TIL: the smoking age was raised to 21
(media.scored.co)
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You can die for your government, but they won't let you buy cigarettes or beer.
Amazing.
Like most disgusting vices, if you don't pick this garbage up until later in life, you tend not to pick it up at all.
I'm very libertarian on most things, but goddamnit will I put on my brown shirt and baby stomping boots to enforce the utter destruction of drugs and alcohol consumption in the world. Stop getting drunk and high, you fuckwads.
Alcohol for chemistry and medicine only. Tobacco plant extracts for medicine only. Cannabinoid extracts for medicine only. So on and so forth.
How is that supposed to work? We already tried the prohibition of alcohol. Just give the government more power next time?
Australia increases the taxation on cigarettes regularly. It is about AU$40 a packet or so, depending on the brand. That works out to about $1 a cigarette.
All cigarettes are in the same coloured brown packets with regulations on the markings and font on the outside. All the packets and all the cigarettes look the same.
The Australian Taxpayer has to pay for end of life medical care. The government just keeps raising the tax to pay for the two years of cancer treatment and/or heart failure treatment for smokers. The high taxes on cigarettes just about covers the direct costs now.
The opportunity cost of smoking is really high. People roll their own tobacco (which is slightly cheaper, especially if they roll them very thin) or they quit.
I can imagine that it would be a lot harder to enact this strategy in countries that did not have such effective border control.
I'd rather the whole thing where the government pays for medical care just not be a thing. It's not my neighbor's fault if I smoke myself to death, it's my fault.
I remember there being something about how the US was gonna have some strict laws on packaging/labelling, but I have seen very little change over the years. But when I get my imports (from India..? don't recall), they're covered in gore pics. So, certainly other countries are making some attempt.