"The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"
I believe limiting people's liberty is an ineffective option opposed to education.
Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed
If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33970717
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967454
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/new-zealand-sm...
Guys, that's all well and good as a philosophy, but you need to integrate your views into the world around you too. When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs, and assume responsibility for everyone's health, you also may need some ground rules. I know it sucks, because _you_ may have just been born there and you don't really have a choice in what society you live, so that means care needs to be taken, but it doesn't mean there can never be any cost-of-entry.
Just ban the sale of them in the country. They offer no positive for society or humanity whatsoever. Chippies at least have their origins in actual food sustenance.
If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck around so long because of legacy and well funded lobbyists and PR / marketing types that have been happy to lie at the cost of millions of lives.
Nice, let's defend that.
> Nice, let's defend that.
Many discussions about freedom are just marketing and corporate interests in a trench coat.
I guess this is my favorite bug bear now.
Guys, it's all well and good as a philosophy, but maybe you should take a second look and reconsider that the state just keeps creeping more and more into your private affairs and is very glad when you believe them when they say things are "for the children" and "for the public good". One day you might find yourself in jail for sharing a meme that is critical of the government in any way.
Look, I found the problem!
I actually quite like your comment, it'd be interesting to have the stats on whether the downvoter objected to your tone or if they made the logical inference that this argument undermines universal healthcare and didn't like that.
I literally said "so care needs to be taken" and you hit me with a slippery slope argument?
Exercise is maybe a slippery slope because it requires enforcing a positive action, but if we're going to force people to be healthy anyway, why not? In a practical sense, not a theoretical one? If you've got theoretical concerns, why doesn't that apply to cigarettes?
No twist needed, it's really fucking logical.
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng209/resources/impact-on-n...
> Smoking-related illness is estimated to cost the NHS £2.6 billion a year
https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/01/nhs-long-term-plan-will-h...
> Alcohol-related harm is estimated to cost the NHS in England £3.5 billion every year.
If we look exclusively at numbers, prohibition would save money. If that's all we care about, try that out - oh, the Americans did, and it wrecked their country and filled it with gangsters, because no amount of trying to stop people drinking actually stopped people drinking, and normal people having to pretend they weren't going to drink, but secretly really really needing it and finding criminals to supply them with drink built out an entire parallel black economy and gave gangsters huge amounts of money and power.
If we're looking at saving money, maybe just kill the long-term disabled and elderly? Easy win for saving money! That's all that matters, after all.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-promo...
Also, very hypocritical argument when alcohol (and gambling) are very accepted in British culture. I'd like to see the numbers showing that the few people that still roll their own cigs at 15 pounds a pouch cost more to the NHS than all the alcoholics in Britain.
Smoking ban is, as usual, Labour going for the low-hanging fruits to scrape the votes of the elderly that are likely to be swayed by these empty arguments, just like the Online Safety Act. One thing's for sure: Barry, 63, would not like if alcohol and gambling were regulated in any way.
I'm not a smoker any more, hate the things and can't stand the smoke, but I sure am glad to have left that island of short-sighted yet heavy-handed politics.
Also, Singapore seems to have conclusively won the war on drugs. I would not mind those policies in San Francisco.
It’s a foul product that belongs in the past.
Tobacco is inherently bad for one's surrounding as well.
Also, you normally dont go to jail by using drugs... what a clueless comment
AFAIK healthcare in UK is tax funded, and smoking with its long list of damages to the body, takes a portion of that taxpayer money which could be used on something underfunded, like mental healthcare.
You can still get addicted to nicotine, they're just banning a very specific delivery mechanism.
I’m curious if a “free society / libertarian” middle ground would be limiting access to NHS for those that choose to continue to use known harmful substances. I’d posit that many would object to that the way “death panels” were politicized when the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed though.
I would call that an easy ban. You can't sell that shit here legitimately. I'm a little surprised the attempts haven't been more widespread.
I wonder what possible gap there is for things that can be illegal to sell, but you can buy them from international sellers and use them in the privacy of your own home? (and health insurance won't cover related complications).
