The world-first ban prohibits anyone born after Jan. 1, 2007, from ever buying, using or smoking tobacco.
The Maldives has become the first country in the world to impose a generational smoking ban, barring anyone born after Jan. 1, 2007, from ever smoking, purchasing or using tobacco.
“The ban applies to all forms of tobacco, and retailers are required to verify age prior to sale,” the health ministry said Saturday as the ban came into effect.
The step “makes the Maldives the first country in the world to enforce a nationwide generational tobacco ban,” it added.
Has prohibition ever worked? Wouldn’t this just create a black market for selling tobacco?
I don’t get the reasoning that “prohibition has never worked” and “there will be a black market”.
Yes there will be, and a number of people will still smoke.
But it will be a minority of people that would normally smoke. It will also remove smoking from the public image.
I really can’t imagine there being a larger number of smokers just because it’s prohibited.
Prohibition of the history tend to prohibit the sale of such substance for everyone, this one is kinda like a new-ish idea, merely prohibit people born after a certain year from ever purchasing tobacco, preventing them to even starting, or at least in theory. It however did not prevent people who already smoke from purchasing it. It’s a less severe form of prohibition, akin to prohibition from selling to people younger than 18, no-smoking zone. Smoking decline in a lot of country didn’t happened by chance, its a result from a shit tons of rule set on tobacco industry, short from blanket ban.
As for black market, you can’t create something that’s already exists.
There are quite a few Asian & Middle Eastern countries that have similar bans. A few Muslim countries have prohibition laws saying Muslims can’t buy alcohol, but it’s still legal for Christians, etc.
It’s certainly not common, but less of a new idea than you might think. My knowledge runs out there, though - I genuinely don’t know how well/poorly those kinds of laws perform even in those areas.
Imo, as someone living in a muslim country with alcohol sales ban on muslim only, there’s nothing similar to this. For one, if the law isn’t being amended later on, the sales ban will only and ever only imposed on muslim, prohibiting them from ever purchasing alcoholic drink. This has been a thing since the begining of Islam. What different from the generation ban is there’s in no point in time alcohol would be prohibited to anyone. The generation ban on tobacco sales however will adjust the age of smoking up by one year, every year, automatically without amending the law, so by the time the last person born after a certain year dies the prohibition will only then take effect for everyone. This is what i mean it’s new-ish, because it’s not a hard blanket ban like everything we used to see, but a soft ban that slowly take effect in a time span of a few decades.
As for it being effective or not, if we compared to the alcoholic drinks ban for muslim, does it stop muslim from drinking? No. But does it significantly decrease it? Yes. It also mean it’s significantly harder for muslim to be addicted to alcohol exactly because it’s harder to obtain and consume it, they can’t just walk into a store and get it, they have to get from other source.
Can you really judge how effective it is when we’re talking about a cohort whose religion prohibits drinking alcohol? What % of those people were never going to try to buy it anyway?
Have you ever tried taking peoples coffee away at work. My office did that once a long time ago and it lasted all of a few hours, people literally refused to work until it was given back. It was hilarious to me since I make my own coffee at home and got to watch the chaos unfold fully caffeinated. I can’t imagine the inability to
workfunction for nicotine addicts.Their coffee isn’t being taken away though, it’s never being given to them in the first place.
Depends what you mean by work. Before I finally quit for good, I had several attempts that failed. If I could drive for more than 30 seconds without passing a place where I could get smokes in less than a minute, I’m pretty sure one of the earlier attempts would have stuck. I sure as hell wouldn’t have engaged in any black market activity to get them.
I’m not in favor of restricting other people’s choices due to my lack of willpower, so I’m not in favor of bans. But if your definition of working is a very large percentage drop in smokers, it might work despite adding tobacco to the black market.
It would certainly be a lot harder to get pack-a-day addicted. It would probably be a more occasional indulgence for those that did get them.
The issue is that during the prohibition, the governement started selling poisoned alcohol on the black market. Its not wild to speculate that the government currently has a hand in all the fenanyl going around. The issue with banning it isnt that it works/doesnt, or that it limits people or anything like that. The issue is that when it is banned, there is no governmental oversight on ensuring the product is safe, and the government has every reason to poison those getting it from the black market. People are going to die over this in preventable ways.
It can work if there’s a safer legal alternative. Like theres a black market for moonshine but it’s miniscule compared to the whole alcohol market because most people would rather go to a normal store and buy vodka instead cause they know what they’re getting. Same with tobacco, they aren’t banning all nicotine products, just smoking, so if the options are to smoke this probably contaminated tobacco you get off the black market or vape / chew nicotine products that have some quality assurance most people will choose the latter.
That’s a good point - with a safer / more convenient alternative it no longer makes sense to get the prohibited item from a suspicious source.
I didn’t see much for alternatives mentioned in the article, so I’d imagine something like this would then boost other nicotine options like chewables or patches…? I’m curious to see where it goes. I can’t help but think it just pushes the issue somewhere else rather than solving it.
It at least solves the problem of - those who don’t want to inhale it having to inhale it along with the air they breathe.
If people want to fill their own bodies with random drugs that make them fake-happy, might as well let them.
Oh, and using peer pressure to make someone use drugs need to be in a similar category to assault.
You understand that they’re not planning on cutting off people who already smoke, right?
You did actually read something and didn’t just kneecirclejerk your response?
Is using a dictionary a “kneecirclejerk” response? If so, then I’ll accept it:
Today You Learned - “Prohibition” is a law forbidding whatever. It does not imply it forbids everyone from the thing. The term is commonly used to describe alcohol prohibition, which usually takes the shape of a total ban on alcohol, so I understand how you could get so confused.
However, Iran only prohibits alcohol for Muslims. Sri Lanka only prohibits women from buying alcohol. Still prohibition. This article? It’s about the Maldives introducing the prohibition of tobacco products to anyone born after a certain date.
“kneejerk”. Or “circlejerk”. Never heard of “kneecirclejerk”.
Not the person you are arguing with
Me neither. Surely it’s some kind of dance?