This is the best summary I could come up with:
Speaking at the Conservative party conference, Mr Sunak said he believed it was the right step to tackle the leading cause of preventable ill-health.
“Because without a significant change, thousands of children will start smoking in the coming years and have their lives cut short.”
But Mr Sunak has decided to throw his backing behind it as a way of meeting the government’s ambition for England to be smokefree by 2030 - defined as less than 5% of the population smoking.
The proposal on raising the age of sale of cigarettes is similar to laws being introduced in New Zealand, where buying tobacco products will remain banned for anyone born after 2008.
Mr Sunak also said the government would consider restricting the sale of disposable vapes and look at flavourings and packaging of the devices, to tackle the rising rates of children using them.
“If implemented, the prime minister will deserve great credit for putting the health of UK citizens ahead of the interests of the tobacco lobby.”
The original article contains 577 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This better not apply to vaping.
I vaped for a few years and then stopped. Quitting was pretty damn easy imo
Your extreme views frighten me! I thought we were just gonna let them all deal with this mess long after we’re gone.
They want to look at how vaping is being marketed to kids to reduce the number starting to vape but they’re not changing the age restrictions as far as I know.
Hopefully this will lead to them just using vapes instead of cigarettes and not them trying to illegally get cigarettes. I’m still on the fence on whether I think this law is a good idea in general or not but allowing them to still buy vapes / vape liquid is definitely the right decision IMO.
They’re doing a separate crusade against disposable vapes. If they’re going after smoking I’d imagine they’d be trying to encourage people to vape to quit.
It’s all hypothetical because it’s highly unlikely he’ll still be in power to put this plan in to action come the next general election
Counterpoint, a majority of the man’s bathrooms in high schools are taken up by vapers and no one can piss anymore
…how do 14 year olds get smokes now?
Making it illegal to buy at certain ages has never worked…banning them outright also won’t work. You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
Has the war on drugs not been a thought to these people? It is useless and does nothing.
The war on drugs can’t work because the CIA uses illicit drug running to fund off-the-books projects.
Maybe if they stopped fucking doing that?
Sure on a global scale, but on a more macro level, the war on drugs failed because people want to buy and consume drugs… if there is no legal, regulated, safe method to buy them then the black market will fill that gap… same under rationing, same under prohibition, same with drugs and in the future cigarettes…!
I think you’re wrong. The market isn’t magic, it needs supply to meet demand and there is a steady supply of drugs to fulfill the demands because of state intervention in the market. The CIA isn’t the only government entity that uses the drug trade to raise illicit funds for off-the-books jobs, it’s just the biggest. If it weren’t for bad state actors, the war on drugs probably would have worked to a large extent; maybe not eliminate the drug trade completely, but at least reduce the volume of trade substantially.
The war on drugs succeeded, because it was actually a war on black people. It was never meant to stop drug abuse.
True, but the want of cigarettes is much lower than recreational drugs. One of the reasons they’re still so popular is because they’re legal and easy to get.
I don’t smoke and never have, but I can’t imagine anyone starting smoking in order to get some effect like with marijuana.
There is a legal, regulated, mostly safe method to buy cigarettes. It is inaccessible if you are under a certain age, but only the seller/provider is punished for violating regulations. It’s okay to have restrictions on what children can consume.
While current laws on illegal drugs do not work, arguing against any regulation whatsoever is similarly silly, the laws obviously work. Smoking rates have dramatically declined since those laws and public education campaigns began.
The war on drugs can’t work because people want drugs. Has literally fuck-all to do with anything or anyone else.
I agree that prohibition doesn’t really prevent a thing from being consumed. However, I don’t think an age limit really counts as prohibition. Selling substances to those who are underage is bad and there should be potential consequences for doing so.
Underage in this scenario could be 40, 50, 60. They will just drive to an Indian reserve and buy cigarettes.
I assume you’re talking about teens though…I’m fine with the current age limits, but increasing the age by 1 year ever year won’t do anything.
Um, you do realize that Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the UK? It’s a long and arduous drive to the nearest Indian reservation.
Why have laws against drunk driving or speeding? You cannot stop people from doing things, no matter how many words you put on paper.
It’s true, you can’t stop people from doing what they want to do with laws, but smoking doesn’t smear a child down the street for everyone to see. What a terrible comparison
Fine, why have laws against littering, or smoking in public buildings, or jaywalking, or embezzlement? People are just going to do those things anyway, no matter what is written on paper.
We have laws to provide an enforcement mechanism for behavior that is unacceptable in our society. You’re right, in that laws written on paper can be ignored, but you do so at a risk of the penalties laid out in the law. Your argument essentially invalidates the purpose and effectiveness of every law. Clearly, we have laws and they work, so your argument is frivolous and empty.
how to create a blackmarket with health issues
aside from the issue of ‘prohibition still doesn’t work’, i don’t think giving kids or “underage” adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone
I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it’s “cool”, making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.
Please, oh dear god…
Please tell me what FFA means and how it doesn’t amount to “send poor people to prison”.
FFA just means “free for all” (it’s a term from competitive games, in case you shouldn’t know), in this context I used it as another word for ‘legal’.
Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.
TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.
Incorrect.
A black market is created, kids still smoke, but poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail.
It doesn’t fix the issue and syphons poor people into prisons.
How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.
