Realistically, I assume that anyone who wants tobacco and would be affected is just going to buy it outside city limits.
Yep. My hometown restricted beer and wine sales and that is exactly what we did. It was a 15min drive instead of what could have been a 5min drive.
We had a religious township do that, now the highway to the nearest wet town has the highest rate of drunkdriving deaths in the province.
I lived in a dry county growing up. If someone was headed “across the bridge” it meant they were heading to the border of the next county where they had a bar and 4 liquor stores within a half mile stretch.
It’s weird that I grew up in a county that didn’t sell alcohol but there were more liquor stores within 10 miles than there were grocery stores.
People will drive to county limits, but policies like this have been shown to actually be quite effective. Even if you are willing to drive to a neighboring county, will you do it as often?
policies like this have been shown to actually be quite effective
United States, 1920s, alcohol.
Very much the opposite
I grew up with these types of laws and they are just more of an inconvenience than anything else. My old hometown restricted the sale of beer and wine for many years, but it was easy enough just to go to the next town over. (Simultaneously, the town hosted a state managed liquor store which was extremely weird.)
If smaller communities want to restrict products like that, whatever. Hell, even restricting some services is OK as long as it’s not discrimination based.
Personally, I wouldn’t live in one of those places. It’s not about the tobacco but more about the people who are elected by those communities to make laws like that. If smaller communities of like-minded people want to make their own laws like that, so be it. I wouldn’t be like-minded, in that case.
Politicians making smoking cool again with this one stupid trick.
Smoking is not good for your health, but we as Americans are free to make that choice for ourselves. I think that’s the definition of unconstitutional. Banning something like that is only going to make it more widespread and sketchy. Look at the war on drugs and what it’s done, but sure it’ll work this time.
I don’t think “unconstitutional” is the word you want here. There’s endless things you are not free to purchase or choose for yourself.
“Unconstitutional” == I don’t like it
Literally as deep as most people’s understanding goes.
Not going to argue about whether or not it’s constitutional (because I don’t know), but I just wanted to point out that this case is slightly more complicated than just “you’re not allowed to purchase”. It’s “you’re not allowed to purchase… BUT other people are”. Which means it’s potentially a question of discrimination, which is maybe not as cut-and-dry as a “normal” law banning a substance across the board.
That’s what I mean. As someone else pointed out, all it does is make it inconvenient, and it opens up a black market. People are gonna do what they want. Either this means they’ll just drive to another city/county/state, or someone is going to acquire them in bulk and sell them on black alleys.
In my mind, a more effective approach is to regulate where someone can smoke. There are a number of CA cities where it’s effectively illegal to smoke a cigarette within city limits (aside from private property), which drives smokers into little nooks and crannies. Ultimately most people want it out of sight and out of mind, and to not walk into a cloud of it on a sidewalk or have their children seeing/smelling it, which is 100% reasonable. But telling someone they’re not allowed to buy it is going to incentivize some to seek it out more.
The cost of cigs is also artificially inflated in many places. I’m glad to see less of the younger crowd smoking, that’s a good thing. But doing it in these ways just feels plain un-American.
We let an awful lot of things that are bad for us slide, because the effects aren’t as visible.
This does seem super anti democratic. Banning things for only people of a specific group made up of people who were born into it is pretty gross no matter what it is. If it’s worth banning then it should be banned for everyone. Or no one.
Effectively banning something for a group of people who had no choice about being in that group. If you can’t ban something for yourself then it shouldn’t be banned for others.
All I’m reading is the government isn’t banning the sale is a market that has already been exploited.
This is like Texas when they had dry counties. This didn’t stop people from drinking they just drove futher to buy it. This law is dumb they are now going lose tax dollars to the next towm over.
How do you stop a Mormon from drinking your alcohol?
Invite 2.
I don’t really know Mormons but for some reason I remember that joke.
I heard it a bit different: What’s the difference between Jews and Mormons? Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the messiah and Mormons don’t recognize each other in the liquor store. (I think it works with baptists too)
Alcohol has an age requirement that stays where it is, if you’re 20, you can buy it in a year. This would be if you’re 23 right now, the age requirement is 24. Next year, you’ll be 24 and the requirement is 25. In 50 years, you’ll be 74 and the requirement is 75, until eventually no one alive is old enough to smoke.
