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

This is an amazing, for the sole reason that everyone who is 17 and change now will turn 18, be able to smoke, the law will bump to 19, they won't be allowed to smoke any more, but then they'll turn 19 and they'll be able to smoke again until the law raises to 20...

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

....how do 14 year olds get smokes now?

Making it illegal to buy at certain ages has never worked...banning them outright also won't work. You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.

Has the war on drugs not been a thought to these people? It is useless and does nothing.

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.

lame. create a legal path to execute the tobacco company execs instead.

New Zealand has done this

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

should rise from 18, by one year every year

If that truly continued every year, that means someone too young to legally smoke could eventually die of old age when the legal smoking age is, say, 90 and they're 89.

EDIT: I was just tripping out at the idea of "you must be 90 years old to buy this" signs at the supermarket. Surreal image.

Raising legal age

not be able to buy cigarettes

French people in shamble

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

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

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.

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)

Yeah no, you don't get to arbitrarily use age to deny people their rights and manipulate them into doing what you want them to do.

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.

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

This better not apply to vaping.

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

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!

Now do Australia

Wishing a very chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder on every dumbass calling this authoritarian

Sure are a lot of authoritarian apologists up in here today

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.

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

Just fucking ban it already.

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

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...