• stonedemoman@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s not in anyone’s own interests. Smokers have to pay more, tobacco industry gets more money. Literally a lose-lose. Dumb. As. Fuck.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            12
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Wrong. Prohibition increases demand.

            Edit: Based off some replies, I think a lot of people are forgetting some rudimentary aspects of the concept of “demand”, so allow me to help:

            Demand is an economic concept that relates to a consumer’s desire to purchase goods and services and willingness to pay a specific price for them.

            When supply decreases, the price of the good increases. Inversely, when the supply of the good increases, the price falls

        • enigmaticmandrill@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Don’t ban them, tax them.

          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.

          • dangblingus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • sodiumbromley@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

              • SourWeasel@lemmy.today
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                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.

        • cjsolx@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          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.

          • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Sure, and I agree that this should be approached with scepticism and not blind bias.

            I’m basing this off tobacco being the third most addictive substance on the planet.

            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.

        • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          What do you mean? The more people have to pay in order to smoke the less people will smoke.

          • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I don’t fight, and I am pretty sure the focus is too reduce new users. How the fuck do you hit rock bottom solely on nicotine?

              • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                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.

                • SourWeasel@lemmy.today
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  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.

                • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyz
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I call bullshit on that. Not to meantion the danger of meth is the physically damage it causes starting from the very first dose.

  • aelwero@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    “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.

    • Gargantu8@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • stonedemoman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        1 year ago

        Nah, this ban accomplishes absolutely nothing except producing more expensive alternatives that do the exact same thing.

        I’m glad you survived your battle, but this ban would only serve to disproportionately affect the poor.

            • Gargantu8@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Thanks so much! All thanks to my anonymous stem cell donor via BeTheMatch! Other treatments didn’t work before that and this person saved my life.

      • kungen@feddit.nu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Dandroid@dandroid.app
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          I just wish it was banned in public because I choose to not put poison in my body, yet I have to inhale everyone else’s poison that they are ingesting near me. In public and in cars is where I wish it was banned. There’s nothing worse than being stuck behind someone in traffic that is smoking and you have nowhere to go and nothing to do except inhale that shit.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            I have to say, pot is getting like that too. While I support that it’s now decriminalized (where I live), now it’s becoming a nuisance. I shouldn’t have to breathe second hand smoke regardless of what you’re smoking

        • aelwero@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • dangblingus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • TauZero@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • kungen@feddit.nu
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

                • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  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.

          • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • Eatsuki@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

    • TheFrirish@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • aelwero@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        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…

        • TheFrirish@jlai.lu
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yes it is in the case of tobacco usage.

          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.

          • aelwero@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • TheFrirish@jlai.lu
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

              That’s the tiny hill I’m willing to die on.

      • aelwero@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • yokonzo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    So I totally forgot about this but, they banned them in Illinois and they just… They’re still there, no one around me has stopped selling them

    • insomniac@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s a story every couple years that the FDA has banned them. But I guess I never see the follow up where it doesn’t work.

  • Caketaco@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    “We’re making an effort, see?”

    In 5 years:

    Studies show menthol cigarette consumption has remained the same.

    I do not trust they will handle this without corruption meddling laws and loopholes.

      • Caketaco@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        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?

      • histy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Seriously, how is this racist? When exactly did menthol cigarettes become a race? I don’t understand what kind of argument you are trying to make here.

          • histy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Wait… generally racists tend to want the race they hate to diminish, you banning a vice that is mainly associated with this race doesn’t seem like an act of racism to me, but the opposite.

            Furthermore “Another thought behind the Biden and FDA ban is that 85% of black voters use menthols. It’s been found that black men in America have the highest lung cancer death rate in America. Black Americans are also less likely than white Americans to be diagnosed with lung cancer at an early, treatable stage.”

            And according to this article or this article, although both types of cigarettes are equally harmful chemically, mentholated cigarettes encourage the habit of smoking more and inhaling more increasing the consumption of carcinogenic chemicals.

            • aelwero@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

              Your point is very problematical.

              • histy@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                The only problematic thing is the mental gymnastics you’re doing, we are talking about an addiction, not a profession, you are making a false equivalence. And although 85% of menthol cigarette users are black people, you are simply ignoring the other 25% and the remaining passive smokers.

                This is a health issue, and aims to reduce the harm caused by addiction to the population, if the proposal were to criminalize the use of mentholated cigarettes I would see a point in your argument, but we are just talking about banning the sale, the only thing that will happen is that users of mentholated cigarettes will have to smoke something else. This is not a political issue.

                And to make it clear how ridiculous this talking point is: If black people were 85% of crack users and the government banned its sale, would you come here and say that this is racist?

        • maaj@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Scroll through the comments bruh. You’ll find the explanation without having to Google.

  • maaj@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    35
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    If you only ban the menthols, it’s racist. If you ban all cigarettes, it’s health-forward and progressive. Ban all cigs.

    • Chestrade@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Banning drugs or alcohol has never worked. The demand will still be there. People will turn to the black market instead if it gets banned.

      • Melkath@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        There is a whole arc in the Battlestar Galactica reboot series that masterfully illustrates this topic.

      • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, which is why illegal drugs have more users than legal drugs (alcohol and tobacco). Except they don’t.

        • papalonian@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Their argument was that banning cigarettes wouldn’t eliminate their use, only drive people to continue doing it through other methods.

          What does your comment have to do with that…? Nobody said there would somehow be more users than before, just that people would continue doing it…

          • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            My argument is that since illegal drugs have significantly fewer users, prohibition does reduce usage.

            • papalonian@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

    • Melkath@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      33
      arrow-down
      16
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Fuck you.

      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.

      Seriously.

      Stop.

      Just stop.

      Prohibition is horse shit.

      Stop supporting prohibition.

        • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          Leave it to Lemmyists to downvote a comment saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to force other people to breathe poisonous smoke.

        • remotelove@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Come to Colorado! If it’s worth legalization, we are all about it.

          (One of my post-legalization projects…)

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Think of it more like a safety standard - prevent the sales of variations doing the most harm to public health

      • dangblingus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • seathru@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      Or, how about we let people put whatever they want into their own body?

      • yukichigai@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          27
          ·
          1 year ago

          Put it another way, if cigarettes are legal then marijuana, LSD, MDMA, and a whole host of other drugs should be legal too.

          Yes. Yes they should.

        • seathru@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          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.

          I emphatically agree.

        • discodoubloon@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          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?

          • kungen@feddit.nu
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Good tobacco is … not insanely addictive

            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.

        • Melkath@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Bruh, you know tobacco is a plant. Right?

          Alcohol needs so much work to be made.

          Tobacco is a plant.

          Just like weed.

            • Melkath@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              That noone “made it” the way it is, and if dudes gonna smoke a plant, let dude smoke a plant.

              • yukichigai@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                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.

      • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Tell that to all the smokers trying to quit who wish their younger self had not started in the first place.

            • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Do we need to ban everything that a shitty parent might not be able to keep away from their kids?

              Why not expand the definition of child abuse to include these things instead of punishing people who are never around kids?

              • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Why not expand the definition of child abuse to include these things instead of punishing people who are never around kids?

                That sounds like a great idea, but it’s going to be impossible to enforce.

      • maaj@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

          • Melkath@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              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.

              • Melkath@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                You mistake the word “nicotine” for the word “tar”.

                2 wildly different concepts.

                And thank you captain I have something to add for observing that tobacco is less healthy that a carrot.

                I meant for me. I’m not sure if you were talking about people or real estate.

                • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Are you suggesting that tar doesn’t contain nicotine or other harmful substances found in cigarettes? Because lol.

                  That’s okay though, I’m sure you are very special and immune to it.

      • Beardsley@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Melkath@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s why this same prohibition measure has failed in many legislative bodies many times.

    • aelwero@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • aelwero@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I agree with that.

          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 :)

      • maaj@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        And I agree with you. It’s not like I give a shit what anyone does to their own bodies, as long as it doesn’t harm or negatively affect anyone else.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      It aint racist my guy. The chemical processes involved in menthol cigarettes increase the carcinogenic properties of the cig.

      Yes, no shit cigs are bad. Menthol cigs are the worst offenders.