this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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[–] Teddybearalleymngr@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Not a smoker or wannabe one but if someone is just one year behind in their age, they'll never be able to legally smoke with this setup.

They don't respect the rights of other people, that's all. It's just blatant authoritarianism that they're getting away with because of popular support.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] Liu_fragezeichen@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I agree that smoking is bad for you, having quit myself - but the idea of outlawing a plant / prohibiting humans who just happened to be born in one specific part of the world from burning it and inhaling the produced smoke just goes against my views on ethics.

Instead, why don't we fix the real problems? How about getting rid of capitalism, and thus the profit incentive to sell addictive substances for a huge markup? How about we fix this broken society that keeps pushing more and more people towards drugs such as nicotine, the tiny escape, and the little bit of stress relief they provide?

Drugs, from cigarettes to meth, are not the problem..

They're just a symptom.

The war on drugs is nothing more than an effort to sweep the real problems under the rug, and nothing less than coordinated violence targeted at people who are already suffering.

Fuck this.

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