- 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 think people should be allowed to harm themselves with drugs of they want. Maybe I’m a radical.
Not as long as healthcare is a public cost.
The luxury of growing old is even costlier. Should we just withdraw old age treatment, or go full Logan’s Run?
Terrible argument
Can I also regulate what you eat and how much you exercise, how much booze and wine, etc? Or have we decided freedom and intellectual consistency were constructs of the 20th century?
You could try to encourage it. And they do, through taxes on booze and less taxes on healthy food.
None of that is the same thing as the government deciding for people what those people can and cannot do with their own goddamn bodies.
This is Basic Freedom 101 stuff.
No, the government should not have the right to arbitrarily bifurcate the population into people it allows to be free and people it does not.
It’s not illegal to smoke. But it’s illegal to sell
So it follows the same principles
No it doesn’t, at all. Unless you are advocating making it illegal to sell any food that isn’t specifically designed by nutritionists to maximize health at the expense of everything else.
If healthcare costs are the concern then they definitely should allow it since the shorter life-expectancy offsets the high cost of care later in life.
Not that I agree with that person but smokers objectively cost more than non smokers even with a shortened lifespan. Smoking increases the risk of and worsens basically every chronic condition as well as being a well linked factor to critical loss of lung function and several cancers. Unless you like, just let someone die if they get a smoking related illness (which is basically all of them depending on how liberal you are with the word “related”)
I disagree but I relent from calling you wrong until I find the research paper I found 15 years ago on the subject.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12474721/
“873 studies identified, 11 were included in quantitative synthesis, which compared 19,759,529 smokers with 206,913,108 non-smokers for direct health care costs. Mean age ranged from 34.5–60.6 years for smokers and 34.3–65.1 years for non-smokers. Mean annual health care costs ranged from $65,640–$1297.1 for smokers and $54,564–$724.4 for non-smokers. Annual incremental direct health care costs for smokers versus non-smokers ranged from –$458 (95% CI [confidence interval]: –2011.0 to 1,095.0) to $11,076 (95% CI: 10,211.9 to 11,940.1) in 2025 US dollars. Meta-analysis revealed smoking generally incurred greater health care costs than non-smoking, with a mean annual incremental cost of $1916.5 (95% CI: –439.9 to 4,272.9). The result was not statistically significant (MD = 1,916.5; p = 0.111). Substantial heterogeneity was observed (I2 = 99.9%). Sensitivity analysis excluding studies of chronic disease yielded a reduced incremental cost for the general population, with a statistically significant difference (MD = 583.9, p = 0.02), although heterogeneity remained high (I2 = 98.0%).”
Literally the first recent meta I found. If you want to smoke I don’t care but suggesting it isn’t a public health burden is asinine
Yeah, I came across that one. I didn’t reference it because I didn’t see where that mentions cumulative lifetime costs which is not the same as annual cost. I’m arguing that the lower life expectancy offsets those increased costs, because then healthcare isn’t paying for someone in old age. At this time, I still disagree with you.
Also
Your argument makes me wonder are you a proponent of banning fast-food and alcohol since they are also argued to create a “public health burden?”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1588892/
“The cumulative impact of excess medical care required by smokers at all ages while alive outweighs shorter life expectancy, and smokers incur higher expenditures for medical care over their lifetimes than never-smokers. This accords with the findings by Manning et al. (1989) of positive lifetime medical care costs per pack of cigarettes, but disagrees with the results found by Leu and Schaub (1983, 1985) for Swiss males. The contradictory conclusions of the analyses are undoubtedly due to a large difference in the amount of medical care used by smokers relative to neversmokers in the United States and Swiss data”
The only studies I can find that confirm shortened longevity incurs lower costs occur outside of America, which shifts things greatly due to cultural differences in receiving medical care and Americas totally fucked healthcare billing
Also I’ll point out that I said I don’t agree with the original poster, that I don’t care if you smoke, and now I will say that you’re a fucking moron with poor reading comprehension. Sorry that I won’t confirm your bias so you don’t feel worse about smoking, idiot. But again, smoke all you want, I don’t care, but don’t act like it doesn’t increase the cost burden on public health (as do your other examples but I also don’t care if you eat cheeseburgers every day and drink yourself to death)
I just want to point out that consumption of fast food and alcohol have no direct effect on people around you. That is a major difference with tobacco.
Drunk people have bothered me far more often than people smoking cigarettes. They’re violent, loud, and often drive drunk.
Anyway the discussion here wasn’t “direct effect”, it was “public healthcare burden”
There’s no reason tobacco must have any effect on the people around you.
Smokers cancer is a big drain though, it’s not like they die immediately, and some just have chronic health issues till death
but not a bigger drain than old-age