Good idea. Cigarettes are totally different to alcohol. A glass of wine is fun. A cigarette is rank. so? Wine kills too, and it kills a lot more people than cigarettes do because in general more people drink than smoke.
There are to issues here. The first is that people are applauding this headline grabbing move because most people don’t smoke and don’t like to be exposed to it. fair enough. smoking is vile. I detest it and Would love for it to not exist, but it does. And by the same token, where people find alcohol fun some people find cigarettes enjoyable. I have no idea why but they do. So maybe alcohol should be banned as well? And apart from “it’s fun,” if not, why not? Alcohol consumption leads to liver and heart failure, increased violence, including domestic violence. Alcohol is not something which only affects those who drink it, it has far-reaching consequences. In fact it is fair to say that alcohol addiction is far more detrimental than addiction to cigarettes.
Alcohol causes people to lose their jobs, their homes, their friends and families, it creates victims of violence and abuse, and that’s before we get to the health consequences. Other than health smoking doesn’t cause any of those things. But most people wouldn’t be applauding a ban on alcohol because they personally drink and they would see it as an erosion of their freedoms. So if the purchase of cigarettes is to be banned then so should the purchase of alcohol. There is 0 reason why alcohol purchase can’t be treated in the same way.
The second thing is that this ban is progressive. I suspect that if it were suddenly banned altogether, while people would argue that it would create a black market, thE majority would say that it was a good thing over all.
But here cigarettes aren’t just being banned, the age of responsibility is being increased. Right now people have to be 16 to have sex, 17 to drive, 18 to drink or to vote, or to buy cigarettes. What the government over there is proposing is that the age of consent to certain things is increased year on year.
So next year you might need to be 18 to buy cigarettes, (or is it 14 given that’s the age they want to bring in?) the year after 19, then 20, until one day it’ll be said that “you need to be 18 to drink, but 45 to buy cigarettes, even though you can smoke them if you wish….”
Where does it end? Where else will the government feel they can just gradually increase the age limit where you can do things? To drink? To vote? To have sex? Maybe to claim certain benefits? Cigarettes are an easy way to bring this kind of thing in through the back door because on the whole most of the younger generation don’t smoke so it won’t affect them. But once a law is brought in and made solid to be able to increase the age of certain responsibilities it’s a lot easier to extend that law to other elements of life.