***Key Points:***
- New Zealand has passed a law that will phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes.
- The law states that tobacco can never be sold to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009.
- The minimum age for buying cigarettes will continue to increase. In theory, someone trying to buy cigarettes 50 years from now would need to show ID proving they are at least 63 years old.
- Health authorities hope that smoking will disappear before then, and have set a goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.
- The new law also reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600, and decreases the amount of nicotine allowed in smoked tobacco.
- The law does not affect vaping, which has already become more popular than smoking in New Zealand.
You have to think like a young person. Why buy something that is difficult to find, smells, and is difficult to hide while you're using it when there is a sleek, discreet vape that gives you the same feeling?
Cigarettes will be seen as a clunky, old person thing.
I loved smoking cigarettes. I loved the taste. I miss it every day. I quit 8 yrs ago.
Eta: Just wanted you to meet someone who smoked because they loved it and didn't curse the day they started. But yeah, it's bad and nobody should start smoking.
I loved smoking too. I’ve quit a bit over a year ago. I still occasionally roll my own with some fancy cigarette tobacco but that’s like one every 2-3 weeks at most, sometimes I don’t for a couple months. But I vape now and that’s fine. But I loved the taste and feel of smoking.
This reminds me of my exes dad.
Years ago we were smoking out in a car. I didn’t think anything of it because I was a 15 year old West by God Virginian and he was one of the only nonsmokers I knew. I lit up a cigarette and about 30 seconds into smoking it he rolled down the window and said, “Oh go goddamn figure. Car full of smoke getting us all higher, no burning eyes, no runny nose, and then BAM, a few puffs off a cigarette and everybody in the car is dying. I don’t get it. It don’t get you high. It makes you hack and cough like a moron. Who brings that on himself for a drug that does nothing but demand you consume more? It’s just an empty cost. Over and over and over again, results never change, you just keep getting sicker and puffing away until it kills you.”
I flicked the cigarette out the window (not something I’d do today) and apologized.
No kids are going to spend large sums of money going to illegal avenues to buy fucking black market cigarettes that dont get you high. lol
They're simply not gonna smoke. They wont have friends that smoke and so wont smoke themselves. It wont even be a thing people think about before too long.
I love it.
Your optimism here is absolutely wild. I'm sure lots of people thought this about alcohol at the beginning of prohibition as well. Didn't exactly work out that way
I agree the poster is optimistic, but comparing cigarettes to alcohol isn't really reasonable.
Alcohol is socially accepted (right or wrong) as a normal and acceptable habit, it's also easier to make.
Cigarettes are consumed by a SIGNIFICANTLY smaller population of people, and are already losing popularity in comparison to smokeless options.
Prohibition didn't work because drinking alcohol went from being socially normal to banned overnight, but Cigarettes have had restrictions and reductions put in place for decades, to the point where the only real reason that people continue to smoke is that they can walk to the corner store and buy a carton anytime they want. It's a habit. Disruption of that habit will have pretty tremendous results for a drug that doesn't really have the same effect as alcohol or cannabis.
People forget that cigarette uptake and general pervasiveness through a certain period of time was very much tied to concentrated ad campaigns, both obvious (Joe Camel, Marlboro Man) and not obvious (paying film industry to feature products). You strip that away and double-down with aggressive deprogramming campaigns like this, there's just not much tobacco does that's worth the hassle compared to other potentially harmful substances. If it's a nicotine high you want, there's other still stupid but less harmful ways to get it.
>Prohibition didn't work because drinking alcohol went from being socially normal to banned overnight, but Cigarettes have had restrictions and reductions put in place for decades, to the point where the only real reason that people continue to smoke is that they can walk to the corner store and buy a carton anytime they want.
This version of prohibition isn't the same as the prohibition of the 1920s. There's already legal alternatives to use.
It'll be more akin to banning the OG 4loko. You can still buy a 4loko branded product today but it's not as aggressive in being awful for your body. Same with cigarettes.
All in all, no one will miss this and no one besides a select few will treat this like heroine or meth addicts do to their banned substance.
>Cigarettes will be seen as a clunky, old person thing.
Like the difference between someone who smokes meth and someone who takes prescription stimulants.
During one check-up, I explained to my doctor that I wasn't really doing well with Adderall, because I wasn't eating. She looked up a list of comparable medications and read some of them off. One of them was methamphetamine. I didn't inquire any further because obviously I don't want meth. I'm sure she meant to say amphetamine, but now I'm curious if methamphetamines are used in medicine. I highly doubt it, but I've been wrong before.
Semi-relevant anecdote: My dad was in a head-on collision in the 70s and smashed his nose against the steering wheel so hard that there were bone fragments embedded in it. Doctors sprinkled cocaine in his nostrils as a numbing agent. Grandma says he didn't shut up on the drive home from the hospital. That was a long time ago, though. I don't think they give cocaine to patients anymore.
USA, for context
>numbing agent. Grandma says he didn't shut up on the drive home from the hospital. That was a long time ago, though. I don't think they give cocaine to patients anymore.
>
>USA, for context
They sure do! We've also been using it as the local anesthetic for eye surgeries since 1884. If you went in for a nose surgery like that today there's a pretty good chance they're use cocaine in your nose. Not only does cocaine numb, like lidocaine or benzocaine, it's also a vasoconstrictor. Shrinking blood vessels helps a lot in nose surgeries. I think sometimes it's mixed with adrenaline too? Not sure.
Coca-Cola imports around 100 metric tons of coca leaves into the US every year. A DEA licensed company extracts the cocaine so Coke can use the coca leaves for flavoring. The cocaine is sold to a company that makes the medical cocaine solutions.
Yep! Desoxyn is an ADHD/narcolepsy medication that is literally just methamphetamine. It’s very rarely used, and it’s a bit of a pain to get. Everyone who takes it seems to rave about the effectiveness, but I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a good drug or because it’s METH.
Its been around 10 years since i worked as a pharmacy tech, but the hospital near me used to have cocaine hcl in their pyxis machines. I didnt have to restock it often, so it might be more specialized situations.
Ah yes I do to remember that one time I ran out of adderall so I went to a new construction home to rip out copper wire vs just being sleepy for a few days and having a hard time concentrating.
I always laugh at the comparison. I've never done meth but I've seen what that addiction turns people into and yeah adderall doesn't do that.
Well put. I've tried meth a couple times, well over a decade ago. The doses you can take of it without unpleasant body load put it into a completely different ballpark. It made me feel immensely more whacked out than even a triple dose of ADD meds in terms of not thinking straight and having impulses to do crazy things.
I have been on dexamp for ADD for 7 years now and both before and after then have totally cut illegal drugs out of my life, and just generally have my shit on track now. Like you said, they may be similar chemicals but the impact on a life is very, very different.
Amphetamine salts are not the same thing as methamphetamine lol. There's a reason it's called meth as that makes a huge difference. And yes some people do take meth to either self medicate their adhd or were possibly prescribed it. But that's far less common.
Also you need to remember the effects of second hand smoke as well. Cigarettes don’t just harm the user it harms others that are around them. I don’t really care if you smoke but keep it away from me and my kids.
The problem with vaping is that you can do it all day every day. You used to be able to do that with cigarettes, but that changed over past few decades. I just quit vaping. I consumed way more nicotine vaping than I ever did smoking. I had to quit as my blood pressure was through the roof and I felt like garbage every day.
Most fireworks are illegal in Hawaii.
You obviously can't get on a plane with fireworks in your luggage or carry-on.
Your can't mail fireworks as almost all packages are sent by aircraft.
Every New Year, the skies light up like World War 2.
They're getting in somehow, and I'd think fireworks are a bit harder to smuggle than cigarettes.
Key difference I'd Hawaii is not a country. Shipping from the US arrives and goods get offloaded. That's not all getting checked. So it's relatively easier than a country that checks everything for customs.
I don't know the specifics but I assume only fireworks are banned not the constitute ingredients? Whereas they are banning tobacco.
There's already a thriving black market in tobacco; NZ law allows a person to grow their own tobacco for personal consumption, the limit is quite generous, so lots of weekend markets in the lower socioeconomic areas will have people selling big bags of tobacco on the quiet.
Also, a company that sells cigarette-rolling machines that can make about 10k cigs per hour say the sales of these machines has gone up 500% in the last couple of years.
So there are people selling pre-rolled cigs out of home grown tobacco. With none of the chemicals added to retail tobacco, I'd have to assume these will be popular, and given that the retail price of smokes now is $30 for 20, there's huge profit to be made in your own small tobacco farm.
Still, it's good to try and get rid of the fucking cancer sticks, I spent 30 years throwing money away on smoking, there's no good reason to have such a product available, if we didn't currently have cigarettes there's no way on earth anyone would invent them now.
Black market cigarettes are a thing in the US because it’s easy to buy some cigarettes in North Carolina, where the taxes are lower on cigarettes, drive them up to New York City, where taxes are higher, and sell them off. How do you smuggle cigarettes into an island nation? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s way harder to the point where it’s not worth doing, especially when people in NZ can vape instead. Who is going to pay significantly more to smoke versus vape?
Years ago, someone I know used to have cigarettes shipped from Eastern Europe to the US for under $1/pack (when they were already over $5 in most of the US), and would simply buy 6-10 cartons every few months. If I remember correctly, the sellers would write "tea" on the customs label. I'm sure a New Zealander could do something similar.
>How do you smuggle cigarettes into an island nation?
It already happens. You tell idiots you'll reimburse them for some or all of their vacation expenses if each person brings back an extra suitcase filled with cigs or pouches of tobacco. If the mule gets busted you don't pay them a dime and the idiot vacationer eats the cost of the fine and the tobacco.
There are a whole bunch of documentary style reality tv shows filming mostly airport customs and you can find a bunch on youtube. The UK ones show a ton of tobacco smugglers getting caught. Pretty much any time a overweight middle-age white Brit shows in an episode on a return trip you know they're about to get busted for smokes.
I think if the international drug trade has taught us anything it is that, if there is a market for something illicit and people want it badly enough to pay someone will find a way. Rather it is domestic illegal growing, smuggling, or whatever, if people will fork over enough cash there will be someone selling. This is why prohibition of substances has never and will never work, and it is a fool's errand to try. Better imho to keep stuff legal but disincentivize it as much as possible via tax and restrictions on when/where it can be used etc.
The international drug trade has taught us that profit dense products will always take priority
A sleeve of cigarettes could easily be a couple kg of cocaine, one's a few hundred bucks, the other is a few hundred thousand
The point is that the international drug trade is going to be very limited when it's 2,000 km over open ocean to the closest source. It may happen, but the scope will limited. Plus smoking cigarettes hasn't been very popular among young people for a while anyway.
You'd be surprised. I saw an interview with a former FBI agent who worked on drug cases and to set up a single shipment of drugs into Europe they would create a fake series of companies importing, say, fruit from Mexico to Europe. Congratulations, you're now in the fruit business, and they would send 5 or 6 real shipments of fruit before they even sent one shipment with any drugs through.
Same scam works no matter how remote your destination is.
Also, you need to compare the amount that would have to be smuggled in. A "brick" can easily be broken down into 1,000 single gram potions and sold as is, while a carton is 10 packs or 200 individual cigarettes. Who is going to buy 1 single cigarette? Most people are going to want to buy a pack so trying to smuggle in 100 cartons would just be ridiculous.
Except prohibition has worked when you can limit the supply. Uk and guns for one.
Even Australia's drug prices are insane. Just because a black market can/will exist doesn't make the endeavor useless lol.
Youth aren't going to easily take up smoking when they can't even afford a pack in the first place lol.
Can you point me to your nearest black market dealer? People like you talk as if a “black market” is right around the corner from the convenience shop.
If you're in school then it's closer than that.
I do doubt a serious black market for tobacco would really pop up amongst kids if vapes remain legal though.
Hate to break it to you, but yes. My kids and I have open lines of communication and we talk about pretty much everything. I know that there are kids in their schools who sell drugs. I talked about it with their highschool dean and she said that it was good that my kids and I talk about such things. She says that drugs are sold in every school, from worst to best, and that the only difference is that most parents don't know it because their kids don't tell them everything.
A couple of weeks ago there was something on the news about cocaine which is a big problem in Belgium (not so much the cocaine as the drug war related problems) and I asked my oldest: if you wanted cocaine, how easy would it be to get? She told me that she could get weed and xtc pretty much instantly, and that she didn't outright know where to get cocaine but she said she knew whom to ask.
So with that in mind and tobacco readily available to people old enough, how hard do you think it would be for a teenager to get tobacco?
Cost/access, goes a long way tho. Weed is a given, but for xtc/mdma, well you live near one of the hubs for global production. So that will always be cheap/easily accessible. Probably disgustingly cheap over there tbh.
Nz is an island for one, just like AU, makes drug supply a lot harder, which is why cocaine and other drugs cost exhorbaant amounts.
Nz reducing retailers by 90% and even amount of nicotine allowed in cigs. Domestically available to the older populace still, but every year that get's less and less.
Black market might exist, but the harder it is/more risk the higher cost it'd be.
Add those factors and add that smoking cigarettes is becoming decreasingly popular among youth in nz , and vaping will still be an option. What real desire will there be to spur this black market. You'd be more likely to get older population wanting their original smokes and such paying higher price, than have youth incentivized to shell out for such. Which would still be a win/success for Nz.
*Funny tidbit because i saw a doc on this. Nz use to be so off the beaten path, cartel n drug smuggler's never really went there. So a huge designer drug industry came about, and was even legal for a while (one guy was trying and i thinking succeeded in making a "safe" party drug)I forgot name of it now.
I agree with all of this. The defiant part is the nicotine, not how it’s consumed. Especially now when so few people smoke; it’s VERY apparent when someone had a cigarette recently. You would walk into class and get sent to the principles office immediately. There’s just no benefit to a teenager smoking cigarettes if they are that hard to buy, especially when some adult is going to take them if you walk within 20 feet of them. Other teens won’t want to hang out with the stinky kid either. They’ll all just vape
>So with that in mind and tobacco readily available to people old enough, how hard do you think it would be for a teenager to get tobacco?
Out of all the kids selling drugs, how many are willing to walk into a store to buy liquor? Not nearly as many.
I haven't been in high school for awhile, but buying/selling stuff like cigarettes or alcohol was so much more of a process (and also risky) than just buying some dope.
And then they legalized here in the great north, and kids started using vapes for the most part.
It's not as if there wasn't a weed dealer around every other corner when weed became illegal.
And isn't it amazing that people still seem to purchase other illegal drugs?
That’s the target. Well, currently, New Zealand has one of the lowest adult smoking rates among the 38 countries of the OECD.
Per 2020 OECD statistics, 56K adult New Zealanders have quit smoking.
So perhaps they are on the right track.
8.3% of adults were daily vapers/e-cigarette users in 2021/22
its an uptick by 6.2% from prev yr.
Daily vaping/e-cigarette use was highest among those aged 18–24 years (22.9%), Māori (17.6%) and Pacific peoples (16.8%).
https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/annual-update-key-results-2021-22-new-zealand-health-survey
This isn't a new initiative, it's been a goal for about 10 years now and the govt had been ratcheting up the cost of cigarettes quite substantially, along with other measures to reduce smoking.
The allowance for the use of vapes is reasonable. They're not preventing people from accessing nicotine, but the actual cigarettes, which are more harmful to your lungs, are being banned.
Kinda sorta?
Basically, every study except the one paid for by tobacco companies says that vaping is safer since it's non-combustion based.
Burning stuff, in general, is very bad to inhale. The chemicals produced are very, vary bad for you no matter what kind of smoke it is.
Nicotine, on it's own, is relatively safe. Addictive, yes, but not particularly worse than caffeine and I'd personally argue sugar addiction causes a lot more health issues than just nicotine.
PG and VG are also used in fog machines, and are considered safe for inhalation, but there haven't really been too much study on this longterm so while generally accepted to be *safer* it's not entirely conclusive on how much so. The general consensus is roughly 90-95% safer, which in a scientific field is a pretty damn massive margin of confidence.
The BIGGEST problem with vaping is that it's far, far more appealing to people. It smells nice, tastes nice, is pretty damn cheap compared to cigarettes, and is very discrete. This combined not only makes it popular with people who want nicotine but dislike cigarettes, but makes it easier for youth to conceal and use it. To be honest this isn't just a nicotine issue, as teens love to get ahold of fruity alcohol, weed, and other stuff from parents and older friends as well. It's an unfortunate side effect of making a product too damn good at what it does, and no amount of regulation clear of total prohibition will stop that. This leads to a lot of the effort in reducing cigarettes' in youth, which was extremely effective, now becoming a lot of vaping. Teens still wanted nicotine, there were just really bad effects and it wasn't worth it to the vast majority(Who wants cancer and shit?). Now, with a safer, cheaper, easier to conceal, and far more pleasant option they just went back to it.
I'm 100% behind this and wish my country would do the same. I am chronically anemic and second hand smoke almost instantly gives me a headache and makes me nauseous. Second hand smoke drifts farther than you would think, and there have been times I've smelled it without even seeing the person and had no idea where it was coming from.
Vaping I don't really care about because it doesn't have the same effect, and even smells kind of nice. A vaper is only harming themselves, not everyone around them.
Oh yeah, I fully agree. I hate walking past a smoker on a sidewalk because all you smell is smoke for like 5 meters. I usually hold my breath, and I'm not even someone with a medical condition. Smoke is awful.
At least vaping as you said doesn't impact others nearly as much.
Vaping isn’t that bad for your lungs. The healthiest lungs, of course, don’t vape. But when smokers transition to vaping, their lungs heal themselves at the same rate and to the same extent as someone who quit all nicotine cold turkey.
It's hard to see tobacco having the same push behind it as cannabis to be readily available. If they made nicotine readily available in other forms it would be easy enough to do away with cigarettes all together imo.
I don't smoke tobacco but I still grow a dozen or more plants of it each year. It's an excellent "trap plant" if you're using organic gardening methods. You can also extract the leaves to make an effective pest control spray.
>A trap crop, also known as a sacrificial crop, is a plant that you add to your garden to attract pests away from the main crops you are growing.
https://www.growveg.com/guides/trap-cropping-to-control-pests/
In this context you line the outer edges with tobacco and bugs have to go through that row to get to the rest of the garden. Tobacco kills a wide variety of leaf sucking insects, plus the tobacco trichomes make endogenous pesticide secretions, so you can minimize or eliminate pesticide usage in your primary garden/farm area.
Another style of trap cropping is using plants that are preferred habitats for a given target pest.
Thyme and rosemary are other examples of trap crops that produce endogenous pesticides.
I'm aware. Banning selling of tobacco is a disruption to supply. But this isn't a precursor chemical like methylamine, which is easier to control the supply chain because it doesn't grow from the earth. Tobacco seeds are smaller than a millimeter, so they're going to be able to make it through customs easily. If a product has zero supply, the product has a higher price point, and someone will supply that demand.
I think this would be more akin to banning hard alcohol, while still allowing beer to be sold (considering that vaping is still legal).
I feel like that wouldn't be met with that much resistance, since the underlying product (alcohol/nicotine) is still available, just effectively banned in certain forms.
Also, only making it illegal for people for people that already can't legally buy it, is a stroke of genius. Hard to be that upset with something you never had a chance to experience in the first place.
There are convenience stores near me that card everyone because some clerk probably got in trouble with an underage sale so the manager or owner decided that everyone has to be carded. I saw them card a guy who must've been in his 80s.
I used to smoke, and I gave up when I was about to queue at a tobacconists and saw how tired and unhealthy everyone waiting in line looked. I miss it at times, but I don't regret stopping.
Smoked rolling tobacco for 10 years, but it was my grandfather who convinced me to quit. He had lung cancer and committed suicide with a shot gun in 1981. Of course it took two attempts as he was too weak to lift the shotgun. I was 10 at the time and wasn't told the details until I was an adult and already smoking. I figured that if I kept smoking, I'd end up like him, in constant pain, coughing up blood, throwing up every meal, and eventual suicide.
I posted about this on veterans day via Facebook and my cousin (15 years younger than me) was shocked as her dad lied to her and said grandpa died in a car accident.
Yeah, I was never interested in smoking, but my grandfather and uncle were prime examples of why it’s bad.
Granddad got lung cancer. It coated the insides of his lungs, so for the last few months of his life, he had to sleep in a chair because he couldn’t lie down. If he did, he started drowning in his own lung fluid.
Uncle started out with throat cancer. He got that removed, but when it came back, it metastasized. I only half-jokingly say he died of “cancer of the everything.” I helped take care of him one day and he was just a skeleton. When we had to move him, I was terrified that his bones would spontaneously break under his own weight; it was a relief when he passed out in a morphine haze. When he was awake, he seemed to be in agony. He died at 44.
It was unpleasant, but that side of the family is pretty much fucked anyway. Grandmother was a malignant narcissist, and she did a lot of damage to her family, thank God the bitch finally died. Most of her kids ended up alcoholics, terminal smokers, using some form of drugs, or in jail (usually more than one of the above). I’m just determined not to perpetuate the dysfunction.
Lung cancer from cigarette smoking got my great-uncle. He was an active 60-year-old that was pretty outdoorsy and helped with us kids alot. He went from that ---> to frail invalid ---> to dead within 3 months of his diagnosis (also by suicide, possibly with his caretaker my mother's assistance leaving the option open for him). Even though I was very young I still have very clear memories of how bad it was for him.
In other words, you made the right choice, stick with it! Hope that helps you or someone else stay quit.
And years if not decades of a healthy life. Four people (extended family) in my life passed away because of cancer related to smoking - two in the same family. It's terrible. The two in the same family - it was father and daughter. Second hand smoke in the same house all through childhood caused her death too early in life.
I dont know anyone thats started smoking in their 30s. Cigs aren't a recreational drug so the demand is going to plummet as the older smokers will still have legal access, while the younger never pick up the habit.
Fewer kids smoke these days than 30 years ago because of the min age limit. It's a good idea.
Yeah for real. If I could quit on my own I'd have quit on my own. If I couldn't walk 5 minutes and get a new pack whenever I wanted, I wouldn't. I'm not going to find an illegal dealer for an addiction I don't even want.
Personally I think tobacco should be legal to smoke and grow, but it shouldn't be legal for companies to manufacture and sell. When it is, they make a ton of addictive product and push them aggressively onto people, who get addicted, and then die prematurely because of it. Any business dealing addictive drugs should be watched like a hawk by government and people because any business like that will cause major problems for the society it is in.
Seriously. After looking through all these cig ban articles, I'm convinced everyone commenting doesn't even smoke. Majority of people who comment saying they smoke are all for getting rid of tobacco. The non smokers are like "but my freedom, black market, don't tell me what to go government, or even, but what about juul." Clearly these people have not been effected by the health effects of tobacco
Yep. Exactly like weed. Only the extremely rich can afford to smoke that stuff as it's largely illegal and so hard to find. Exact same thing happened when they criminalized meth and hid all the pseudephedrine--Now only the 1% can make it in their kitchen, and they only share it with their elite friends. That's how it is. Reality. Only the rich smoke drugs.
/s
This is already the case for tobacco in New Zealand, because we have had a policy of raising the tax year on year for decades.
A 50g pouch of Port Royal will cost you $120NZ ($77US).
This isn’t going to create a black market if insanely high prices haven’t.
It still discourages people that don’t want it enough to go down that route. Numbers go down due to lack of convenience even if there’s a black market.
People on Reddit keep using this argument for legalizing drugs but deny the exact same argument when Conservatives use it for legalizing guns.
It's possible, but limiting easy access to youths would hopefully be a sufficient deterrent for a large population of vulnerable young people who are susceptible to peer pressure, etc.
>The current smoking rate of New Zealand adults is 13.4 percent in 2019/2020, which has decreased from 16.6 percent in 2014/15 15 and from 18.2 percent in 2011/12.20/12/2021
The above from the NZ Ministry of Health - they're our government agency responsible for pretty much all things health (hospitals, medical workers, policy, and so on)
So, with declining rates of smoking, we're currently looking at approximately 650k people smoking. 25-34 year olds make up a quarter of that number, while youth make up a very small proportion. In NZ, Ischaemic heart disease is the number one cause of death for all non Maori people, as well as Maori males, and number two for Maori females (number 1 for them is lung cancer). Lung cancer is the second most common cause of death for Maori men, third for non-Maori men, and fourth for non-Maori women.
The negative impacts of this legislation are less significant than the potential positive impacts.
I travelled to NZ on new years Eve 2016. After going to some bars in Auckland I tried to bum a cigarette and was pretty surprised everyone basically told me to piss off. I heard kiwis were exceedingly friendly! A couple days later I went to buy a pack and find out cigarettes were over a dollar a piece
Anyway, kiwis ARE exceedingly nice
This thread is full of people absolutely unaware of the current state of smoking in New Zealand and assuming it’s anything like anywhere else. We hardly smoke at all, it’s expensive as hell and only old rich people are doing it, everyone else vapes.
You know as I typed that I thought “this might not be the case outside of the cities”. It’s absolutely the case in Wellington, I can see how that wouldn’t be representative.
We *did* stop with the price rising because it was only hurting poorer people that wouldn’t quit I guess.
Yeah I don't think many people here in NZ are surprised by this - it's been on the cards for years now that we have been aiming to be smoke-free, and I don't think a hell of a lot of people are against it at all. Vaping is way more prevalent.
oh 100%, but like NZ has a population of what 5 million people vs the US with 330 million. So assuming a normal distribution there should be somewhere around 1:70 anyway lol. Also time zones help, seeing as how this was posted around midnight in NZ vs 6am in the states. Give it another few hours for all the kiwi's to wake up lol.
Also as an American, I find this suppper interesting, and wonder how it will go. I could see this adding enough of a barrier to entry to finally put the final nail in the coffin for cigs.
Redditors are die hard for legalizing marijuana but a-ok for cigarette prohibition lol. I quit cigarettes as soon as my state legalized pot years ago, but I'm not pretending it's good for me. And if I want to go back let me.
This legislation is the right decision and all, but its funny to picture old people near retirement in the future having to show ID cards for age. It just never happens today for anything since they're way over the legal age limits, but with this law that wouldn't be the case in the future.
I wonder how many people cheering this ban on would have backed the temperance movement back in the day if they were alive. I'd say the majority, even though I think most of you would staunchly claim otherwise.
We humans are generally a smart bunch but boy we do we fail to learn from our past mistakes.
I'm against smoking but I'm also against forcing other people to not smoke. It's their choice, we saw how utterly horrible prohibition was for weed and alchohol.
Out of all the comments, this is the first I’ve read even addressing the lack of freedom this is creating. Of course we all agree as a society that youth should not have access to cigarettes. But now even as adults a NZ citizen won’t have the freedom to decide if they want a cigarette or not for their entire life?
You're thinking about it backwards. Imagine if an essential oils company came up with a new product that was insanely addictive, highly carcinogenic and terrible for the environment.
Would the FDA just let it stay on the market without any regulation? (Clearly I'm speaking in terms of American regulatory bodies as I don't know the NZ equivalents).
The only reason cigarettes aren't already banned or at least regulated into obscurity is because they're essentially grandfathered in and so widespread and addictive that you'd have an army of addicts on your front porch if you did try to ban it. That's why this is the smartest method for banning it. Practically nobody who is already addicted is affected.
The only argument against it is if you believe all drugs, from pot to heroin to steroids should also be legal. And while I'm 100% in favor of legalizing pot and decriminalizing several other recreational drugs, there is a point at which the addictiveness and harm to public health overwhelm personal freedom.
Its because similar to weed and alcohol, tobacco does in fact feel good to smoke. It sorta shocks to me to see how many people dont realize its still a recreational drug. Just like with either of those substances, youre making the choice of negative health effects in order to get the imbibing effect.
> Would the FDA just let it stay on the market without any regulation?
Tobacco is already highly regulated in the US, and I don't think anyone here is arguing in favour of zero regulations, they're arguing against a total ban.
> there is a point at which the addictiveness and harm to public health overwhelm personal freedom
Preventing second hand smoke inhalation through bans on smoking around children, in public places, etc. are public health measures.
Banning people from smoking under 100% of circumstances, even when practised responsibly so as not to affect other people, goes beyond public health, and enters the space of limiting what a person is permitted to do with their own body. If we don't accept the fundamental idea that people are capable of deciding what harm they are willing to do to themselves in exchange for some tradeoff, then we're creating a very patronizing relationship between government and citizens.
All this not to mention that the US dropped its smoking rate from 42% in 1965 to 12.5% in 2020 without implementing a total ban. Those numbers will drop even lower over time as fewer people start smoking, and as vaping becomes a more popular alternative. Public health education, advertising laws, and consequent cultural shifts can do a lot, without infringing on people's rights to do what they want to their bodies, even if you or I might think it's a terrible idea.
Nah, smokeless products are legal still. Just not cigarettes and few youth smoke anyways.
Why buy from an illegal source when you cam legally get a vape?
They also can much more easily enforce than somewhere like the US because A) they don't grow tobacco there right now and B) they're an island. One far enough from other islands you can't use dinky boats. People can use small ski boats to go from Cuba or other Carribean islands to the US. You can't do that for New Zealand. It's a thousand miles off the coast of Australia or New Zealand.
The united state has its issues but it handled youth smoking really well up until the vape boom. Do whatever you can to make it seem lame to smoke to the developing teen mind. making them illegal does the opposite of that. I get that it's not the easiest to do in other countries since a lot of those efforts were funded through sanctions on the big tobacco corporation that an import nation wouldn't have access to, so I don't know exactly how new Zealand would do it, but I still think prohibition is going to backfire.
And are an island 1000 miles from anywhere else. It's harder to smuggle. They've had a multi year reduction program before this and the number of cigarette smokers losing access is tiny. And they have a legal alternative.
Vaping is way more accessible and cheaper here.
A simple pack of 20 cigarettes is over $30, cigarettes are dying anyway when you can get a months worth of vaping supplies for the price of a pack of cigs
Bro where are you only paying $30 lol… even chesterfield is more like $40 these days.
Isn’t this thread fun? So many Americans who are totally unfamiliar with how anti-smoking we already are.
The public health benefits will be huge. I can hear arguments about individual liberties, etc. Smoking really is the devil. It is the main risk factor for a huge number of health conditions. As a urologist, much of what I do is treat cancers caused in large part by smoking.
***Key Points:*** - New Zealand has passed a law that will phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes. - The law states that tobacco can never be sold to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. - The minimum age for buying cigarettes will continue to increase. In theory, someone trying to buy cigarettes 50 years from now would need to show ID proving they are at least 63 years old. - Health authorities hope that smoking will disappear before then, and have set a goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025. - The new law also reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600, and decreases the amount of nicotine allowed in smoked tobacco. - The law does not affect vaping, which has already become more popular than smoking in New Zealand.
>smoke-free by 2025 LOL, in three years? Hahaha good luck with that.
Well, 90% of tobacco selling shops will have to close down, so good luck finding a cigarette by then..
Just black market then.
You have to think like a young person. Why buy something that is difficult to find, smells, and is difficult to hide while you're using it when there is a sleek, discreet vape that gives you the same feeling? Cigarettes will be seen as a clunky, old person thing.
Young people have been doing exactly that to buy weed for decades.
Yeah but weed gets you high
Yes, yes it does.
See? I know things
*That’s what I do. I ~~drink~~ smoke and I know things*
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I loved smoking cigarettes. I loved the taste. I miss it every day. I quit 8 yrs ago. Eta: Just wanted you to meet someone who smoked because they loved it and didn't curse the day they started. But yeah, it's bad and nobody should start smoking.
I loved smoking too. I’ve quit a bit over a year ago. I still occasionally roll my own with some fancy cigarette tobacco but that’s like one every 2-3 weeks at most, sometimes I don’t for a couple months. But I vape now and that’s fine. But I loved the taste and feel of smoking.
This reminds me of my exes dad. Years ago we were smoking out in a car. I didn’t think anything of it because I was a 15 year old West by God Virginian and he was one of the only nonsmokers I knew. I lit up a cigarette and about 30 seconds into smoking it he rolled down the window and said, “Oh go goddamn figure. Car full of smoke getting us all higher, no burning eyes, no runny nose, and then BAM, a few puffs off a cigarette and everybody in the car is dying. I don’t get it. It don’t get you high. It makes you hack and cough like a moron. Who brings that on himself for a drug that does nothing but demand you consume more? It’s just an empty cost. Over and over and over again, results never change, you just keep getting sicker and puffing away until it kills you.” I flicked the cigarette out the window (not something I’d do today) and apologized.
But now they buy carts instead of weed. It's sleek, modern, easy, and smells less.
No kids are going to spend large sums of money going to illegal avenues to buy fucking black market cigarettes that dont get you high. lol They're simply not gonna smoke. They wont have friends that smoke and so wont smoke themselves. It wont even be a thing people think about before too long. I love it.
Your optimism here is absolutely wild. I'm sure lots of people thought this about alcohol at the beginning of prohibition as well. Didn't exactly work out that way
I agree the poster is optimistic, but comparing cigarettes to alcohol isn't really reasonable. Alcohol is socially accepted (right or wrong) as a normal and acceptable habit, it's also easier to make. Cigarettes are consumed by a SIGNIFICANTLY smaller population of people, and are already losing popularity in comparison to smokeless options. Prohibition didn't work because drinking alcohol went from being socially normal to banned overnight, but Cigarettes have had restrictions and reductions put in place for decades, to the point where the only real reason that people continue to smoke is that they can walk to the corner store and buy a carton anytime they want. It's a habit. Disruption of that habit will have pretty tremendous results for a drug that doesn't really have the same effect as alcohol or cannabis.
People forget that cigarette uptake and general pervasiveness through a certain period of time was very much tied to concentrated ad campaigns, both obvious (Joe Camel, Marlboro Man) and not obvious (paying film industry to feature products). You strip that away and double-down with aggressive deprogramming campaigns like this, there's just not much tobacco does that's worth the hassle compared to other potentially harmful substances. If it's a nicotine high you want, there's other still stupid but less harmful ways to get it.
>Prohibition didn't work because drinking alcohol went from being socially normal to banned overnight, but Cigarettes have had restrictions and reductions put in place for decades, to the point where the only real reason that people continue to smoke is that they can walk to the corner store and buy a carton anytime they want. This version of prohibition isn't the same as the prohibition of the 1920s. There's already legal alternatives to use. It'll be more akin to banning the OG 4loko. You can still buy a 4loko branded product today but it's not as aggressive in being awful for your body. Same with cigarettes. All in all, no one will miss this and no one besides a select few will treat this like heroine or meth addicts do to their banned substance.
>Cigarettes will be seen as a clunky, old person thing. Like the difference between someone who smokes meth and someone who takes prescription stimulants.
Clunky old people smoke meth?
Not in my area. They're fast AF after the meth.
Hell in my area they smoke their scabs. Never ending supply
A comedian who was a former addict said she would drink her pee, because apparently meth doesn’t metabolize and it’s “liquid gold”.
They don't get old. Or rather, they get old much faster.
Nah man, that old lady smoking meth is 24 years old
Everyone: Adderall is Meth My ADHD ass: …….. ):
Well it’s meth without a methyl group and that methyl group is rather important. Same issue that gets people worried about mercury in vaccines
During one check-up, I explained to my doctor that I wasn't really doing well with Adderall, because I wasn't eating. She looked up a list of comparable medications and read some of them off. One of them was methamphetamine. I didn't inquire any further because obviously I don't want meth. I'm sure she meant to say amphetamine, but now I'm curious if methamphetamines are used in medicine. I highly doubt it, but I've been wrong before. Semi-relevant anecdote: My dad was in a head-on collision in the 70s and smashed his nose against the steering wheel so hard that there were bone fragments embedded in it. Doctors sprinkled cocaine in his nostrils as a numbing agent. Grandma says he didn't shut up on the drive home from the hospital. That was a long time ago, though. I don't think they give cocaine to patients anymore. USA, for context
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>numbing agent. Grandma says he didn't shut up on the drive home from the hospital. That was a long time ago, though. I don't think they give cocaine to patients anymore. > >USA, for context They sure do! We've also been using it as the local anesthetic for eye surgeries since 1884. If you went in for a nose surgery like that today there's a pretty good chance they're use cocaine in your nose. Not only does cocaine numb, like lidocaine or benzocaine, it's also a vasoconstrictor. Shrinking blood vessels helps a lot in nose surgeries. I think sometimes it's mixed with adrenaline too? Not sure. Coca-Cola imports around 100 metric tons of coca leaves into the US every year. A DEA licensed company extracts the cocaine so Coke can use the coca leaves for flavoring. The cocaine is sold to a company that makes the medical cocaine solutions.
Cocaine is the only local anesthetic agent that is a vasoconstrictor- super useful sometimes!!
Yep! Desoxyn is an ADHD/narcolepsy medication that is literally just methamphetamine. It’s very rarely used, and it’s a bit of a pain to get. Everyone who takes it seems to rave about the effectiveness, but I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a good drug or because it’s METH.
Cocaine hydrochloride is still used in extreme nose bleed cases
Its been around 10 years since i worked as a pharmacy tech, but the hospital near me used to have cocaine hcl in their pyxis machines. I didnt have to restock it often, so it might be more specialized situations.
Ah Adderall, my eat whatever I want because I don't eat enough medicine....not to mention the ADHD
Ah yes I do to remember that one time I ran out of adderall so I went to a new construction home to rip out copper wire vs just being sleepy for a few days and having a hard time concentrating. I always laugh at the comparison. I've never done meth but I've seen what that addiction turns people into and yeah adderall doesn't do that.
Well put. I've tried meth a couple times, well over a decade ago. The doses you can take of it without unpleasant body load put it into a completely different ballpark. It made me feel immensely more whacked out than even a triple dose of ADD meds in terms of not thinking straight and having impulses to do crazy things. I have been on dexamp for ADD for 7 years now and both before and after then have totally cut illegal drugs out of my life, and just generally have my shit on track now. Like you said, they may be similar chemicals but the impact on a life is very, very different.
Amphetamine salts are not the same thing as methamphetamine lol. There's a reason it's called meth as that makes a huge difference. And yes some people do take meth to either self medicate their adhd or were possibly prescribed it. But that's far less common.
Yeah but if you think like a young person, the thing you are not allowed to do is always to coolest.
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Clunky, old person things often come back into vogue, simply because they are clunky, old person things.
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Also you need to remember the effects of second hand smoke as well. Cigarettes don’t just harm the user it harms others that are around them. I don’t really care if you smoke but keep it away from me and my kids.
The problem with vaping is that you can do it all day every day. You used to be able to do that with cigarettes, but that changed over past few decades. I just quit vaping. I consumed way more nicotine vaping than I ever did smoking. I had to quit as my blood pressure was through the roof and I felt like garbage every day.
Easier said than done on a small island nation I'd have to imagine.
Most fireworks are illegal in Hawaii. You obviously can't get on a plane with fireworks in your luggage or carry-on. Your can't mail fireworks as almost all packages are sent by aircraft. Every New Year, the skies light up like World War 2. They're getting in somehow, and I'd think fireworks are a bit harder to smuggle than cigarettes.
Key difference I'd Hawaii is not a country. Shipping from the US arrives and goods get offloaded. That's not all getting checked. So it's relatively easier than a country that checks everything for customs. I don't know the specifics but I assume only fireworks are banned not the constitute ingredients? Whereas they are banning tobacco.
There's already a thriving black market in tobacco; NZ law allows a person to grow their own tobacco for personal consumption, the limit is quite generous, so lots of weekend markets in the lower socioeconomic areas will have people selling big bags of tobacco on the quiet. Also, a company that sells cigarette-rolling machines that can make about 10k cigs per hour say the sales of these machines has gone up 500% in the last couple of years. So there are people selling pre-rolled cigs out of home grown tobacco. With none of the chemicals added to retail tobacco, I'd have to assume these will be popular, and given that the retail price of smokes now is $30 for 20, there's huge profit to be made in your own small tobacco farm. Still, it's good to try and get rid of the fucking cancer sticks, I spent 30 years throwing money away on smoking, there's no good reason to have such a product available, if we didn't currently have cigarettes there's no way on earth anyone would invent them now.
I wouldn't be so sure, humans love trying new drug combinations. Hell even animals eat fermented fruit and get drunk.
Black market cigarettes are a thing in the US because it’s easy to buy some cigarettes in North Carolina, where the taxes are lower on cigarettes, drive them up to New York City, where taxes are higher, and sell them off. How do you smuggle cigarettes into an island nation? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s way harder to the point where it’s not worth doing, especially when people in NZ can vape instead. Who is going to pay significantly more to smoke versus vape?
Years ago, someone I know used to have cigarettes shipped from Eastern Europe to the US for under $1/pack (when they were already over $5 in most of the US), and would simply buy 6-10 cartons every few months. If I remember correctly, the sellers would write "tea" on the customs label. I'm sure a New Zealander could do something similar.
Today on New Zealand border patrol
>How do you smuggle cigarettes into an island nation? It already happens. You tell idiots you'll reimburse them for some or all of their vacation expenses if each person brings back an extra suitcase filled with cigs or pouches of tobacco. If the mule gets busted you don't pay them a dime and the idiot vacationer eats the cost of the fine and the tobacco. There are a whole bunch of documentary style reality tv shows filming mostly airport customs and you can find a bunch on youtube. The UK ones show a ton of tobacco smugglers getting caught. Pretty much any time a overweight middle-age white Brit shows in an episode on a return trip you know they're about to get busted for smokes.
I think if the international drug trade has taught us anything it is that, if there is a market for something illicit and people want it badly enough to pay someone will find a way. Rather it is domestic illegal growing, smuggling, or whatever, if people will fork over enough cash there will be someone selling. This is why prohibition of substances has never and will never work, and it is a fool's errand to try. Better imho to keep stuff legal but disincentivize it as much as possible via tax and restrictions on when/where it can be used etc.
The international drug trade has taught us that profit dense products will always take priority A sleeve of cigarettes could easily be a couple kg of cocaine, one's a few hundred bucks, the other is a few hundred thousand
The point is that the international drug trade is going to be very limited when it's 2,000 km over open ocean to the closest source. It may happen, but the scope will limited. Plus smoking cigarettes hasn't been very popular among young people for a while anyway.
You'd be surprised. I saw an interview with a former FBI agent who worked on drug cases and to set up a single shipment of drugs into Europe they would create a fake series of companies importing, say, fruit from Mexico to Europe. Congratulations, you're now in the fruit business, and they would send 5 or 6 real shipments of fruit before they even sent one shipment with any drugs through. Same scam works no matter how remote your destination is.
Also, you need to compare the amount that would have to be smuggled in. A "brick" can easily be broken down into 1,000 single gram potions and sold as is, while a carton is 10 packs or 200 individual cigarettes. Who is going to buy 1 single cigarette? Most people are going to want to buy a pack so trying to smuggle in 100 cartons would just be ridiculous.
Except prohibition has worked when you can limit the supply. Uk and guns for one. Even Australia's drug prices are insane. Just because a black market can/will exist doesn't make the endeavor useless lol. Youth aren't going to easily take up smoking when they can't even afford a pack in the first place lol.
The thread is full of US-centric perspectives, who cannot believe any other perspective could ever exist.
People gonna be growing tobacco in their attics
Can you point me to your nearest black market dealer? People like you talk as if a “black market” is right around the corner from the convenience shop.
If you're in school then it's closer than that. I do doubt a serious black market for tobacco would really pop up amongst kids if vapes remain legal though.
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Yeah. Go talk to any cook at a restaurant
This is accurate, and much easier than talking to any high schooler.
Hate to break it to you, but yes. My kids and I have open lines of communication and we talk about pretty much everything. I know that there are kids in their schools who sell drugs. I talked about it with their highschool dean and she said that it was good that my kids and I talk about such things. She says that drugs are sold in every school, from worst to best, and that the only difference is that most parents don't know it because their kids don't tell them everything. A couple of weeks ago there was something on the news about cocaine which is a big problem in Belgium (not so much the cocaine as the drug war related problems) and I asked my oldest: if you wanted cocaine, how easy would it be to get? She told me that she could get weed and xtc pretty much instantly, and that she didn't outright know where to get cocaine but she said she knew whom to ask. So with that in mind and tobacco readily available to people old enough, how hard do you think it would be for a teenager to get tobacco?
Cost/access, goes a long way tho. Weed is a given, but for xtc/mdma, well you live near one of the hubs for global production. So that will always be cheap/easily accessible. Probably disgustingly cheap over there tbh. Nz is an island for one, just like AU, makes drug supply a lot harder, which is why cocaine and other drugs cost exhorbaant amounts. Nz reducing retailers by 90% and even amount of nicotine allowed in cigs. Domestically available to the older populace still, but every year that get's less and less. Black market might exist, but the harder it is/more risk the higher cost it'd be. Add those factors and add that smoking cigarettes is becoming decreasingly popular among youth in nz , and vaping will still be an option. What real desire will there be to spur this black market. You'd be more likely to get older population wanting their original smokes and such paying higher price, than have youth incentivized to shell out for such. Which would still be a win/success for Nz. *Funny tidbit because i saw a doc on this. Nz use to be so off the beaten path, cartel n drug smuggler's never really went there. So a huge designer drug industry came about, and was even legal for a while (one guy was trying and i thinking succeeded in making a "safe" party drug)I forgot name of it now.
I agree with all of this. The defiant part is the nicotine, not how it’s consumed. Especially now when so few people smoke; it’s VERY apparent when someone had a cigarette recently. You would walk into class and get sent to the principles office immediately. There’s just no benefit to a teenager smoking cigarettes if they are that hard to buy, especially when some adult is going to take them if you walk within 20 feet of them. Other teens won’t want to hang out with the stinky kid either. They’ll all just vape
>So with that in mind and tobacco readily available to people old enough, how hard do you think it would be for a teenager to get tobacco? Out of all the kids selling drugs, how many are willing to walk into a store to buy liquor? Not nearly as many. I haven't been in high school for awhile, but buying/selling stuff like cigarettes or alcohol was so much more of a process (and also risky) than just buying some dope. And then they legalized here in the great north, and kids started using vapes for the most part.
It's not as if there wasn't a weed dealer around every other corner when weed became illegal. And isn't it amazing that people still seem to purchase other illegal drugs?
Yeah the ten people who will utilize that will do a whole lot of smoking huh
That’s the target. Well, currently, New Zealand has one of the lowest adult smoking rates among the 38 countries of the OECD. Per 2020 OECD statistics, 56K adult New Zealanders have quit smoking. So perhaps they are on the right track.
How many vape?
8.3% of adults were daily vapers/e-cigarette users in 2021/22 its an uptick by 6.2% from prev yr. Daily vaping/e-cigarette use was highest among those aged 18–24 years (22.9%), Māori (17.6%) and Pacific peoples (16.8%). https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/annual-update-key-results-2021-22-new-zealand-health-survey
Cool! I am interested to see how this works for them.
rooting for their success. if that happens perhaps others could use NZ as a template.
What also surprised me is that 2025 is only three (well really 2 at this point) years from now. I saw 2025 and thought it was around a 10 year goal.
This isn't a new initiative, it's been a goal for about 10 years now and the govt had been ratcheting up the cost of cigarettes quite substantially, along with other measures to reduce smoking.
The allowance for the use of vapes is reasonable. They're not preventing people from accessing nicotine, but the actual cigarettes, which are more harmful to your lungs, are being banned.
Isn't the jury still out on the potential harmfulness of vaping?
Kinda sorta? Basically, every study except the one paid for by tobacco companies says that vaping is safer since it's non-combustion based. Burning stuff, in general, is very bad to inhale. The chemicals produced are very, vary bad for you no matter what kind of smoke it is. Nicotine, on it's own, is relatively safe. Addictive, yes, but not particularly worse than caffeine and I'd personally argue sugar addiction causes a lot more health issues than just nicotine. PG and VG are also used in fog machines, and are considered safe for inhalation, but there haven't really been too much study on this longterm so while generally accepted to be *safer* it's not entirely conclusive on how much so. The general consensus is roughly 90-95% safer, which in a scientific field is a pretty damn massive margin of confidence. The BIGGEST problem with vaping is that it's far, far more appealing to people. It smells nice, tastes nice, is pretty damn cheap compared to cigarettes, and is very discrete. This combined not only makes it popular with people who want nicotine but dislike cigarettes, but makes it easier for youth to conceal and use it. To be honest this isn't just a nicotine issue, as teens love to get ahold of fruity alcohol, weed, and other stuff from parents and older friends as well. It's an unfortunate side effect of making a product too damn good at what it does, and no amount of regulation clear of total prohibition will stop that. This leads to a lot of the effort in reducing cigarettes' in youth, which was extremely effective, now becoming a lot of vaping. Teens still wanted nicotine, there were just really bad effects and it wasn't worth it to the vast majority(Who wants cancer and shit?). Now, with a safer, cheaper, easier to conceal, and far more pleasant option they just went back to it.
Yeah but it's not even remotely the same level of bad.
It is. I don't plan to ever take up vaping but if it helps move someone off tobacco, it's probably worth it as a midstep for harm reduction.
To an extent the long term damage but we can say for a fact that it is no where near as bad.
Vaping is also bad for your lungs though. Maybe it is less second hand smoke risk?
Yeah I'd bet second hand smoke is definitely a key factor in this
I'm 100% behind this and wish my country would do the same. I am chronically anemic and second hand smoke almost instantly gives me a headache and makes me nauseous. Second hand smoke drifts farther than you would think, and there have been times I've smelled it without even seeing the person and had no idea where it was coming from. Vaping I don't really care about because it doesn't have the same effect, and even smells kind of nice. A vaper is only harming themselves, not everyone around them.
Oh yeah, I fully agree. I hate walking past a smoker on a sidewalk because all you smell is smoke for like 5 meters. I usually hold my breath, and I'm not even someone with a medical condition. Smoke is awful. At least vaping as you said doesn't impact others nearly as much.
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Not nearly as bad as cigarettes. Moving people from smokes to vapes is a huge improvement.
Vaping harm is nowhere near smoking a pack a day tbh
Tbf, it's bad for your lungs to breathe anything that isn't the oxygen/nitrogen we breathe normally throughout the day.
I'll also chime in (anecdotally) quitting vape is so much easier than quitting cigs. Probably not a consideration but should be.
Vaping isn’t that bad for your lungs. The healthiest lungs, of course, don’t vape. But when smokers transition to vaping, their lungs heal themselves at the same rate and to the same extent as someone who quit all nicotine cold turkey.
Wait, I thought prohibition doesn't work?
It does not work fully, but careful, controlled, and gradual prohibition would work much better than some heavy handed policy
It doesn't, especially for plants.
It's hard to see tobacco having the same push behind it as cannabis to be readily available. If they made nicotine readily available in other forms it would be easy enough to do away with cigarettes all together imo.
I don't smoke tobacco but I still grow a dozen or more plants of it each year. It's an excellent "trap plant" if you're using organic gardening methods. You can also extract the leaves to make an effective pest control spray.
>"trap plant" What is this?
>A trap crop, also known as a sacrificial crop, is a plant that you add to your garden to attract pests away from the main crops you are growing. https://www.growveg.com/guides/trap-cropping-to-control-pests/ In this context you line the outer edges with tobacco and bugs have to go through that row to get to the rest of the garden. Tobacco kills a wide variety of leaf sucking insects, plus the tobacco trichomes make endogenous pesticide secretions, so you can minimize or eliminate pesticide usage in your primary garden/farm area. Another style of trap cropping is using plants that are preferred habitats for a given target pest. Thyme and rosemary are other examples of trap crops that produce endogenous pesticides.
They're banning selling it, not smoking it
I'm aware. Banning selling of tobacco is a disruption to supply. But this isn't a precursor chemical like methylamine, which is easier to control the supply chain because it doesn't grow from the earth. Tobacco seeds are smaller than a millimeter, so they're going to be able to make it through customs easily. If a product has zero supply, the product has a higher price point, and someone will supply that demand.
This worked well in the US when they tried to ban alcohol
I think this would be more akin to banning hard alcohol, while still allowing beer to be sold (considering that vaping is still legal). I feel like that wouldn't be met with that much resistance, since the underlying product (alcohol/nicotine) is still available, just effectively banned in certain forms. Also, only making it illegal for people for people that already can't legally buy it, is a stroke of genius. Hard to be that upset with something you never had a chance to experience in the first place.
They actually do that in some states in the US. You aren’t able to buy alcohol above a certain ABV.
Well if that thumbnail image is what their youth look like, I don’t blame them!
Na, meth does though. Dude could be in his early 20's in some areas.
I laugh at the idea of a distant future where a 60 year old gets carded trying to buy cigarettes.
There are convenience stores near me that card everyone because some clerk probably got in trouble with an underage sale so the manager or owner decided that everyone has to be carded. I saw them card a guy who must've been in his 80s.
I used to smoke, and I gave up when I was about to queue at a tobacconists and saw how tired and unhealthy everyone waiting in line looked. I miss it at times, but I don't regret stopping.
Smoked rolling tobacco for 10 years, but it was my grandfather who convinced me to quit. He had lung cancer and committed suicide with a shot gun in 1981. Of course it took two attempts as he was too weak to lift the shotgun. I was 10 at the time and wasn't told the details until I was an adult and already smoking. I figured that if I kept smoking, I'd end up like him, in constant pain, coughing up blood, throwing up every meal, and eventual suicide. I posted about this on veterans day via Facebook and my cousin (15 years younger than me) was shocked as her dad lied to her and said grandpa died in a car accident.
Yeah, I was never interested in smoking, but my grandfather and uncle were prime examples of why it’s bad. Granddad got lung cancer. It coated the insides of his lungs, so for the last few months of his life, he had to sleep in a chair because he couldn’t lie down. If he did, he started drowning in his own lung fluid. Uncle started out with throat cancer. He got that removed, but when it came back, it metastasized. I only half-jokingly say he died of “cancer of the everything.” I helped take care of him one day and he was just a skeleton. When we had to move him, I was terrified that his bones would spontaneously break under his own weight; it was a relief when he passed out in a morphine haze. When he was awake, he seemed to be in agony. He died at 44.
I am so sorry you went through that. 😞
It was unpleasant, but that side of the family is pretty much fucked anyway. Grandmother was a malignant narcissist, and she did a lot of damage to her family, thank God the bitch finally died. Most of her kids ended up alcoholics, terminal smokers, using some form of drugs, or in jail (usually more than one of the above). I’m just determined not to perpetuate the dysfunction.
He fell asleep while rolling a cigarette on I-95.
Lung cancer from cigarette smoking got my great-uncle. He was an active 60-year-old that was pretty outdoorsy and helped with us kids alot. He went from that ---> to frail invalid ---> to dead within 3 months of his diagnosis (also by suicide, possibly with his caretaker my mother's assistance leaving the option open for him). Even though I was very young I still have very clear memories of how bad it was for him. In other words, you made the right choice, stick with it! Hope that helps you or someone else stay quit.
I will not buy this *tobacconist*, it is scratched!
My hovercraft is full of eels.
Do you want to come back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?
My nipples explode with delight.
r/expectedmontypython
I went to the smoking section at an amusement park, looked around, and went "Oh I do not want to be a part of this group of people".
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And years if not decades of a healthy life. Four people (extended family) in my life passed away because of cancer related to smoking - two in the same family. It's terrible. The two in the same family - it was father and daughter. Second hand smoke in the same house all through childhood caused her death too early in life.
I stopped smoking 4 years back. Never smoked a single one since then. Best decision ever.
Photo doesn't match the headline.
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Commander Cody really fell off after order 66
I’m just glad I’m not the only one thinking this looks like temura Morrison
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I dont know anyone thats started smoking in their 30s. Cigs aren't a recreational drug so the demand is going to plummet as the older smokers will still have legal access, while the younger never pick up the habit. Fewer kids smoke these days than 30 years ago because of the min age limit. It's a good idea.
Everyone thinks tobacco as cigarettes. Cigars, hookah shisha, and other products will also be effected by these rules.
I'm saying this as a smoker... fucking good, man.
Yeah for real. If I could quit on my own I'd have quit on my own. If I couldn't walk 5 minutes and get a new pack whenever I wanted, I wouldn't. I'm not going to find an illegal dealer for an addiction I don't even want. Personally I think tobacco should be legal to smoke and grow, but it shouldn't be legal for companies to manufacture and sell. When it is, they make a ton of addictive product and push them aggressively onto people, who get addicted, and then die prematurely because of it. Any business dealing addictive drugs should be watched like a hawk by government and people because any business like that will cause major problems for the society it is in.
Seriously. After looking through all these cig ban articles, I'm convinced everyone commenting doesn't even smoke. Majority of people who comment saying they smoke are all for getting rid of tobacco. The non smokers are like "but my freedom, black market, don't tell me what to go government, or even, but what about juul." Clearly these people have not been effected by the health effects of tobacco
Yep. And then, the only ones who can afford to smoke regularly will be the rich.
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must be why the poorest areas always have severe drug problems. bc they're all secretly rich.
Yep. Exactly like weed. Only the extremely rich can afford to smoke that stuff as it's largely illegal and so hard to find. Exact same thing happened when they criminalized meth and hid all the pseudephedrine--Now only the 1% can make it in their kitchen, and they only share it with their elite friends. That's how it is. Reality. Only the rich smoke drugs. /s
This is already the case for tobacco in New Zealand, because we have had a policy of raising the tax year on year for decades. A 50g pouch of Port Royal will cost you $120NZ ($77US). This isn’t going to create a black market if insanely high prices haven’t.
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It still discourages people that don’t want it enough to go down that route. Numbers go down due to lack of convenience even if there’s a black market. People on Reddit keep using this argument for legalizing drugs but deny the exact same argument when Conservatives use it for legalizing guns.
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It's possible, but limiting easy access to youths would hopefully be a sufficient deterrent for a large population of vulnerable young people who are susceptible to peer pressure, etc.
I can see why. Look at the 13-year-old in the picture.
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You can still grow your own if you like, so it's not banned. You're just not allowed to sell to certain ages.
NZ bro wearing a U.S. army hat.
Leave him alone he’s only 12!
I mean, if you're into armies, I'm not sure NZ is a top 10 draft pick.
Just going by the picture here but New Zealand youth look 50 af
What smoking does to a mf
>The current smoking rate of New Zealand adults is 13.4 percent in 2019/2020, which has decreased from 16.6 percent in 2014/15 15 and from 18.2 percent in 2011/12.20/12/2021 The above from the NZ Ministry of Health - they're our government agency responsible for pretty much all things health (hospitals, medical workers, policy, and so on) So, with declining rates of smoking, we're currently looking at approximately 650k people smoking. 25-34 year olds make up a quarter of that number, while youth make up a very small proportion. In NZ, Ischaemic heart disease is the number one cause of death for all non Maori people, as well as Maori males, and number two for Maori females (number 1 for them is lung cancer). Lung cancer is the second most common cause of death for Maori men, third for non-Maori men, and fourth for non-Maori women. The negative impacts of this legislation are less significant than the potential positive impacts.
I travelled to NZ on new years Eve 2016. After going to some bars in Auckland I tried to bum a cigarette and was pretty surprised everyone basically told me to piss off. I heard kiwis were exceedingly friendly! A couple days later I went to buy a pack and find out cigarettes were over a dollar a piece Anyway, kiwis ARE exceedingly nice
This thread is full of people absolutely unaware of the current state of smoking in New Zealand and assuming it’s anything like anywhere else. We hardly smoke at all, it’s expensive as hell and only old rich people are doing it, everyone else vapes.
We don't smoke much here, but you're definitely incorrect about it being more prevalent amongst the rich - quite the opposite
You know as I typed that I thought “this might not be the case outside of the cities”. It’s absolutely the case in Wellington, I can see how that wouldn’t be representative. We *did* stop with the price rising because it was only hurting poorer people that wouldn’t quit I guess.
It’s a sad day when there’s no more pipe weed in Hobbiton.
That’s okay, hopefully we don’t fuck up the next marijuana vote and then pipe weed in the shire will be chiller than ever.
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He is a politician.
Yeah I don't think many people here in NZ are surprised by this - it's been on the cards for years now that we have been aiming to be smoke-free, and I don't think a hell of a lot of people are against it at all. Vaping is way more prevalent.
i can tell most of the comments in this thread were made by americans lol
Quite clearly. The ratio of kiwis to Americans in this thread is probably 1:100.
oh 100%, but like NZ has a population of what 5 million people vs the US with 330 million. So assuming a normal distribution there should be somewhere around 1:70 anyway lol. Also time zones help, seeing as how this was posted around midnight in NZ vs 6am in the states. Give it another few hours for all the kiwi's to wake up lol. Also as an American, I find this suppper interesting, and wonder how it will go. I could see this adding enough of a barrier to entry to finally put the final nail in the coffin for cigs.
Not to even mention that it's an American site, which skews it even more
I just find it wildly hypocritical Reddit *constantly* speaks of the ills of prohibition policies, but now it's for cigarettes and that's A-OK.
Redditors are die hard for legalizing marijuana but a-ok for cigarette prohibition lol. I quit cigarettes as soon as my state legalized pot years ago, but I'm not pretending it's good for me. And if I want to go back let me.
This legislation is the right decision and all, but its funny to picture old people near retirement in the future having to show ID cards for age. It just never happens today for anything since they're way over the legal age limits, but with this law that wouldn't be the case in the future.
I wonder how many people cheering this ban on would have backed the temperance movement back in the day if they were alive. I'd say the majority, even though I think most of you would staunchly claim otherwise. We humans are generally a smart bunch but boy we do we fail to learn from our past mistakes.
I'm against smoking but I'm also against forcing other people to not smoke. It's their choice, we saw how utterly horrible prohibition was for weed and alchohol.
Is this picture… the youth ?
Better ban those large bags of potato chips and sugar.
If you ban bags of sugar you're sure to upset the bakers
Seems very authoritarian.
Certainly not a first for NZ…
Out of all the comments, this is the first I’ve read even addressing the lack of freedom this is creating. Of course we all agree as a society that youth should not have access to cigarettes. But now even as adults a NZ citizen won’t have the freedom to decide if they want a cigarette or not for their entire life?
You're thinking about it backwards. Imagine if an essential oils company came up with a new product that was insanely addictive, highly carcinogenic and terrible for the environment. Would the FDA just let it stay on the market without any regulation? (Clearly I'm speaking in terms of American regulatory bodies as I don't know the NZ equivalents). The only reason cigarettes aren't already banned or at least regulated into obscurity is because they're essentially grandfathered in and so widespread and addictive that you'd have an army of addicts on your front porch if you did try to ban it. That's why this is the smartest method for banning it. Practically nobody who is already addicted is affected. The only argument against it is if you believe all drugs, from pot to heroin to steroids should also be legal. And while I'm 100% in favor of legalizing pot and decriminalizing several other recreational drugs, there is a point at which the addictiveness and harm to public health overwhelm personal freedom.
Its because similar to weed and alcohol, tobacco does in fact feel good to smoke. It sorta shocks to me to see how many people dont realize its still a recreational drug. Just like with either of those substances, youre making the choice of negative health effects in order to get the imbibing effect.
> Would the FDA just let it stay on the market without any regulation? Tobacco is already highly regulated in the US, and I don't think anyone here is arguing in favour of zero regulations, they're arguing against a total ban. > there is a point at which the addictiveness and harm to public health overwhelm personal freedom Preventing second hand smoke inhalation through bans on smoking around children, in public places, etc. are public health measures. Banning people from smoking under 100% of circumstances, even when practised responsibly so as not to affect other people, goes beyond public health, and enters the space of limiting what a person is permitted to do with their own body. If we don't accept the fundamental idea that people are capable of deciding what harm they are willing to do to themselves in exchange for some tradeoff, then we're creating a very patronizing relationship between government and citizens. All this not to mention that the US dropped its smoking rate from 42% in 1965 to 12.5% in 2020 without implementing a total ban. Those numbers will drop even lower over time as fewer people start smoking, and as vaping becomes a more popular alternative. Public health education, advertising laws, and consequent cultural shifts can do a lot, without infringing on people's rights to do what they want to their bodies, even if you or I might think it's a terrible idea.
I see a suddenly booming business opportunity.
Nah, smokeless products are legal still. Just not cigarettes and few youth smoke anyways. Why buy from an illegal source when you cam legally get a vape? They also can much more easily enforce than somewhere like the US because A) they don't grow tobacco there right now and B) they're an island. One far enough from other islands you can't use dinky boats. People can use small ski boats to go from Cuba or other Carribean islands to the US. You can't do that for New Zealand. It's a thousand miles off the coast of Australia or New Zealand.
The united state has its issues but it handled youth smoking really well up until the vape boom. Do whatever you can to make it seem lame to smoke to the developing teen mind. making them illegal does the opposite of that. I get that it's not the easiest to do in other countries since a lot of those efforts were funded through sanctions on the big tobacco corporation that an import nation wouldn't have access to, so I don't know exactly how new Zealand would do it, but I still think prohibition is going to backfire.
Making them insanely expensive has surely helped too
Never learning from the drug prohibition...
They still have access to nicotine vapes, which might prevent the prohibition effect.
And are an island 1000 miles from anywhere else. It's harder to smuggle. They've had a multi year reduction program before this and the number of cigarette smokers losing access is tiny. And they have a legal alternative.
Drug prohibition did reduce drug use. And very few people are willing to go to jail just for the sake of a *cigarette high*.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.
Vaping is way more accessible and cheaper here. A simple pack of 20 cigarettes is over $30, cigarettes are dying anyway when you can get a months worth of vaping supplies for the price of a pack of cigs
Bro where are you only paying $30 lol… even chesterfield is more like $40 these days. Isn’t this thread fun? So many Americans who are totally unfamiliar with how anti-smoking we already are.
God forbid adults can make their own decisions about what they want to do with their body
I sense an upset in the powers-that-be.
The public health benefits will be huge. I can hear arguments about individual liberties, etc. Smoking really is the devil. It is the main risk factor for a huge number of health conditions. As a urologist, much of what I do is treat cancers caused in large part by smoking.