Sunak proposes raising smoking age every year to create 'smoke-free' generation
Sunak proposes raising smoking age every year to create 'smoke-free' generation
Smoking's already dramatically fallen out of popularity with younger people, being replaced by vaping. So I don't think it really matters what they do at this point - smoking's a dinosaur waiting to die.
Although vaping is far more popular and at least better than smoking, it's still actively bad for health. I'd be interested to see how a similar policy to ban vapes would go over in the west like they're trying in Taiwan.
Fast food, alcohol, motorcycles, and Instagram are also bad for your health. I'm not sure how vaping compares. Vaping is definitely easier to demonize.
Motorcycles aren't bad for your health. Crashing them is, but just driving them isn't, even doing it a lot. Unlike the other things you mentioned where doing them a lot is unhealthy.
Vaping isn't bad for your health, it's what you put into the vape that might be. There are already commonly used medical technologies that are adjacent to vaping, and many researchers think we will be able to use vaping in the future to replace hypodermic needles in some situations.
They are statistically bad for your health.
By your own argument, you would agree with the statement: "Smoking cigarettes isn't bad for your health. Lung cancer is."
Nope, doesn't need to end in lung cancer for it to be bad.
Take it this way:
You can drive motorcycle for hours every day for years and not take any health casualties from it.
You can't smoke cigarettes every day for years and not take any health casualties from it.
No. You are another pedantic commenter. Stop.
Lmao. Just because I disagree with you? ^^
That is indeed true, but don't forget that vaping addiction comes from the nicotine inside it that gets into your body physically. Riding a motorcycle or being on Instagram are still addictive but they don't "force" it upon you
We get it, you vape.
I actually don't vape. I just see a vice that seems relatively harmless and I don't think we should demonize it. Even if vape people are annoying.
This article is why I'm against demonizing vapes.
Regularly, you see these news articles about illegal vapes getting people sick. Because they are illegal and unregulated.
Regularly, governments and media try to use those revelations to attack the legal vape industry, which works quite hard to make sure not to ever release vapes with high lead, nickel, or (the famous one) Vitamin E. The whole popcorn lung thing was practically an ad campaign where I live. They kept (accidentally I'm sure) leaving out that NOT A SINGLE ONE vape pen in my area that had Vitamin E in it came from our smoke shops or legal dispensaries.
Why? To demonize vapes.
I have a sister who vaped for a year before she got bored of it. I am grateful that we had a regulated industry that made sure the vapes she got her hand on weren't going to really hurt her.
actively bad for health
Interesting turn of phrase. What is "actively bad for health", really? Experts seem to be pretty convinced that as bad as Vaping might be, it's not as bad as alcohol. And we in the US know what happens when you try to ban alcohol. I have Prohibition to thank for the incredible Whiskey industry of today.
Have you been literally anywhere in Europe? Smoking is not a dinosaur waiting to die
I keep hearing this and yet when I'm in Europe the amount of people smoking seems to go from tiny to slightly less tiny. Sure there are more smokers, but it's not a significant portion of the population anymore in most places. I just traveled all over France, which I thought was famous for being a smoking country and I noticed how seldom I was even around a smoker. Outside of Belarus I don't think smoking is even that significant anymore in Europe.
Europeean countries are thick with anoke compared to where I live. I can walk the streets and never smell tobacco smoke (except the areas in Oslo where many people from other countries in europe or from the middle east lives).
If you walk in the street in Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warzaw etc, people smoke more and you can smell it everywhere.
Not sure where you're comparing to but compared to the US the difference is stark. I expect to see the occasional smoker on your average US city block, but in Europe it feels like I cannot go outside any building without the doors being surrounded by smokers. Anecdotally my experience is very different to yours and also this map indicates my experience is not isolated. Compared to the US just about all the European countries have a higher density of smokers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_consumption_by_country
I will say that in the rural US the smoking rate "feels" higher than even the European countries I've visited. Maybe you're from the rural US? It feels like the rate in US cities is extremely lower than in the rural south
I was going to link the same wiki to argue the opposite. Twice as much as tiny is still small. What that wiki article shows to me is that tobacco use is way way down, the 12th country on that list only has double the tobacco use of the US. Considering 60 years ago about half of adults smoked in the westernized world it's way down and it's been on a constant decline. Several European countries are only marginally higher than the US and ~4 are lower.
Though I must admit, looking at more data, it's still higher than I would have guessed, about 12% in the USA when I would have guessed 5%. I live in a city.
I don't know why suddenly the bar for comparison is the world generally decades ago. We were comparing countries. My point stands, most European countries have higher smoking rates than in the US. Even if there are a few exceptions.
Yeah the only thing raising the smoking age will do is make smoking cool again.
Everything about smoking is cool. Especially the part where it devastates your body before killing you in the most terrible way possible, drowning in your own fluids. Kinda hoping on the world ending so I can say fuck it and pick it up again.
Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.
-Brooke Shields
Hey, but you get to gorge on morphine before drowing in your own fluids /s
