this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 years ago (2 children)

aside from the issue of 'prohibition still doesn't work', i don't think giving kids or "underage" adults criminal charges for cigarettes is making anything better for anyone

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Smoking age is specifically the ability to purchase. There are no criminal/civil charges for underage smoking. The crimes are specifically 1) selling to minors 2) buying for minors.

TL;DR: No one goes/will go to jail for underage smoking. They won’t even get in trouble for buying. The onus is on the vendor OR the legal purchaser who handed them off.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Incorrect.

A black market is created, kids still smoke, but poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail.

It doesn't fix the issue and syphons poor people into prisons.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

poor people making a buck selling to kids go to jail

As they should

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How do you propose this black market gets created? In theory, no new addicts would get created because the smoking age rises in lockstep with the people themselves.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

You really have a surface-level understanding of how the world works, I take it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I know this is pretty radical, but if we made smoking FFA way fewer people should theoretically start smoking in the first place. From my experience when I was still at school most of the people there were only smoking because it's "cool", making smoking legal for everyone should take the coolness factor away at least.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Please, oh dear god...

Please tell me what FFA means and how it doesn't amount to "send poor people to prison".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

FFA just means "free for all" (it's a term from competitive games, in case you shouldn't know), in this context I used it as another word for 'legal'.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Oh thank god.

Yes, I 100 percent agree with you. Your thought process is the way.

Sorry I was so adversarial in my first comment. A lot of the rest of this thread has me all sorts of triggered.