New Zealand to Ban "Smoking".

New Zealand is taking a step towards a total ban on smoking by not allowing any one born after 2004 to smoke.

Smoking is not something that anyone can really promote as there are clear connections to health problems resulting from it.

But then there is the question of Government over reach and of personal freedom to choose.

Also, Bhutan, the paradise nation that does have a ban on smoking, has a thriving black market in cigarettes.

More importantly, by smoking every one means smoking cigarettes, though the ban would apply to all smoking.

I have never smoked cigarettes but have always smoked cigars and still occasionally do so.

I do not consider smoking a cigar to be same as smoking a cigarette.

Cigarettes have all kinds of toxic chemicals mixed in the tobacco to provide the "flavour" and even the paper of the cigarettes is said to be toxic.

Cigar is nothing but a tobacco leaf rolled tightly to form a tube.

Besides cigar smoke is not inhaled, rather the fragrance of the expelled cigar smoke is what it's all about.

I wonder if 100 years from now there will still be people smoking some where in the world.

Would the efforts to ban smoking be like the prohibition, aimed at banning alcohol?

 

No question about that.
Smoking has done a lot of harm. I like to add cigarette smoking has been the cause of the harm though, thereby seeking a pass for cigars

In UK there are lots of free quit tobacco programs as well and have been for a while.
I too have personal history with devastation from smoking there.

There are two points though.
New Zealand being a remote not easy to access place may be able to accomplish the ban but any where else, say in Europe, it would not be possible to enforce such a ban and the Bhutan scenario of a vast black market will materialise.
Can you imagine the French banning smoking any time soon?

The second, is about alcohol.
I am sure most of us know many people, who have greatly harmed themselves using alcohol and/or hurt their family and friends because of alcohol.

So what makes smoking that much worse than alcohol?

Why no ban for alcohal then?

 

"Alcohal does not harm every individual who drinks"
That is true.

But the same is also true about smoking is it not?

Consider the Churchill factor.
Here was a guy who arguably had the greatest possible stress in his life.
Leading the country and the empire through the World War could be termed as maximum stress.
On top of that, he had heart disease, high BP, diabetes and many more problems.

Still he was almost never seen without a cigar in his mouth
Even at the end of his long and uneventful life, he had a huge cigar sticking out of his mouth.

So neither alcohol nor smoking hurts EVERY ONE, it depends on the individual Gene's.

Even so, alcohol for some mysterious reason, is nothing like the demon smoking is.

Am not a supporter of cigarettes but am amused with the dual standards regarding this every where.

 

good

 

My dad died from lung cancer. And he loved to drink too. But it's smoking that killed him.

 

My ex wife smoked and when we got married, had promised me that she would stop.

It was not easy for her though and I could have been a lot more tolerant of that, than I was.

But then, she absolutely swore that during pregnancy she would not smoke.

The house was very big but even so, as a non smoker of cigarettes, the moment I entered the house I could tell that she had smoked that day

Again, it must have been very very difficult for her but I did not see it that way at the time.

All that resulted in unbearable tragic consequences over time.

I have personally been greatly hurt by the smoking addiction, even so I do believe that personal freedoms are worth fighting for.

I again suggest that the alcohol lobby has succeeded in suppressing the global opposition to drinking even though the damage to health over the decades and even centuries, has been no less and may be a lot more than from smoking.

If you go into the Native American reservations and the decrepit rust-belt towns, it is not smoking that you will see as the agent of devastation.

You will see alcohal addiction and then that almost always leading to other intoxication problems.

So please do ban smoking right away but then also do the same for alcohal.

I do think though, that the policy initiated by New Zealand to ban smoking for the very young is a good step forward. Nip it in the bud as it were.

Of course there is a religion, the only religion which absolutely prohibits smoking in its scriptures.

Sikhism, the newest major religion in the world, (around 700 years) has smoking as an absolute no no!

 

I think people should have sovereignty over what they decide to put into their bodies (within reason of course). Nicotine and even cannabis, in the grand scheme really are not so bad.

 

I'd imagine the majority of smokers are also taxpayers. Majority of whom also haven't benefited directly from their contributions

 

So, should we take that a step further and have calorie policing? Obesity causes all kinds of health issues. Shouldn't we shut down bakeries, fast food joints, etc., and insist that people only eat the recommended nutrition every day? What about dangerous activities like bicycling on mountain trails or on city streets? A lot of people get needlessly injured (thereby making you pay for their healthcare) when riding bikes for pleasure. Shouldn't these folks be controlled and punished, as well?

 

Rationalizations aside, it will be interesting to see if limiting an individual's freedoms for perceived societal health benefits is a slippery slope for you or not. E.g., the nutcake, socialist mayor of NYC has already tried to institute a ban on large, sugary soda's because of "public health" reasons.

 

So, it is not a ban as the OP states?

 

Happiness is seeing someone who claims that smoking can't hurt you, get run over by a cigarette delivery truck.