Exclusive: Sources say law could gradually increase smoking age to ultimately prevent sales to people born after certain year

Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.

Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.

  • Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social
    12·
    9 months ago

    American prohibition and the war on drugs has shown that toal band like that really just make consumption worse while piling a whole new slew of problems onto an existing issue.

    • Wage_slave@lemmy.ml
      2·
      9 months ago

      I wholeheartedly agree with ya there, but would smoking be carried on in the same fashions as drugs and booze?

      I quit years ago after thirty years of smoking and while it was hard as fuck, and i was nasty as a human for a while, I didn’t get the urge to find plug for smokes or off up ass for a pack of butts. Or kill anyone for that matter.

      Here in Canada the jump in price has reservation smokes selling like fucking crazy. My old Racist as fuck neighbor bent his morals just enough to say his buying them was justified. I am pretty sure old Dar would drop and blow a herpes staff for a smoke, so I am probably already wrong to question it.

      • Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social
        4·
        9 months ago

        While people may not be willing to kill or rob someone to get a pack of smokes, there will absolutely be a black market for them that will be rife with unsavory characters that will. I live an hour away from a recreational marijuana state and it has destroyed the local black market for pot as anyone who wants to get high can just drive across the state line and get their own pot. No more sketchy drug dealers pushing other substances, no more police stings to catch teenagers buying dope.

        Buying controlled and reasonably dangerous substances from licensed retailers like a dispensary, grocery store, or even a gas station is a lot safer for everyone than trying to keep tabs on a black market. The danger of prohibition wasn’t alcoholics trying to find their next drink, it was mobsters like Capone trying to dominate the black market for popular goods.

        Edit since i misread what you meant: Sure tobacco is on it’s way out as is, but nicotine consumption is still skyrocketing. I dont see how banning tobacco sales for anyine born after a certain date like Sunak is proposing will help anything. People under 30 are already way less likely to smoke tobacco but consume unhealthy quantities of nicotine anyway.

    • KillAllPoorPeople@lemmy.world
      13·
      9 months ago

      This just isn’t true though. Other countries ban alcohol and it doesn’t turn into what happened during American alcohol prohibition. Nor does it mean banning needs to be done like it was done during that period either. You people gotta start thinking a bit deeper about stuff.