New Zealand to ban cigarettes for future generations

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I think adults should be free to smoke if they want but hey thats just me.

No way this will completely backfire.

I was watching the Hunt for Red October - 1990 today (free on youtube) and I couldn't help but notice all the smoking going on... inside submarines. Doing that now would probably result in getting court marshalled.

Anyways, young folks these days do a lot of vaping. So it's probably not going to bother them any.

I remember vaping got shout down for a while last year or so. A vape shop had just opened next to where I live downtown, and then went out of business shortly after because of that. Now another vape shop is getting ready to open a couple of doors down from where that one was.

tobacco gum shares set to rise in NZ

This is part of New Zealand's ongoing Smokefree 2025 plan, which aims to reduce smoking rates to 5% of the adult population by 2025, and later to reduce it to as close to zero as possible. So far, NZ's already introduced bans on public indoor smoking, plain packaging laws, a ban on visible displays, and progressively increasing taxes, in addition to long-standing bans on advertising.

Currently, about 13% of adult NZers are reported as smokers, down from about 18% a decade ago. I doubt NZ will make it to 5% by 2025, let alone 0% in the long run. But anything to get the numbers as low as possible I think is a good thing.

A strange move from a government that is largely in favour of weed legalisation. Smoking marijuana is about as good for your lungs as tobacco is, perhaps even worse, to say nothing of the effects on mental health.

Just the usual big state and authoritarians telling people how they should live because they think they know best for others (they don't, never have and never will; no one does except those living their own lives). If people are worried about healthcare use, just don't provide it for those that smoke for specific conditions (and they pay less taxes for that lack of use); fair's fair there. Give warnings that it can be harmful, and you've done your moral duty as a good human.

Never smoked, but it's not my right to tell others not to. All of us do things that others don't like and/or are harmful to ourselves in some way, and they're our choices for our lives. As long as it's not a danger to others when it comes to substance use/abuse, like driving intoxicated, then it should be fine in a free society to smoke if one chooses to.

Big corporation covering up the side-effects of their product is about as bad as big state doing the bad things they do. They took away information that would allow the consumer to make an informed decision.

Give the info (as soon as it's known), and let people decide for themselves. Minimal exertion of will upon others is then achieved. Of course, I'm an idealist when it comes to liberty, and I am quite detached from the social collective for obvious reasons, but humans should have their own agency, even when it comes to things that may harm them, such a cigarettes.

I hope this does not keep my Altria and Phillip Morris stock from raising their dividend and generating a high total return long-term.

The logic is based upon the one unique thing about tobacco. People only take it up in their teens. Not before, and not after. So if you can shepherd folks through their teens then they will not use it ever for life.

The adults who already became hooked as teens can keep on smoking. But each new wave of teens will be blocked from nicotine, and once into adulthood will not take it up. Or thats the theory. In contrast folks take up alcohol, and marajuana, and crystal meth, at any age. So it wouldnt work for any other substance. But who knows? In small island nation like NZ it might work for tobacco.

Forbidden Fruit. An American cigar aficionado once claimed Cuban cigars aren't necessarily the best in the world, but because of the embargo between the US and Cuba, it made them all the more appealing to American cigar smokers. Whether that's because they were off limits and forbidden, or they were much more expensive to attain though the black market (since some feel more expensive = better).

New Zealand kids will still have knowledge of what cigarettes are. Being told they can't have them may entice some who would otherwise have not smoked to smoke illegally.

Someone born in 2007 can make a killing buying and reselling them to his younger classmates.