What a dumb thing. Prohibition literally never works, and this might be the dumbest way to try prohibition that I've ever heard
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Nope and like I said it does nothing to address the root causes of addiction, this is a classic blunder.
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"
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
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
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And yet your prohibit certain kinds of posts. Curious.
It's different when I do it because I'm a tankie and therefore I'm automatically correct
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Prohibition never stops all use.
It sometimes reduces use, though, and that still fulfills their goals.
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Maybe tackle the reasons WHY people want to smoke like being poor and living in a country that wants to put them in a meatgrinder?
I picked up smoking this month, and its absolutely related to being burnt out for the past 3 months
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This will devolve into a very profiting black market.
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.
Book a cheap flight, buy 200 cigs for 50€ at the duty free, fly back.
The mafia going to make a sudden resurgence off of that loose cigarette money
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.
I mean isn't it pretty clear that this is going to create a sizeable black market? The only way to prevent that is funnel billions of pounds to the police and treat ciggies like they're literally heroin.
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The war on drugs works! We're winning!
What's your position on cannabis?
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.
Imagine the struggle of being a middle aged pack-a-day smoker born in 2009
So they'll still legally be able to buy vapes when they're 18, just not cigs? Isn't vaping just as harmful?
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.
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 "a glass of wine with dinner when you're old enough can be good for your heart" 💀
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.
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
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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
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.)
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No? The NHS literally recommends vaping as a safer alternative.
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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 :/
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
Introducing the world’s first kale cigarette,
You're not gonna believe this 
Except snus makes you look like a Nordic dork, and smoking makes you look and feel cool
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Inhaling smoke can't be neutral in any way
Not with that attitude it can't.
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This is literally a Northernlion bit.
I'm gonna open a business selling ciggies to poor gen-z kids unable to buy them. So much for the 'you were born in the 1900s grandpa' jokes
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?
Most cannabis in the UK is smoked in combination with tobacco.
Yuck
Imagine being 40 and having to ask your cool uncle to buy you cigarettes lmao
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Politicians and society taking the easy way out. Whether smoking, drinking, or internet access, slapping on age limitations is cheaper and supplies instant public gratification, while education takes patience, time, and parental involvement.
Legislating vices always works. I guess the prison industrial complex needs more young people to put to work in the UK.
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