Smoking age should rise from 18, by one year every year - Rishi Sunak

aside from the issue of 'prohibition still doesn't work', i don't think giving kids or "underage" adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone

how to create a blackmarket with health issues

Sunak should start publicly smoking all the time, then it will be the lamest thing and teen smoking will crater.

Man the fuck up and outlaw it for everyone instead of this sneaky prohibition that only affect people that can't vote yet. It's such a cowardly, disingenuous way of doing it.

Cool, when does the minimum age for joining the military start to raise by one year every year?

NZ already did this and it is the most cowardly way to avoid political blowback.

There's plenty of other options for minimising smoking. A more altruistic way is by lifting people out of poverty and tackling social disintegration, since smokers are overwhelmingly poor and disaffected.

No no no, minimum age should increase by 360 days every year, that way people can still have hope that some day they'll be able to smoke. Staying true to how capitalism works.

If this is the only effort, it's weak. Better to also (or instead) tax each box by another 20 pounds. Kids don't have that money. They'll find other things to do.

“We operate a Check-74 policy. If you are lucky enough to look younger than 70, we will ask for ID when buying cigarettes”

This better not apply to vaping.

I vaped for a few years and then stopped. Quitting was pretty damn easy imo

New Zealand has done this

Rishi is just jealous that they aren't one of the cool kids

https://www.theonion.com/secondhand-smoke-linked-to-secondhand-coolness-1819564071

Back in my day we used to smoke up hill both ways in the rain and snow.

So he's nicking what newzeland did ok cool something that he's not going to profit from for a change atleast

As UK economy continues to crumble, Rishi is focusing on the real issues.

Not a smoker or wannabe one but if someone is just one year behind in their age, they'll never be able to legally smoke with this setup.

Big tobacco trying to kill big vape by making it exciting again to smoke and break the law

If he wanted it to work he could make cigarettes more lethal. Kill you in a couple of months type of thing.

(Clearly not a serious suggestion in case you wonder)

Save the people from themselves. They are too ignorant to have control of their bodies.

Sure are a lot of authoritarian apologists up in here today

I hate smoking stock photos. Clearly she has never smoked in her life.

Now do Australia

Because people have been more and more conditioned to obey year after year. To be absolute pushovers who never fight against the grain, never question groupthink, etc. Grandfathering the criminalization (using violent enforcement) of something like smoking a cigarette is a shining example of what's to come.

I agree that smoking is bad for you, having quit myself - but the idea of outlawing a plant / prohibiting humans who just happened to be born in one specific part of the world from burning it and inhaling the produced smoke just goes against my views on ethics.

Instead, why don't we fix the real problems? How about getting rid of capitalism, and thus the profit incentive to sell addictive substances for a huge markup? How about we fix this broken society that keeps pushing more and more people towards drugs such as nicotine, the tiny escape, and the little bit of stress relief they provide?

Drugs, from cigarettes to meth, are not the problem..

They're just a symptom.

The war on drugs is nothing more than an effort to sweep the real problems under the rug, and nothing less than coordinated violence targeted at people who are already suffering.

Fuck this.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Speaking at the Conservative party conference, Mr Sunak said he believed it was the right step to tackle the leading cause of preventable ill-health.

"Because without a significant change, thousands of children will start smoking in the coming years and have their lives cut short."

But Mr Sunak has decided to throw his backing behind it as a way of meeting the government's ambition for England to be smokefree by 2030 - defined as less than 5% of the population smoking.

The proposal on raising the age of sale of cigarettes is similar to laws being introduced in New Zealand, where buying tobacco products will remain banned for anyone born after 2008.

Mr Sunak also said the government would consider restricting the sale of disposable vapes and look at flavourings and packaging of the devices, to tackle the rising rates of children using them.

"If implemented, the prime minister will deserve great credit for putting the health of UK citizens ahead of the interests of the tobacco lobby."

The original article contains 577 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This is illegal. You can't make a law that discriminated based on age. This would be effective prohibition for some adults and not others.

Which means somebody's gonna have to fill the tax-hole (loss of government income) it creates...

Just fucking ban it already.

Smoking age should follow the age of boomers, age 80+