Ban selling cigarettes to anyone born after 2008, Ottawa Public Health urges Health Canada

Shit policy idea. Banning things never works. Please see all of history as evidence.

Increase taxes on nicotine ten-fold if it's so important. Use taxes in part to ensure that the amount of smokes that fall off the back of trucks doesn't spike. That's about as good as you're gonna get to influence anyone who's addicted.

You don't have to increase it 10 fold, that just creates an overnight black market.

Banning sales to people born after a specific date is just as good a solution as any. If you want go full retar-, er, libertarian on it, let people grow their own, but forbid sales/distribution.

There is no upside to cigarettes -- it's the leading cause of lung cancer and a dozen other diseases that cost our health care system billions in each province, every year. The only people who will complain will be the companies who make billions in profit from human addiction, misery, and death.
This kind of policy is not about influencing people who are already addicted, it is about trying to prevent anyone new from getting addicted and eventually putting the entire thing in the rear view.
Which "all of history" are you using as a base? Because this is a slow phase-out of cigarettes, nothing like anything we've had before.

This is not a ban on nicotine, like we had bans on alcohol. People would still be able to vape nicotine.

I like the idea of nobody smoking, but any policy like this probably needs to be coupled with some kind of enforcement. Half or more of cigarette sales are already illegal:

Illegal cigarette sales could comprise up to 67 per cent of Ontario's total tobacco market, 45 per cent in B.C. and 44 per cent in Newfoundland.

I like the idea too, but prohibition has never been successful at anything other than creating black markets

Maybe nicotine addiction should be medicalized.

Anyone born after [date] could get it legally through a pharmacy after talking to their doctor/nurse-practitioner and explaining why they need a prescription (ie they are addicted and can't function without it).

I actually like that framing. I'm imagining explaining it to my 5 year old:

What's that person doing?

They took the wrong medicine and now they have to take that medicine everyday. It's yucky, expensive, and very hard on their body.

Why did they take the wrong medicine?

They didn't realize it was medicine and they thought it looked interesting or fun, I'm not sure exactly. You know not to take medicine without talking to mum, dad, or a doctor right?

Yeah sure let's go back to banning drugs.

This is a ban on cigarettes, not on nicotine
- Good point I didn't think of. I guess removing that convenience could discourage a lot of people. But won't it still increase contraband?
Yeah, let's bring back lead in gas. And asbestos. And raising radiation exposure limits. And measles. Smallpox. In fact, let's roll back all progress we've ever made to improve human health. Let's get those 10 year olds back into the coal mines and smoking unfiltered cigarettes.
- Actually, filtered cigarettes have been said to be worse in some articles I've seen.
  
  As you said above though, unadulterated natural tobacco should always be available to people who have a cultural connection with it and can prepare it traditionally. Take away the cool factor and the chemical-laden stuff could hopefully be phased out. Education campaigns can also talk about the human suffering and environmental costs of production on a large scale.
- Yeah, let’s bring back [...] measles. Smallpox
  
  You heard what America's aristocracy was making its dumbest do during CoVid, right?

I feel like as a country, we should be pragmatic more broadly. Not just about tobacco, but about anything a person could enjoy, extending to the black market. Determine the things that people will consume no matter what the taxation, social, or regulatory structures are. Quantify the costs of the consumption of those things openly and honestly, and create systems to build those costs into the price of the thing consumed.

I think we're running aground on that right now, because federal & provincial tax on enjoyable things is set at a rate that isn't indexed to the costs incurred by the enjoyment of those things.

Personally I enjoy Nicotine, and I would like to know that the price I pay for it is fair to the base of taxpayers who fund our healthcare system. It doesn't stop at Nicotine though, of course.

I remember reading (but not where, or how true it is) that tobacco use doesn't impact the healthcare system much at all, because smokers tend to die younger, and old age is the most expensive and longest illness to treat.
- Interesting.
  
  I'm not an expert on the matter, but to my eyes, taxes on alcohol and tobacco are set arbitrarily. It would be nice to see those funds enveloped for specific programs & a layer of transparency on how the numbers are determined. Canada taxes spirits at ~$13/ litre of absolute alcohol. We ought to wonder - why exactly that number? Is that too much, or not enough, from a healthcare outcome standpoint?

On the one hand I respect personal choice but on the other hand I feel like this is definitely something that should be done (or the recommended idea from undercrush's comment of extremely high taxes on the products to disincentivize use) because the public healthcare system is definitely spending too much time and effort dealing with the ramifications of peoples decisions to continue to hurt themselves.

Yes, quitting sucks, I was at like a pack a day before 16, ended up going cold turkey around 24 and although the first few months suck with the odd craving for the next year or two, it's not that bad. If push comes to shove, changing smokes to sugar free gum would be a vast improvement.

Although a few friends have tried that 'fum' thing and said they succeeded in quitting but I haven't personally tried that. There's a wide variety of ways to beat the addiction these days and if everyone is contributing to a national money pool for everyones health then at the very least we need to do the minimum amount of effort to try to be healthy so as to not overburden the system and collapse it.

... especially when canada keeps losing billions of dollars to corporate tax fraud. Fucken CRA is trash at everything.

The nanny state grows.

It's called living in a society my man.
- I understand that nothing I say will change your mind, which is why I didn't provide an argument. But I don't think it's the government's job, place, or right to tell people what they can and can't put in their own bodies.
What benefit is there to allowing the sale of cigarettes when there are much safer nicotine delivery methods out there? If you want to roll your own you could still do that if this were to pass
- Are they going to allow the sale of cigarette tobacco? It's not the same as pipe tobacco.

They should ban smoking cannabis, too. It's just as bad. Produces tar in the lungs and can cause lung, throat and mouth cancer as well. And because it dilates the bronches, it goes in deeper.

Honestly if they do that people will fall back to contraband. And that's worse.

And I love having the occasional cigar. (Like a couple of times a year) There's very little harm in that.

Edit: you know there are other ways to consume cannabis than to smoke it, right?

Cannabis has potential medical applications in areas like pain management. Tobacco has none that I'm aware of—its only legitimate use is in the ceremonies of some Indigenous peoples.

So, given that one is useful and the other useless, why do you want us to get rid of the useful one?
- Yes. I'm a frequent user. But I don't smoke it. I use oils or edibles. There are other ways to consume cannabis than by smoking it.
  
  I don't care if people down vote me for this. Smoking anything has big potential cancer risks and that's a fact.
- Nicotine outside of its addictiveness does have perks. It does assist with anxiety and makes you more aware which is said to make you remember things better. They aren't advertised often because the downsides of smoking cigarettes outweigh them usually.
  
  I would argue that if they were trying to make it about health, edibles and such may reduce lung and other impacts by cannabis but only time will tell in studies.
  
  The law just seems strange to me to say, we vote ban smoking cigarettes (pre-rolled) for those who can't vote and have no say, but we keep that privilege for ourselves. Also no changes to rules about smoking around those people.
  
  Either make the rules for everyone or no one.