from delivery methods is particularly risky. They do provide support for claims it’s dangerous when smoked, and possibly dangerous when inhaled even via vaping, and the takeaway that you should generally avoid inhaling stuff other than clean air without good reason is good. The other claims about nicotine in general do not appear to be backed up at all.
i’m not trying to say nicotine is extremely dangerous, but rather that its danger is underestimated.
I find the notion that the danger is underestimated hilarious when one of the claims used a comparison with heroin to fearmonger.
Your source, if anything, is evidence to me of the opposite.
I didn’t read this novel but you’re arguing nicotine isn’t unhealthy and that makes you wrong
“I haven’t read this, but let me misrepresent what the thing I didn’t read says”.
I have not argued it isn’t unhealthy. I have argued it’s one of the safer stimulants we have, unless you ingest it in a way that is dangerous (e.g. inhalation). That does not mean it’s free of downsides, but neither are a whole lot of things we still decide it’s fine to use.
Next time maybe try abstaining from replying to something you’ve not bothered to read.
You just confirmed what I said. “One of the safest”
And yeah you wrote way more shit than you should ever expect people to read. Maybe abstain from writing 10,000 words ever but especially if you’re wrong
I tried to get used to nicotine via patches years back to use as a safe stimulant, and not only did I not get addicted, I couldn’t get used to it
Well of course not. You weren’t getting the dopamine rush of a large acute dose rushing from your lungs directly to your brain in a matter of seconds.
What the heck kind of hot take is this?
Regardless, the dangers – including ease of addiction – are well-known and are scientifically proven. Your anecdata of one does not change that.
Well of course not. You weren’t getting the dopamine rush of a large acute dose rushing from your lungs directly to your brain in a matter of seconds.
So in other words, you’re saying I didn’t pick the right delivery method to get me addicted. Which was my point.
Regardless, the dangers – including ease of addiction – are well-known and are scientifically proven. Your anecdata of one does not change that.
Missing the point: 1) a large part of the addiction for most people is down to delivery, not nicotine itself - something you yourself used as an argument against my anecdote above -, and most of the research focuses on that. 2) the remaining addiction potential of nicotine is real, and proven, but it’s also nothing particularly special compared to other things we’re fine with seeing the addiction to as ranging from a nuisance (e.g. caffeine) to a problem that doesn’t justify prohibition (any more), like alcohol.
My point was not that it’s impossible to get addicted to nicotine, but that confusing nicotine vs. nicotine via a given delivery method is not helpful.
Well what’s wrong with nicotine? In itself it’s not worse than booze. It’s all the other crap they add that makes it so terrible
Hi from the depths of a nicotine addiction and struggling to quit. Its a worthless chemical that gets more expensive everyday and my brain SCREAMS at me for a fix if I try to go more than even a few hours. At least heroin gets you high.
A lot of the alternatives are already owned by Big Tobacco
That isn’t always the case though. Just look at climate scientists.
Some just want to ban smoking because they see how much damage it has done in their community.
But I’d also like to know if there was any vested interests.
I’m not sure what this has to do with climate scientists. What am I supposed to be looking at?
Rishi has a history of making legislation to benefit the companies run or owned by friends and family. I would be extremely surprised if this didn’t also have a similar angle.
Just some good old “whataboutism”. Maybe he sprinkles some climate-change denial into some prohibition discussion to distract us?
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I’m not so sure
Cigarettes are not often seen with the same attraction as other drugs
The draw from younger potential customers is greatly outweighed by far less harmful stuff like weed or even shrooms
Cigarettes are not often seen with the same attraction as other drugs
And the best way to change that is by making them illegal.
For something to be attractive on the black market it’d have to be attractive on its own.
Cigarettes have abjectly lost that race ever since the campaign of trotting every lung cancer patient able to be found in front of the cameras was normalized.
Especially when the supposed upshot of it is something you can get for much cheaper and way less dangerously with weed.
Yeah if smoking is due to infuriate the grown-ups then someone will pick it up!
I don’t think they’re going to give people twenty years for selling cigarettes to minors.
I think chances are we are at a stage where most would-be smokers would just opt for vaping, given that while it sounds like he wants some restrictions on that as well, it doesn’t like that’d be subjected to the year over year age increase?
So we would eliminate smoking the same way we eliminated drug use…by making it illegal.
/S if necessary
I’m generally pro legalization of drugs, but will say this is likely to be much more effective than the war on drugs ever was.
You don’t outlaw possession, just the sales age. You’ll see significantly fewer new starters as time goes because after 20 years 40 year olds that can buy wont be bothered to support fresh 18 year olds looking to start a new habit or whatever. The ones that really want to start can buy from abroad without any form of punishment.
I think it’s different because I don’t think anyone turns to their first cigarette looking to try and attain some new feeling. It’s usually one of those things like… My friends were so I grabbed one from them and blah blah.
I would say I’m for the progressive increase in age, and I wrestle with my own hypocrisy seeing that I support legalizing other drugs. But maybe that’s rooted in the basis that I’ve never had a pothead or dude on shrooms negatively impact me. Cigarettes however–littered everywhere, get smoke in your face, etc
people could easily say they hate the smell of weed - is that a good reason to outlaw?
I keep thinking of the rat experiments where rats in cages took drugs until they died but happy rats in rat societies turned away from drugs.
I think people take drugs, including cigarettes, to cope. If they didn’t need to cope with terrible conditions, they wouldn’t use the drugs (except a few outliers). To me, taking away people’s cope is punching down.
We can’t get rid of tobacco like we can quaaludes or some synthetic drug. It’s going to be available to people. The question is do you want to create a huge black market for it (where people can easily lace cigarettes with fentanal, bonus? ), or do you want to address the reasons that people chain smoke?
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Is there any evidence to suggest a gradual ban actually prevents a black market?
It’s worth noting that even the happy rats would go get the occasional hit, they just weren’t dependent on the drugs. They did it for fun once in a while, not frequently as an escape from reality. This is how healthy people enjoy drugs.
That doesn’t change the end result though. Addiction is the result of profound despair, not the cause of it. Giving people hope and support keeps them from needing to escape.
I think people want to do things they are not allowed to. They will go through the effort to find a way. In a lot of states that legalized Marijuana, its use went down after legalization. Once it was normalized, some people lost interest. I think the opposite happens when you make it illegal, you’re basically making it cool again. This isn’t just drug use, it’s with a lot of things, if you forbid it, people will suddenly want that thing more than they did before. Religion comes to mind. Authoritarian countries that want to stamp out a religion or all religion often cause a religious resurgence. There’s nothing quite like being told you can’t do something to make you want to do it or visa versa. People are naturally oppositional.
Yeah, lots of bad faith comparisons to drug legalization. People outright against age-gated laws. So I guess that means it’s ok for 4 year olds to drive around?
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few hours ago
Smoking’s already dramatically fallen out of popularity with younger people, being replaced by vaping. So I don’t think it really matters what they do at this point - smoking’s a dinosaur waiting to die.
Although vaping is far more popular and at least better than smoking, it’s still actively bad for health. I’d be interested to see how a similar policy to ban vapes would go over in the west like they’re trying in Taiwan.
Fast food, alcohol, motorcycles, and Instagram are also bad for your health. I’m not sure how vaping compares. Vaping is definitely easier to demonize.
Motorcycles aren’t bad for your health. Crashing them is, but just driving them isn’t, even doing it a lot. Unlike the other things you mentioned where doing them a lot is unhealthy.
Vaping isn’t bad for your health, it’s what you put into the vape that might be. There are already commonly used medical technologies that are adjacent to vaping, and many researchers think we will be able to use vaping in the future to replace hypodermic needles in some situations.
They are statistically bad for your health.
By your own argument, you would agree with the statement: “Smoking cigarettes isn’t bad for your health. Lung cancer is.”
Nope, doesn’t need to end in lung cancer for it to be bad.
Take it this way:
You can drive motorcycle for hours every day for years and not take any health casualties from it.
You can’t smoke cigarettes every day for years and not take any health casualties from it.
No. You are another pedantic commenter. Stop.
Lmao. Just because I disagree with you? ^^
That is indeed true, but don’t forget that vaping addiction comes from the nicotine inside it that gets into your body physically. Riding a motorcycle or being on Instagram are still addictive but they don’t “force” it upon you
We get it, you vape.
I actually don’t vape. I just see a vice that seems relatively harmless and I don’t think we should demonize it. Even if vape people are annoying.
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This article is why I’m against demonizing vapes.
Regularly, you see these news articles about illegal vapes getting people sick. Because they are illegal and unregulated.
Regularly, governments and media try to use those revelations to attack the legal vape industry, which works quite hard to make sure not to ever release vapes with high lead, nickel, or (the famous one) Vitamin E. The whole popcorn lung thing was practically an ad campaign where I live. They kept (accidentally I’m sure) leaving out that NOT A SINGLE ONE vape pen in my area that had Vitamin E in it came from our smoke shops or legal dispensaries.
Why? To demonize vapes.
I have a sister who vaped for a year before she got bored of it. I am grateful that we had a regulated industry that made sure the vapes she got her hand on weren’t going to really hurt her.
actively bad for health
Interesting turn of phrase. What is “actively bad for health”, really? Experts seem to be pretty convinced that as bad as Vaping might be, it’s not as bad as alcohol. And we in the US know what happens when you try to ban alcohol. I have Prohibition to thank for the incredible Whiskey industry of today.
Have you been literally anywhere in Europe? Smoking is not a dinosaur waiting to die
I keep hearing this and yet when I’m in Europe the amount of people smoking seems to go from tiny to slightly less tiny. Sure there are more smokers, but it’s not a significant portion of the population anymore in most places. I just traveled all over France, which I thought was famous for being a smoking country and I noticed how seldom I was even around a smoker. Outside of Belarus I don’t think smoking is even that significant anymore in Europe.
Europeean countries are thick with anoke compared to where I live. I can walk the streets and never smell tobacco smoke (except the areas in Oslo where many people from other countries in europe or from the middle east lives).
If you walk in the street in Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warzaw etc, people smoke more and you can smell it everywhere.
Not sure where you’re comparing to but compared to the US the difference is stark. I expect to see the occasional smoker on your average US city block, but in Europe it feels like I cannot go outside any building without the doors being surrounded by smokers. Anecdotally my experience is very different to yours and also this map indicates my experience is not isolated. Compared to the US just about all the European countries have a higher density of smokers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_consumption_by_country
I will say that in the rural US the smoking rate “feels” higher than even the European countries I’ve visited. Maybe you’re from the rural US? It feels like the rate in US cities is extremely lower than in the rural south
I was going to link the same wiki to argue the opposite. Twice as much as tiny is still small. What that wiki article shows to me is that tobacco use is way way down, the 12th country on that list only has double the tobacco use of the US. Considering 60 years ago about half of adults smoked in the westernized world it’s way down and it’s been on a constant decline. Several European countries are only marginally higher than the US and ~4 are lower.
Though I must admit, looking at more data, it’s still higher than I would have guessed, about 12% in the USA when I would have guessed 5%. I live in a city.
I don’t know why suddenly the bar for comparison is the world generally decades ago. We were comparing countries. My point stands, most European countries have higher smoking rates than in the US. Even if there are a few exceptions.
Yeah the only thing raising the smoking age will do is make smoking cool again.
Everything about smoking is cool. Especially the part where it devastates your body before killing you in the most terrible way possible, drowning in your own fluids. Kinda hoping on the world ending so I can say fuck it and pick it up again.
Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.
-Brooke Shields
Hey, but you get to gorge on morphine before drowing in your own fluids /s
Smoking is redundant today. Kids are getting enough cancer from the environment already.
It’s not redundant. Harms compound. It’s not like people max out their carcinogenic index or something. 🙄
Pretty much anything in the state of California
This product is known to the state of California
Why not making the warnings be available elsewhere?
That law is an excellent example of knowledge vs wisdom. Knowledge is knowing that some substances may be carcinogenic. Wisdom is knowing that the dosage of a carcinogen is so low it hardly poses any risk.
To be fair though that’s hard to put on a warning label and harder to explain.
That wasn’t funny or clever.
What is funny or clever, oh great wise bobman of unilem of org?
Lol, why do you people always get upset when someone says something isn’t funny?
It was just a rude and aggressive thing to say intended to make someone feel bad about IMO a valid (or at worst innocuous) comment.
Not really. It’s to show them the reality that some people think what they said wasn’t funny.
You seem to think that it’s only acceptable to say a joke is funny, but not that it isn’t.
You seem to think anyone cares about what you think is or isn’t funny.
What? Lol.
Unfortunately these days, you’ll find that reality is neither
True anyways
From someone who has smoked and quit, I was really blind sided by how addictive nicotine was. People talk about adults and what they put in there body but nicotine really is a different monster
I never felt the same buzz after my first cigarette, it felt like I was fucking drunk after my first smoke lol.
After that I was basically just chasing the dragon, I was smoking about 15-30 cigarettes a day for about 1-2 years. Never again.
Huh. I gave it a try, and while drunk, i just went on and on, but overall it just smelled so bad that it never became a habit. I guess i’m lucky
Some people definitely don’t respond the same and it real does take 1-3 days to really start to notice for some people
What I don’t see is why smoking should be the main nicotine delivery device when it can easily be done without the cancerous smoke.
Isolated nicotine is apparently not cancerous. We just choose to enforce the continued coupling of nicotine and cancer, and refuse to permit alternatives that decouple if from cancer if their dosage isn’t pitiful.
“Either get the weak alternatives, or the cancerous ones.”
The moderate non-cancerous alternatives are illegal.
I see angry wankers want to moan for the sake of moaning.
Eliminating smoking is a goos thing! I’ll take my wins whenever possible, doesn’t happen all that often.
But but there are other things that are also bad and if one proposal doesn’t solve everything it is complete trash!!!
Yea not everything is a partisan issue, and this seems like a good thing? Antismoking efforts have largely been successful in a lot of places.
It’s not one of those things where someone is choosing to harm themselves only. Smoking affects the people around you
So many people like to portray everything as a ‘personal choice’ while ignoring all said implications to others. Very rarely does something only actually impact you.
Banning it for everyone is OK, telling some people that they can’t ever because they were born too late is silly, discriminatory and will inevitably create a flourishing black market.
“If I don’t like it, then neither should anyone else!” - you
If I never have to smell cigarette smoke again and also no one ever uses the medical system to cure the consequences of smoking then I don’t care. Otherwise I am all for this.
First and foremost, people have the right to slowly kill themselves with cigarettes as long as it isn’t harming innocent bystanders.
Arguably more importantly, the proposed ban is worryingly dystopian.
Finally, agreeing with anything Sunak does is unforgivable. And in this case would reflect neo-liberal sympathies.
as long as it isn’t harming innocent bystanders.
Considering that’s exactly what second hand smoke does, I really don’t see what point you’re trying to make.
What they are trying to say is to ban it in public areas, but not at home.
But consumption isn’t being banned…
First and foremost, people have the right to slowly kill themselves with cigarettes as long as it isn’t harming innocent bystanders.
That’s the thing with smoking though, second hand smoke is a big problem, especially for vulnerable people
Except smokers always insist on slowly murdering everyone around them and littering everything in their path. If you want to smoke in a hermetically sealed room and not get close to me for at least 6 hours after, fine by me.
I mean, I understand that it smells really bad to non smokers. On the other hand, statements like this seem so ridiculously over the top that it makes me question you as a person.
We live in car country - assuming you are German as well -, with a wide variety of unhealthy crap that you have to inhale on a daily basis. Smog, exhaust fumes, half the food we can buy is unhealthy.
Honestly I don’t understand how people can be so worked up about smokers in that context. Is it because those are people you can bitch at and boss around, instead of nebulous corps and governments who ignore your calls for climate action and environment protection?
Otherwise it makes no sense. Smokers are already segregated away from non smokers nowadays, what about their freedom to live (or die) as they want? Your freedom not to smell unpleasant things doesn’t trump that. Me farting in your vicinity doesn’t constitute harm to your individual rights.
Your freedom ends where mine begins. You are free to kill yourself, but not to blow cancerous substances on top of me - and yes, that should include cars.
I generally agree, just that it seems cheap to pile on smokers like they are some sort of lepers. Also you are free to go somewhere else when around a smoker. Their habit doesn’t make them second class citizens, or should I say your freedom ends where theirs begins?
If we want clean air we have to start with the actual polluters, not the easy pickings who are just random people. That’s like, obsessively worrying about your personal climate impact when the vast, vast majority of climate change is caused by just a handful of corporations.
Also you are free to go somewhere else when around a smoker.
Not always.
Also you are free to go somewhere else when around a smoker.
That’s not how it works.
to create ‘smoke-free’ generation
Of course, not counting the smoke, ash, and other toxic oxidized chemicals that will be kicked up by gas and diesel vehicles with his scrapping the HS2 Manchester line. What a fucking idiot. “Oh no, we brexited ourselves so hard that we’re poor now and can’t afford to build infrastructure that would stand to enrich multiple cities for hundreds of years!”
Such classic smooth brained thatcherite conservatives. It’s mind numbing that people keep voting for them.
Calling him smooth brained is looking past the fact that it’s just plain corruption. He has interests in the oil industry, and they are against public rail. Hold him to account for what he is, a criminal.
Honestly he’s more corrupt than Boris Johnson which is saying something.
Of course. Why else would a billionaire want the job of leading a country?
I mean, Sunak is a complete and utter bellend and cancelling half of HS2 is a ridiculous and nonsensical move.
But I think that the good old idiom about broken clocks might just apply here. Smoking bans are a good thing.
Yep, arresting a 47yo for smoking will be very on point for a broken clock.
Keep in mind, this will be policed only on poor ethnic minorities. Rich white guys in their private club s will still smoke with impunity.
Keep in mind, this will be policed only on poor ethnic minorities. Rich white guys in their private club s will still smoke with impunity.
This is the real answer right here - this is just another poverty tax/punishment.
I don’t smoke, never have, but I know why people smoke, and it’s now (that it’s no longer seen as “cool”) almost exclusively to try and relieve a tiny bit of the mountain of stress that existing in the world today (especially as part of a marginalised group) brings, and there are a million better ways to reduce the need to smoke, and improve the health outcomes of smokers (eventually, hopefully, to the point where they are able to reduce smoking or stop altogether).
Sunak is looking for a quick “win” for headlines and distraction, not to actually help people live healthier better lives (E: just seen his transphobic comments, which only reinforce this point). Why target the source of the problem when you can slap a band aid on it and bask in your own glory for a couple of days before your next bit of corruption is exposed?
It’s hard to believe so many people vote for them
It’s mind numbing that people keep voting for them.
Well recent polling would suggest that they no longer will be voting for them.
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He’s still an MP, so those in his riding would have voted for him, and the Tory party members voted for him, and the rest of the country voted for members of his party that include Lettuce Head and BoJo, so they did vote for a numbskull from his party to be in power.
The fact that I have no idea what her name is but still know exactly who you’re talking about when you say Lettuce Head is endlessly amusing to me.
Or do it like Germany: make vaping extremely expensive so people go back to smoking. Stupid.
Absolutely obscene and short sighted what the German government have done. Everything is taxed per ml, even if it has no nicotine in it. As you say it’s cheaper to actually smoke.
So are you for or against Sunak’s proposal?
Ah yes, because making drugs illegal has worked so well in the past.
Setting age limits on substance use is a little different from criminalizing possession/use. In the case of smoking, it has helped reduce rates. This is something backed by people working in public health, who also support decriminalization for possession and bringing in safe consumption sites. It’s all about finding the right approach for an issue.
I’d rather focus on calling out the OTHER bad stuff his government is doing, instead of turning this one partisan based on which party introduced it
It’s not really an age limit when you’ll never reach it, it’s just gradual criminalization.
That’s not true. It’s a ban on the sale not possession or consumption. The end user is not being criminalized.
Theoretically there’s nothing stopping from importation (barring implementation of another law).
But this isn’t am age limit, its using an age limit as a hack to basically grandfather in a smoking ban. It is about finding the right approach, and this ain’t it.
Read the article for fucks sake.
They’re not making the drug illegal, just cigarettes. People who want nicotine still have other options.
It’s like how no one goes out of their way to make/sell pure ethanol, because you can still buy beer or vodka.
That’s still prohibition… it’s flat out dumb. A kid isn’t smoking a $10 cigar…
Afaik NZ has already implemented such a rule.
It has.
Finally something sensible from this guy. Last week it was all big auto lobby nonsense.
He should also star making crimes illegal so that they can live in a society without crime /s.
But what will boebert do while jerking off dudes at movie theaters?
This won’t affect her as Sunak is the Prime Minister of the UK.
No, no, they have a point.
Fucking surveillance state you have there
It’s a camera… in private property…
I don’t see anything wrong with having cameras in cinemas and theatres.
You say that, but yet bringing a camera is guaranteed to get you kicked out of a cinema.
I meant a security camera.
And no shit you would get kicked out for taking a regular one. They don’t want you to record the movie.
Ohhhhhh, is that why.
I mean yeah, why else would they not want you taking a camera?
She was vaping, not smoking.
She went from suck to blow
no difference
Broken clock right twice a day type of deal with Sunak
