- Technically, the new law will raise the legal age requirement in the UK for buying cigarettes, cigars or tobacco, which is currently 18, by one year in every subsequent year, starting on January 1, 2027
- This will effectively mean that people born on or after January 1, 2009 will never be eligible to buy them
- Retailers will face financial penalties for selling the products to those not entitled to them
- The government will also be empowered to impose a new registration system for smoking and vaping products entering the country, seeking to improve oversight
- The bill will expand the UK’s indoor smoking ban to a series of outdoor public spaces, for instance in children’s playgrounds, outside schools and hospitals
- Most indoor spaces that are designated smoke-free will become vape-free as well
- Smoking in designated areas outside pubs and bars and other hospitality settings will remain permissible
- Smoking and vaping will remain legal in people’s homes
- Vaping will become illegal in cars if someone under the age of 18 is inside, to match existing rules on smoking
- Advertising for smoking and vaping products will be banned
- People aged 18 or older will remain eligible to purchase vaping products, but some items targeted at younger consumers like disposable vapes have already been outlawed as part of the program
I generally agree that prohibition doesn’t work, and is bad, but having an absolutist position like this is usually problematic. For example we have to restrict some people’s freedoms. Like some people want to harm or kill others, that should not be a freedom people have.
Most things in life have a lot of nuance, which means we can’t usually make blanket rule for things.
In saying all that… Prohibition usually doesn’t solve the issue, sometimes makes it worse, and often ends up hurting people who are already suffering (usually why they resort to harmful substances)
It’s not really about stopping people from smoking per se. I mean, that would be nice, but it’s not realistic. What this does is more heavily discourage smoking around others who do not consent to being forced to breath second hand smoke, since those people will now have an enforceable mechanism with which to punish that behaviour.
Hence the immediate follow-up sentence: “I can see the point for some of these restrictions, to provide a safe basis for other people around”. Basically, the old saying “one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins”.
Laws should be around to protect other people from external nuisance/danger, not for the express purpose of prohibition.
The parts about not being a nuisance for other/imposing onto them is nice. It will take forever to become a new society standard, though. In France, it’s been forbidden to smoke in public places like subway stations and bars for decades, but there’s still a lot of people doing it. But we’re slowly moving there.
However, forbidding people to smoke, period, will not prevent them from smoking, it just makes it illegal. That’s the part I’m not strongly agreeing with. There was the nuance.
And to be clear, my personal opinion on this topic is that smoking is batshit crazy and why would anyone do this to themselves, but I’d rather we go the education route and work toward a better environment for people to live in than going the “NO” route. Unfortunately, that’s not the way we’re going.
The issue is that they are NOT doing this for healthcare costs, or any other reason other than telling others what they can do. If it was for healthcare costs, it would be everyone, so you can rule that out from jump. So why did they say 18 and under, because they weren’t sure if they could get a large enough following to say yes is they went to high, so divide and conquer. Find enough people who don’t care about the minority, and they can get it to pass. Why 18… Because they mostly have no say. If we relabeled it to non-whites can’t buy cigarettes, people would be like woah that’s racist, but the attempt would be the same, trying to control what others can or can’t do while not restricting enough of the majority to lose their votes.
Under 18 can’t smoke is like saying under 30 can’t cat call people on the street, under 40 can’t slap their coworkers on the ass, under 50 can’t beat their children, and under 60 can’t rape minors.
Either they are all bad/wrong for society… and should be banned for all, or they are manipulating votes as a plot to slide something else by under peoples noses while playing it up to look like a good guy