• Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netM
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    9 days ago

    What a dumb thing. Prohibition literally never works, and this might be the dumbest way to try prohibition that I’ve ever heard

      • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        It’s gotta be a neoclassical blunder because now you have more than enough evidence to confirm 10x over prohibition doesn’t work. So the ignorance is worse because it doesn’t work, you radicalize some people by doing something that obvious, and even the people that like you who know better roll their eyes

      • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        When I was 13 I remember long middle school assemblies about the health risks of vaping, and the consensus among half my friends was “yeah yeah we know it’s fucking our health but we’re depressed and don’t care”

    • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 days ago

      In the US vaping is illegal under 21, and my state even universally banned flavored vape juice when I was in high school. Yet every public HS bathroom in the fucking country still smells like artificial mango or blue raspberry or whatever

      I’m in uni and I swear half my generation is in the 1950s when it comes to nicotine. It’s literally the first drug most middle or high schoolers try, before even alcohol or weed, just bc some kids carry it in their backpacks/pockets EVERYWHERE and offer their friends a hit in the school bathroom

      On the plus side it acts as febreeze when someone’s taking a shit

      • mrfugu [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        I had my first cigarette in middle school. It was kinda awful and low key kept me away from nicotine for a while. It wasn’t until college that nicotine really sunk its teeth in and I think part of that is due to early vapes and hookah.

        Still, I shudder to think about what health condition I’d be in if vapes weren’t an option and as mentioned, hookah has been around the whole time adding flavors to nicotine and making it “cool”

      • whiskers165 [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        It feels like smoking/nicotine is ubiquitous in the late teens, early 20’s but it drops off hard by the time your social circle starts hitting 30. College age is peak nicotine use

  • Big [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    The price of Cigarettes are extremely inflated in western Europe. In Norway, for example, you have to pay over 12 dollars for a pack of ten cigs.

    By outlawing Cigarettes, you’ve basically ended all the tariffs and artificial price hikes, and with how easy and common they are to smuggle, you’ve basically made them dirt cheap and easily available to everybody, especially underage people, who’d love to look cool smoking smuggled Cigarettes.

    Prohibition is basically just giving up any kind of control on the product and giving it a Cool Factor for any kid who wants to feel rebellious.

  • replaceable [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    When i was a child i hated the smell of cigarette smoke so much i fantasized about a total ban on them and about bombing cigarette factories to smithereens, seems like dreams (at least partially) do come true.

  • OttoboyEmpire [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    unambiguous W, and, again, such a pleasure to witness a community of purported health “affirmers” twist into knots regarding 2nd order effects like they’re precocious 14 year olds who just read Hayek or Sowell.

    the best bit is that with the age prohibition, the ban won’t even affect the commentors. they’re position is simply one of pure wretched psychic distress, that other kids will have leg up and not be addicted to nicotine.

  • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    Instead of this which won’t work and will only encourage smuggling/booting/other crime they should focus their efforts on creating the healthy cigarette, or at least the health neutral cigarette

  • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    So they’ll still legally be able to buy vapes when they’re 18, just not cigs? Isn’t vaping just as harmful?

    • BoxedFenders [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 days ago

      Vaping introduces a different set of carcinogens to the user, but overall it is still less harmful than cigarettes. It doesn’t mean that vaping is safe, but rather highlights just how dangerous cigarettes really are. I smoked most of my life as a child of the 90s, and it would shock people today to experience how normalized and widespread it was. You could smoke in elevators, restaurants and hospitals. Schools had smoking lounges for teachers and designated smoking areas on the grounds for students. I remember the uproar when laws started to demand smoking sections for restaurants, as if it was a god given right for every smoker to be able to smoke anywhere they wanted.

      • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        Fair enough, idk where the research is at now, but when I was in middle school our health class teachers basically told us it’s the same shit and possibly even worse for you, but there weren’t enough long-term studies to confirm

        Then again they also told us LSD/shrooms are addictive, carcinogenic, kill brain cells, & cause brain disorders… which I now know all four of those are completely false for psychedelics but completely true for alcohol, meanwhile they were telling us the debunked “a glass of wine with dinner when you’re old enough can be good for your health” 💀

        • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 days ago

          Anti drug campaigns that boiled down to just straight making shit up in a bid to scare kids off it are so ridiculous. It just made kids not take any of it seriously even when it was correct and the danger is actually real.

          • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 days ago

            Shrooms specifically our teacher implied were similarly harmful as meth and even fentanyl. Meanwhile shroom research from the past decade has found them one of the safest & least addictive drugs we know of, capable of growing new neural pathways rather than killing them, and potentially being one of the most effective treatments for depression & addiction that we know of

            The amount of urban myths and pseudoscience about psychedelics is wild for the fact they’re practically the only recreational drugs with evidence for long-term psychological benefit

        • InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 days ago

          Burger-Americans are so nutritionally deprived I could see the glass of wine thing being true purely on the fact that it’s the only fruit product they have consumed in a month, and otherwise they would get scurvy

          • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 days ago

            I think there was a correlative study many years ago that found moderate drinkers averaged slightly better heart health than non-drinkers, and the media latched onto that shit, and its become a popular narrative to downplay all the long-term risks of drinking

            Turns out most of the non-drinkers in the study were only non-drinkers because of pre-existing health issues…often from past drinking 😭

      • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        9 days ago

        Not only that, but I remember when I was a kid in the early 80s, you could find Cigarette Machines outside and easily accesible by anyone. Undoubtedly a popular option for teens who got ID checked in stores

        • 30_to_50_Feral_PAWGs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          9 days ago

          Grocery stores had candy cigarettes in the checkout line impulse buy areas, right next to the candy bars, so kids could pester their parents for a pack. Big Tobacco hyper-normalized the fuck out of it all.

          Edit: they tasted like mint-flavored chalk. Somewhere between Tums and Smarties. (Because of course my chain-smoking grandparents thought it was adorable to give fake cigs to a six year old.)

  • inTheShadowOf [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    Tbh I want to love this, cause cigarettes are horrible, but I agree with everyone else who’s skeptical on the effectiveness. Bans like this don’t really work :/

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    I don’t think this will put much of a dent in underage smoking. Kids in the UK today stand outside the local spar (small newsagent/cornershop/postoffice combo) and ask whoever looks like they might be sympathetic “Oy mate can you go in the shop for me?” to buy cigs/tobacco.

    They’re still gonna do that and they’re still gonna find exactly the same number of people willing to do it for them. Back when I was underage this was like 10-20minutes stood outside, not particularly hard.

    Then they’re gonna age up and start sourcing it from different more convenient places, local smugglers, who will also be dealing in other drugs, which may increase usage of other drugs in unintended ways.

    What’s going to happen to cannabis legalisation too? Most cannabis in the UK is smoked in combination with tobacco. Where does the argument for legalising cannabis go if tobacco is completely prohibited?