Comment by joegibbs
9 hours ago
Drinking has been decided to be totally fine though, no need to ban that - probably because it's unfashionable to smoke, and the kind of people who come up with these laws find it uncouth. It will also be ridiculous in a few years when the UK inevitably decides to legalise marijuana - totally fine to smoke a joint, but don't you dare put any of that tobacco in it!
Drinking doesn’t affect others as direct as smoking does.
Most of the indoor smoking bans in the U.S. have been based entirely on the fact that second hand smoke affects the employees who are forced to be there.
Further, drinking has a far deeper cultural resonance, so smoking is clearly the lower hanging fruit.
And it’s not like the UK has not been taking action against drinking. For example, they’ve imposed minimum alcohol taxes which have been directly linked to lower consumption.
Drinking affects others much more than smoking does, it's just that it doesn't affect random strangers. In a study of the harms of various substances, alcohol came out on top by a mile for the damage it does to the family and others close to the drinker.
I should qualify the above: it doesn't affect random strangers as often as second-hand smoke does. But drunk driving and drunk violence are a thing, and both can affect anyone.
"Ranked by drug experts on damage to user, impact on crime, and socioeconomic effects"
1. Alcohol 2. Heroin 3. Crack Cocaine 4. Cocaine 5. Tobacco
I think these laws are bizarre morality rituals. Evidence doesn't conclude it has anything to do with public health when you see how vicious alcohol is.
Nobody was ever attacked on the street by a tobacco-addled stranger at 3 in the morning though. Besides, they're not banning indoor smoking, they're banning it entirely - including vaping and other nicotine products.
Prohibition (of alcohol) wouldn't work, but over time the government has raised alcohol duty rates:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/alcohol-duty-rates
That cuts down on drinking, except for the alcoholics of course. Scotland also imposed a minimum price per unit on alcohol, in an attempt to further cut consumption:
https://www.gov.scot/policies/alcohol-and-drugs/minimum-unit...
Whether that works is an open question, but in the UK things like "the sugar tax" have a visible affect on consumer consumption rates of "bad things".
Nicotine is insanely addictive, so ya.
Alcohol is very difficult to ban as you can take almost any kind of sugar feedstock and turn it into alcohol.
Right. Booze is straight up naturally occurring, albeit rare. That's why you get drunk monkeys and other wildlife. The animal is like "Actually this moldy fruit is pretty good" - they did absolutely nothing to manufacture booze but here it is.
Newsflash: Its possible to consume "marijuana" w/o smoking it (just like nicotine!).
They're not banning smoking in general (which would be impossible anyway, what are they going to do, make it illegal to set something on fire and breathe it in?), they're banning nicotine products. I also really doubt that they will legalise weed and then say "but of course you're not allowed to smoke it, edibles only".
"they're banning nicotine products" If I am not mistaken, they are banning to sale of tobacco, not nicotine:
"[..]provision prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after 1 January 2009[..]"
"I also really doubt that they will legalise weed and then say "but of course you're not allowed to smoke it, edibles only"."
I mean, there is still vaporization, so it wouldn't be edibles only?
Tbh I'm worried that this is directionally bad and we're more likely to see a pointless crackdown on weed.
Drinking has been declining on its own.