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treatlerites reeling. "socialists" crying about paternalism and manifesting thatcher when they - who are evidently children- aren't allowed to have unlimited access to their highly processed bright green ooze.
I think 10 year olds shouldn’t have unlimited unsupervised access to drugs and that makes me a puritan and oppressor of children now
Don't forget your belief that children are subhuman. An important aspect of being human is legally guaranteed unlimited access to the self-kill juice no matter your circumstances nor development.
Following this argument to its logical extreme, why have age of consent laws? Why not let 10 year olds drive? Why not let kids apply for credit cards so they can accrue thousands in debt for Fortnite skins?
As a society we have accepted that children are not developmentally ready for many things. I don’t see why this is any different.
Did I drink booze underage? Of course, like millions of kids. But it was mainly at house parties and whatnot. I think drinking at house parties with a bunch of age appropriate people was probably a (relatively) safer environment to get introduced to alcohol than hanging around in bars at 15. A bit of a tangent but just a concrete example from my life of how even when being broken these kinds of laws might reduce harm.
The reason is cognitive development, especially before the age of 16, the same reason kids aren't tried as adults in a court of law.
The main reason people drink energy drinks in the first place is to stay awake longer, which is already unhealthy on its own. Usually this is tied to severe overwork or extreme study sessions, making it even more unhealthy.
these are unaddressed by restrictions on caffeine consumption of course
This is the weirdest upvoted take on Hexbear I have ever seen.
There's a huge difference between imprisoning people for taking a drug, and banning the sale of goods to children.
But never mind, I agree, legalise the direct sale of cocaine to children now!
under 16 year olds shouldnt have any reason to be consuming stimulants but they clearly are, instead of the state intervening in why they do that theyre just throwing the book at one sensationalized product group.
literally 0 cafeine or sugar addicts will be stopped, because neither is actually being blocked, just an arbitrary combination of the two.
just because you believe in the utility of state bans on products you shouldn't credulously entertain the worst incarnations of these coming from the worst governments on earth. the UK government is starving children with austerity but sure, this is about children's health and not a bone to tabloid readers
Not to entirely defend that take. But the authorial family structure/upbringing as a result of patriarchy is something a lot marxist spoke out against.
Hard disagree that this will hurt and stigmatise children to any degree. Are children stigmatised because they can’t vote or drive?
Letting kids sleep in a couple more hours in the morning before school would help them more than giving them unlimited access to gamer juice.
In a vaccuume, this is a good policy choice. In the context of English politics, this is something of a mistake. Living standards are in decline, more and more pensioners are freezing to death each winter, and the capitalists and blue-bloods are needling for any opportunity to privatize the NHS. If Labour actually lived up to their name (or at least were just cynically savvy), this ban would come alongside a package to actually work on and improve these problems.
Instead, it's just gonna be perceived as an austerity government doing a little bit of nanny state policy on the side, just because they can. Torries will use it as a rally cry, like the big-gulp soda thing in New York was, and most people will remember this as Labour electing to tinker at the margins rather than actually govern to anyone's benefit.
To be clear, this is a good policy. But it's a good policy being done in the most self-sabotaged manner possible.
They cant stop kids from vaping, this ban isn't worth shit.
I get it now, anyone who might think a blanket ban might backfire instead of something like more stringent warnings on packaging clearly has to be a child living in the UK because nobody else could possibly care about a growing trend of "think of the children" bans, right?
For reference, I'm not saying that energy drinks shouldn't have more regulation, as in the case of the death of a college student from Panera's Charged Lemonade. I think warnings on any drinks with significant amounts of caffeine or other stimulants would honestly be a good idea. As an adult, I've been jittery and miserable twelve hours later from just one 120mg coffee in a can because I drank it while dehydrated and didn't drink any water after that.
I am ardently against bans like this and want way more radical solutions like banning in advertising (blanket, but I'd settle for "junk foods"), plain packaging and regulations on making products visually appealing, limits on sweetness to hide chemical bitterness outside of pharmaceuticals, nutritional infor clearly communicated more prominently than branding.
Distracting paternalism is useless at best and harmful at worst. These things are brightly coloured, have edgy fonts and names, and are disgustingly sweet because that works. Hit the corporate ghouls in the money where it hurts, don't blame teenagers for wanting to consume the drug that makes managing their life easier when it's packaged so attractively and sold everywhere.
I don't know what the right answer is, or whether or not those proposals would be effective, but I think we can both agree bans like this for cheap political points are actively unproductive to solving the actual problem.