I’d be with you if second and third hand smoke wasn’t a thing. And also if I didn’t just kick nicotine a month back for causing severe pain in my hands and wrists.
The theory that when you smoke, the nicotine binds to surfaces the smoke touches, causing cancer to anyone who comes near surfaces that nicotine has touched.
It was a "truth" run around in the 80s as we were discovering the nature of radiation, so lots of war on drug "research" papers got published functionally saying nicotine and radiation are the same thing.
I mean, nicotine does saturate things when you smoke in an enclosed area. It’s impossible to paint over the stained walls of a smoker’s house without chemically stripping them first, because all the accumulated tar will just seep through the paint and leave brown stains. There’s no way that shit’s healthy.
Normally I'd agree, but cigarettes in particular are a product that is designed to be as addictive as possible with a laundry list of negative health impacts and virtually zero positive ones. Combine that with the fact that you aren't just putting it in your body but the body of anyone within breathing distance of you, there's a strong case to be made for banning them outright.
Put it another way, if cigarettes are legal then marijuana, LSD, MDMA, and a whole host of other drugs should be legal too.
Combine that with the fact that you aren’t just putting it in your body but the body of anyone within breathing distance of you,
That’s part of responsible use. I’m ok with only letting smokers smoke in specialty ventilated & filtered areas. Easy for me to say, I don’t smoke. But if any adult wants to make an informed decision to, that should be their choice.
Put it another way, if cigarettes are legal then marijuana, LSD, MDMA, and a whole host of other drugs should be legal too.
Cigarettes != tobacco. Tobacco is an ingredient in cigarettes, and not the only one, not by a long shot. Literally dozens of additives are included in cigarettes, many of which are designed to make them more addictive.
Secondly, modern tobacco absolutely was "made" the way it is, first through selective breeding and then genetic modification to (among other things) increase Nicotine content. Much in the same way that modern weed is far stronger than the stuff grown 50 years ago, so too is tobacco.
Maybe they could just regulate what they put in them instead? Good tobacco is pretty tasty and not insanely addictive. Why not just basically put them in legacy mode?
They’ve already hit a crazy stride with vapes. Maybe they could do a 5-10 year plan where the clean it up while also gaining the foothold that they have with younger people?
Nah, nicotine is very addictive by itself. But yes, the additives make it even worse.
I agree though, it’s disappointing that governments don’t have better labeling regulations on “sinful” products. Alcohol: why not require a list of ingredients and calories? Cigarettes: same thing, show what it has been processed with, etc? Like how the EU used to require showing how much tar and nicotine each cigarette contained, but realized all the producers started to fake the testing machines by designing holes in the filters (like “light” cigs) where the user’s lips would otherwise cover when smoking.
Because African American smokers tend to favor menthol over other types of cigarettes.
“In the 1950s, less than 10% of Black smokers used menthol cigarettes. Today, after decades of tobacco industry targeting, that number is 85%. Menthol cigarettes continue to be heavily advertised, widely available and priced cheaper in Black communities."
Black people tend to primarily smoke menthol, disproportionate to other races. I’m too lazy to link, but you can Google it and find studies pretty easily.
That logic doesn’t flow, though. You need to compare number of current illegal users vs number of users before it was illegal.
Have you heard of the US prohibition on alcohol? It’s a pretty famous counterexample to your argument showing that it absolutely does not reduce usage.
Maybe not for other laws, but it makes sense for drugs. The important thing is that people should have the right to breathe non-poisonous air, and forcing smokers to hide their smoking achieves that.
This ban is on the sale of menthol infused cigarettes. It wouldn’t criminalize smoking menthols and there’s plenty of other ways to infuse cigarettes with menthol or buy a synthetic alternative.
If your point is at all that this prohibition would in any way, shape, or form help fulfill that goal, that is incorrect.
I’ve read the comment chain, it just seemed like you were implying that this ban would achieve some kind of beneficial outcome.
It’s fine if I’m wrong, that’s okay. I’ll take that loss. That’s not my point. I just think this ban has no positive effects whatsoever and I’m just hoping people realize that if true.
I spent half my life legally smoking tobacco and illegally smoking weed.
I moved a quarter of a country away for the mental health of legally smoking tobacco and legally smoking weed.
I WILL NOT be dragged back into a life where one of my vices give me crippling fear of imprisonment.
Get off your fucking high horse. Mind your own fucking business. Stop asserting your will over others. Live your own fucking life. Let me live my fucking life.
I’m glad I live in a country with universal healthcare. Your point is made completely erroneous by the fact that everyone’s taxes are paying for your cancer treatment. This “fuck you i’ll do what i want” mentality is literally antisocial conservative garbage.
This apparently is an objectionable point to bring up… not sure if your downvotes are the “all or nothing” aspect, or the spotlighting of the blatant racist aspect, but it seems people don’t want to see this at face value :/
I’m with you though. The selective targeting is wrong. Equal ban or no ban is the right position to take IMHO.
I down voted it because I don’t think the government should ban substances. Not cigarettes, not alcohol, not marijuana, not psychedelics, and probably not a bunch of other drugs too. The government’s job is not to play mommy and daddy for a nation of adults. Our citizens are entirely too eager to strip away their own liberty these days.
The specific ban in question on this particular post isn’t a general matter though… it’s targeting minorities…
That kinda makes it a moot point in my opinion on wether or not prohibition is appropriate in general, because regardless of where you fall on the matter of bans or liberties, the specificity of the intended targets is wildly inappropriate, because it’s racist/homophobic, so I kinda disregarded the last point they made entirely :)
They’ve already banned menthol in California and it did nothing. Alternatives are already being marketed and sold and some of the better ones recreate the exact same effect but cost $1.20 more per pack at the low end. To put it simply, this is dumb as fuck.
That’s not how capitalism works. If the tobacco industry could raise prices and get more money today, they would. Since they haven’t, you have to assume that any increased taxes or burden on them will reduce their profits.
Yes, it might increase prices to the end consumer, because the demand curve will change when the costs change. But that doesn’t mean the tobacco industry is making any more money. If it did, they would already charge more.
“That guy happened to tangentially mention tax so you must’ve been talking about tax, herp derp”
Edit: Is it really that hard to figure out that I started this whole thread in reference to the topic of prohibition as the title suggests? I’m not talking about taxes. I never mentioned taxes. I don’t care that anyone else is talking about taxes.
Prohibition has no net effect on demand, it simply enables black markets. Alcohol use after Prohibition was not higher than pre-prohibition, but did rise to the same levels fairly quickly.
Supply and demand do not have an inverse relationship. Demand exists, and when supply exceeds demand, prices fall. When supply does not meet demand, prices rise. You understand they are related but forgot the actual curve on the graph. Supply and demand can both be low, for instance, as is the case with mega yachts. Supply and demand have no direct effect on one another, though low supply does tend to encourage firms to increase supply to try to compete and meet the demand.
Data during prohibition is irrelevant to this specific discussion, because your claim is that demand goes up when goods are prohibited, which is false, as I showed with my link
I don’t believe you have actually taken Econ 101, given the things Ive seen you say here.
Thanks for proving my point for me. I appreciate it.
Your link shows an estimate of alcohol consumption during prohibition based on mortality, but there is. Zero. Accurate. Data. of alcohol consumption during the prohibition.
The important part of that link was not during prohibition, which is irrelevant, because regardless of demand the number of people with access to alcohol was lower, but rather that after prohibition, usage rates did not surpass pre-prohibition levels.
When supply does not meet demand, prices rise
This is not an inverse relationship between supply and demand. The supply is not affecting the demand, which is what “inverse relationship” requires.
This way smokers have to pay more so the demand will decrease, tobacco industry gets less money, and the economic burden on public health and environment can be financed with the additional tax income.
Addicts will always find a way to justify their addiction. Price of smokes goes up? Welp, looks like Ol Johnny Blacklungs is going to buy less food this month.
So we shouldn’t tax cigarettes then? It sounds like you’ve identified that addiction can quickly become a public health crisis if wealth inequality could cause addicts to choose their vice over food. We could fund programs to help addicts get help, but we would need to raise tax revenue.
If the government insists on high rates of taxation for the reason that the product has a high potential for harm, then shouldn’t the use of that tax revenue be mostly, if not entirely, re-directed towards harm reduction programs around that substance or product? How can anyone possibly argue any other use for that revenue? When the revenue generated by ‘sin taxes’ is used for other unrelated purposes, they are effectively exploiting the users by recognizing that they will continue to be a source of revenue because the product is habit forming or addictive. The last time I checked on the revenue generated by tobacco taxes, only ~11% was spent on harm-reduction programs related to tobacco use and the remaining 89% was just paying for other government projects totally unrelated to tobacco.
To suggest that the solution is to further raise the taxation rates rather than properly allocating the current revenue is immoral and illogical IMHO.
There’s a reason why people tend to hit rock bottom before they finally kick their drug addiction. If they don’t have the means, they will attempt to find it. Your logic is flawed, and only serves to disproportionately impair the poor while bolstering the very industry you fight.
How the fuck do you hit rock bottom solely on nicotine?
Tobacco, the main ingredient in cigarettes, is more addictive than meth. If you can imagine somebody hitting rock bottom on meth then it should be easy enough to wrap your head around it. Especially when cigarettes contain added chemicals to make it more addictive than tobacco alone.
Also, I would be inclined towards believing that the habit is mostly spread through peers. Price as a barrier to entry wouldn’t be effective at preventing peer pressure if they’re your first supplier.
To clarify, the addictiveness of nicotine ≠ the addictiveness of tobacco. Even aside from the additives used by the tobacco industry, tobacco naturally contains an array of MAO inhibitors and other compounds that work in harmony with nicotine causing it to be far more addictive than nicotine itself. Pure nicotine is much farther down the scale of addictiveness, classed as a “weak reinforcer” in studies.
If you are interested in the subject, I highly recommend reading the studies and posts by Maryka Quik, director of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Program at SRI International. I first found out about her in an interesting article published in Scientific American — LINK.
Okay thanks, but we are talking about tobacco. I understand that I messed up the terminology, but why are you replying this to me and not the one that is denying it?
Edit: Wait…you do know that cigarettes contain tobacco right?
…why are you replying this to me and not the one that is denying it?
I repied to you because of your reply to Jake_Farm. Jake_Farm stated:
How the fuck do you hit rock bottom solely on nicotine?
To which you responded:
It’s more addictive than meth. If you can imagine somebody hitting rock bottom on meth then it should be easy enough to wrap your head around it. Especially when cigarettes contain added chemicals to make it more addictive than nicotine alone.
By inference you are claiming that nicotine is more addictive than meth and I’m just pointing out that isn’t correct — you can’t use tobacco and nicotine interchangeably in discussions, whether talking about addictiveness, harm, or just about any aspect of their short and long terms effects. The addictiveness is drastically different, the cardiovascular effects are vastly different, the effects on lung function are vastly different.
To your credit, the overall conversation is about tobacco and I should have clarified that my point applies to everyone in this conversation who is talking about nicotine and tobacco in the same breath.
Yeah I definitely flubbed the terms, but if you extrapolate what I’m saying it should be obvious I was talking about tobacco. And I feel like the people in this conversation are so eager to hate on me that they’ll just incorrectly use this as evidence that I’m wrong lol
No hate or downvotes from me, sorry if it seems that way. Perhaps it’s my current mood or imagination, but the Lemmy crowd seems a bit more reactionary and prone to strongly worded dismissive comments than Reddit.
I’m also seeing a lot more downvoting of comments here that don’t seem all that controversial. I’d rather hear why someone disagrees with a post than the rush to silently downvote, but I can’t control that either. People are wound up these days.
I completely agree. This is not even a subject that I’m particularly educated on and I’m still waiting for a single substantiated defeator for my opinions on the topic to change my mind.
Then you look at the downvotes and you’d think that you missed a comment that disproved your statement(s).
Okay so here we are speculating about this, but there’s data on this isn’t there? Is it not the case that countries who tax tobacco more have all but eliminated it? I’m not well versed on the subject, but I think it’s a bit silly to just pull this out of your ass as if it were fact. Here’s a link to an ncbi article that talks about it. I’m sure there’s plenty more out there to show one way or the other, so I’m interested to know whether you have anything to back up your stance.
Being that dependent on a substance suggests that practical decision-making and rational thinking, such as adding motivation to quit through price, is certainly not going to be the most effective way to reduce dependency while also further harming those that fail to break their dependency.
Edit: Also I just want to point out, again, that I was never referring to tax. From what I saw there’s not enough conclusive data for me to form an opinion one way or the other on the effectiveness of increasing tobacco tax . All of my comments are about this ridiculously assanine ban, or the increased prices that come as a result of this ban.
This is effectively a Pigouvian tax, and will absolutely keep some people from smoking.
Also higher prices do not necessarily mean the industry is making more money. Far more likely, given the saturation of competition, that they simply cost more to make.
Would you like a citation on what Pigouvian taxes are, how the cigarette industry is flooded with competition, or that putting further regulations on products makes them more expensive to produce?
I assumed you could Google any of these but I can do it for you. Fair warning, you’ll be getting a “let me Google that for you” link.
Not one of these facts is even remotely controversial so my mind is a bit boggled that you’d even try to contest any of them
Don’t forget a lot of the cost of a pack of smokes is often more due to taxation than the cost of the product, even if you include things likes all the overhead for marketing and legal and shit.
“According to the American Lung Association, the use of menthol cigarettes is highest among Black, brown and LGBTQ+ communities. Medical groups like the American Lung Association have long advocated for menthol cigarettes to be banned because they can make it easier to start smoking and disproportionately affect minority communities.”
Gonna save the minorities from the opression of racism and homophobia by specifically targeting them with a ban.
I’ve never really understood references to “the left eating itself” until I hit that paragraph. The absolute irony of the anti racist/homophobe sentiment being so overtly racist/homophobic kinda made the light bulb come on.
This adverse thing is adverse, so in order to reduce adversity among minorities, we’ll target the specific option they tend towards… to reduce discrimination against them, by discriminating their specific choice. Discriminating against them… to reduce discrimination…
And then you publish that shit? That’s kinda fucked IMHO.
Huh I mean I get what you’re saying but can’t we just take this potential win? I’m a cancer survivor and it just seems weird to complain about legislation that will reduce cancer. Menthol cigarettes just make it easier to get cancer than plain ones. That’s how I see this. Just because minorities and lgbtq are more likely to use them doesn’t mean it’s racist.
Also my opinion, and the outcome of prohibition would suggest that society at large generally believes this as well.
…with an obvious exception for minorities…
Which was my point. Apparently the politics of it, and decades of anti tobacco propaganda (and I dont intend the normally negative connotation the word has, it just is what it is) have made this acceptable somehow… for an obviously racial/homophobic exception to just be openly declared and apparently acceptable… it’s kinda weird to me.
No you don’t lmao the FDA is kind of the authority here. There’s nothing on store shelves that you can choose or not choose to put in your body that wasn’t already cleared by the FDA. You have an illusion of choice.
Menthol makes it easier to start smoking, to continue being a smoker for longer than the person would have done otherwise, and to smoke more, because it makes smoking less irritating and tastes better. You are correct in that the menthol molecule itself is not a carcinogen.
Do you have a source for these claims? No one is smoking cigarettes for the taste, nor is “bad taste” a common reason for anyone to quit. Smoking is both a chemical addiction (nicotine and such) and a psychological habit (place and timing, having something in the mouth, forced breathing exercises, etc).
If we really wanted to hinder big tobacco, they’d start requiring producers to document all their ingredients, additives, and processing methods.
Exactly. It’s all about money & control and it always has been. If they wanted to get people to stop smoking, they’d mandate that the tobacco companies remove all of the chemicals from cigarettes that make the nicotine a free base form to increase their addictive properties.
Nic Salts are the free base equivalent of cigarettes for the vaping world, but I agree that it’s a lot less harmful. The government would endorse vaping if they truly wanted to end smoking, since it has an incredibly high success rate as a smoking cessation device, like orders of magnitude higher than any other form. All of the other cessation methods (which are owned by the tobacco companies BTW), have a max success rate of about 3.5%. Vaping has a success rate of almost 70%! So yeah, their opposition to vaping makes my point even more clear.
No it doesn’t. It’s purely a preference. There are tons of smokers who can’t stand menthols but love regular cigarettes. I even know someone who smokes menthols because he said it makes people less likely to bum cigarettes off of him.
I even know someone who smokes menthols because he said it makes people less likely to bum cigarettes off of him.
That’s why I switched to menthols back when I smoked. That, and I just liked them more. I didn’t like the ultra menthol ones like Kools or Benson & Hedges, but Marlboro Milds were just about perfect, and the amount of “Oh…those are menthol? Nevermind” was the cherry on top.
Menthol cigarettes just make it easier to get cancer than plain ones.
Were you a smoker, and did you ever smoke menthols? Menthols give a bit different feeling, but I wouldn’t say it’s that much “easier” to smoke.
The EU did the same thing to ban menthols a couple years ago, and yet I can still go to the store and buy cigarettes with menthol taste. These new fake-menthols surprisingly feel even smoother to smoke than classic menthols, but it’s still not a big difference compared to unflavored cigarettes IMO.
It’s racist to specifically target a type favored by minorities if your intent is to target minorities, and the stated intent is specifically to target minorities with a ban… ironically, to protect them from being discriminated against by their chosen type of cigarettes.
They published that… they very publicly are saying that they’re going to protect these minorities by directly targeting them with a ban. It’s not me saying it’s a racist/homophobic ban, it’s the published premise itself. The entire basis of the ban is published as being to keep cigarettes from affecting blacks, browns, and LGBTQ+ people by eliminating their preferred type.
How on earth are there people who don’t understand this? Are you so tied to the politics that you cannot or will not see this objectively? It’s blatant.
Targeting something based on race and minority status is not necessarily racism. That’s kind of a bizarre jump.
The groups being targeted with the ban are, coincidentally, the groups for whom smoking rates are highest.
If you want to have the biggest impact, it makes sense to target the groups that are A) the majority of smokers and B) those least well-protected against starting smoking by current initiatives.
FWIW I’m against this ban on pure “people should be allowed to do what they want” grounds, but your specific angle of attack seems ill-informed.
It’s not a false analogy, it’s just brutally logical and completely disregards the merits of the situation…
Logging is the deadliest occupation on earth. Banning minorities from the logging industry would greatly improve their odds of survival. It’s exactly the same as banning their chosen cigarettes.
I don’t really have a preference on tobacco bans at all tbh. I do think people should have options, but I don’t disagree with the intent of smoking bans either… the issue here is, it’s not a choice between those two for everyone, it’s a selective ban that removes the options from a singular group, and the selection is based on race and orientation.
The merits of the ban are, in my opinion, not all that relevant. I don’t disagree with banning cigarettes entirely, I don’t disagree with onerous taxation as an incentive to reduce sales, I don’t object to any measures that are indiscriminate, because I don’t really care that much tbh, I switched to vapes in 2012.
I object to the specificity.
From another perspective, were talking about a ban on tobacco that selectively preserves tobacco use for straight white people… does that make it more clear why I object?
No it’s totally unrelated to the discussionl. I think your objection is very poorly thought out.
I used to smoke menthols and I’m white as the driven snow my man. Nothing racist about targeting the cigarettes preferred by the people who are majority smokers by percentage.
I also think “this doesn’t effect me so I don’t care” is a poor way of looking at governance.
what a wanker take on it, cigarettes should be banned period, they do nothing good for anyoneand are an absolute blight for public health. Any step in making cigarettes worse for accessibility, as marginal as it is, is a step in the right the right direction. People who smoked in France had the same take when they upped the cigarette prices “ooooh it won’t stop the poor people smoking blah blah” “they’re just doing it for the money they don’t care about poor people it will just hurt the common man more”. Welll cookie it turns out that 10€ has forced a lot of people to stop and greatly reduced young people who start smoking in the first place. Granted now people have shifted to vaping but compared to cigarettes they’re heaven. You can’t even compare vaping to smoking.
So it’s totally fine to target minorities with a ban if it means forward progress in disincentivising tobacco use? I disagree on the ends justifying the means in this case.
No arguments at all on the merits of reducing tobacco use, just an objection to throwing minorities under the bus in pursuit of it. I would not actually object to taxation as a means. I wouldn’t object to an outright ban even. My objection is to the specificity to minorities… that’s not cricket…
imagine a situation women drank more alcohol than men and then the government banned alcohol for everyone. So you would consider this bad because it’s immoral to impose any kind of ban on women?
So what then? Ban it for the rich, the middle class and white people and let the people at risk smoke themselves to death ?
Where are your morals in this ? Put down your ideologies for one second and be pragmatic.
If they banned all alcohol for everyone, its indiscriminate, and I would not consider it to be discrimination (I’d consider it a bad idea based on the obvious). In your example, a ban on wine, but not whiskey, with the publicly stated intention of reducing alcohol intake among women, would be the equivalent, and I’d absolutely consider that misogynistic. In the case of a wine ban, yes, it would be immoral to impose that ban, because it would be targeted at women specifically.
They aren’t banning cigarettes. They’re banning menthols, and the publicly stated intent is to affect use of cigarettes among minorities. The policy is specifically intended to affect a demographic. Not because I say so, or because I think it does… it’s what they’re citing as the basis of the policy… they published it as such.
The pragmatic solution is to ban cigarettes. That would still affect the minorities disparately, but it’s no longer an inherently racist proposal at that point, because it’s about tobacco use period, not just the tobacco use specific to the minorities.
Well agreed that they should ban all cigarettes. in the end this is a half arsed solution that they came up with to “help” minorities.
But to be honest, I’ve seen too many people die to tobacco. I don’t care if the proposal is racist or not. Anything that can merely annoy a smoker’s smoking habits for me is a step in the right direction.
Glad to to hear that. Lemme know when the US is matched with Canada in terms of corruption. Also, let me know what happened to spicy skittles. They made them for a year and stopped entirely. They were fucking good, man. It sounds weird, and that’s why it was a Halloween thing, but they were good. Spicy, then sweet. I fucking loved them. And they ripped them away from me. Why?
Because African American smokers tend to favor menthol over other types of cigarettes.
“In the 1950s, less than 10% of Black smokers used menthol cigarettes. Today, after decades of tobacco industry targeting, that number is 85%. Menthol cigarettes continue to be heavily advertised, widely available and priced cheaper in Black communities."
Because African American smokers tend to favor menthol over other types of cigarettes.
“In the 1950s, less than 10% of Black smokers used menthol cigarettes. Today, after decades of tobacco industry targeting, that number is 85%. Menthol cigarettes continue to be heavily advertised, widely available and priced cheaper in Black communities."
So if we ban minorities from the logging industry, that’s the opposite of racism? It’s the deadliest occupation on earth…
Fisherman, truck drivers, roofers… ban minorities from all of it to save their lives, because that’s the opposite of racism.
See the flaw in the logic here? Targeting a demographic is, by the simplest definition, an act of racism. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Banning minorities from entire industries would be to their ultimate benefit, and is obviously racist. Like Jim Crow obvious.