UK plans to pass law banning anyone born after 2008 to buy or smoke cigarettes

PurpleDime:

I used to think that was true, but after researching the topic a couple of years back, I have a more nuanced position. That said, that’s a completely different conversation.

To be more specific I would say it depends on the drug. Is it weed or fentanyl, makes a huge difference.

Grapeg:

Absolutely dreadful, I am increasingly embarrased to be English. This is an infringement of bodily autonomy which ought to be a basic human right.

You are a bit wrong here, since the consumption is still legal and allowed. The selling is restricted. It has nothing to do with bodily autonomy rather than with social market economy.

where-are-my-SOCKS:

The UK at this point is a surveillance nanny state that has come off the rails. Next: prohibit more than one pint a week (unhealthy, costly for health insurance)

The comparison breaks a bit apart here, since you compare two different things together. The generational ban doesn’t take cigarettes away from anyone who currently legally smokes, doesn’t surveil anyone, and doesn’t criminalize possession or use. It restricts retail sale to people born after a certain date. While your example with alcohol criminalize the consumption.

PurpleDime:

Yes. My question is, is it fair to the people born in 2009? The People born in 2008 will forever have the right to buy and smoke cigarettes but not people born in 2009 and later.

This is not an uncommon pattern for laws around the world if you look at the pensions reforms as one example. But to not end this here in a whataboutism argument, one of the alternatives would be to prohibit the selling of cigarettes for everyone. Which would be a huge issue for people that are already addicted to nicotine. While becoming nicotine free does not take long (under seven days), most people would still need the help of a professional doctor. So a prohibition of selling, puts the healthcare in extreme pressure and might even make things worse.

Another alternative would be to make smoking less attractive, but how good does this actually work? In my country every pack of cigarettes needs to have one full site printed with a picture that shows what happens if you smoke too much. Mostly pretty ugly and disturbing pictures, however it did not have a big effect on the abuse of nicotine. So if even such thing like that can not hold people away from starting with cigarettes, what can?

Another possibility would be to try to regulate the industry. This might work, however I do possess any knowledge of how strong the cigarette industry in the UK is and how much leverage power they have.

PurpleDime:

I also hope the law applies to vaping, otherwise it is less likely to work. Some of my smoker friends have used vaping as a way to quit cigarettes, and it worked. They don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but they do vape which is still bad. Also vaping has become popular with a lot of young people who don’t smoke tobacco and never have.

The issues I see with vaping, at least in my country, is that the ads are designed so that especially young people and potentially people under 18 are feeling addressed by them. They do not explicitly target underage people, because this would be highly illegal here, but the ads still (intentionally) attracted minors.

Besides that you also have the issue that most vapes are highly toxic for the environment. A lot of e-waste and plastic that gets used once and then thrown away.

@PurpleDime Could you maybe change the title of your OP and remove the “or smoke” part. Because the law is, according to the BBC, not about the consumption rather than the selling.

Both the Commons and Lords have settled on a final draft of the “landmark” legislation that aims to stop anyone born after 1 January 2009 from taking up smoking by making it illegal for shops to sell them tobacco, to create a smoke-free generation.

(Quote from the linked BBC article.)