Is smoking tobacco a human right, or should it be banned?

Crni Vuk said:
You can't ban tobacco.
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Sure you can. They won't do it, for obvious reasons. But you can. And they did it once with Alcohol. Albeit Tobacco won't go most probably cause of the lobby around it.
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Ah, the great American Prohibition. And how did that turn out, in the end?

Right. IT WAS A TERRIBLE FUCKING MISTAKE. Moralists who think it's their duty to watch over their neighbor do NOTHING but harm to others. Meanwhile, what do people who think only for themselves accomplish, even when their choices are reckless and inducing harm onto themselves? Nothing, by comparison. Worse case scenario, they kill themselves. Well, that was their choice. But did they end up killing hundreds of people around them? Did they create crime empires that lasted for generations AFTER they realized they done fucked up? Did they waste so much money on a farce that it bankrupted many law enforcing branches and agencies and brought the nation around them to a screeching economic halt? No, no, and no. But, it doesn't sound as snazzy to say "let them be" to moralists. It sounds so much more compelling to say "I know better than you what the right thing to do is, so let me guide you".

But sounding nice doesn't make it any less bullshit.

Yes, countries PHYSICALLY "can" place legal bans on anything they choose to. But they IN PRACTICE "can not" do any of this, because they not only aren't wholly good practices to implement, but the overwhelming weight of the cons make the pros (if any) look like a joke. It's empty-headed and it's backwards. Arguing "they can" just to be facetious is just stupidity.
 
Compare to heroin, which IS banned.
Illegality helps this many people: 0
This is the ammount of people, world wide, who refrains from buying heroin, purely because it is illegal: 4
This is the ammount of people, world wide, who buy heroin despite it being illegal: 25 000 000

Making a substance illegal only punishes the abuser, the smuggler and the manufacturer. It solves nothing, it creates new problems, and removes no problems. That is the bottom line here: Problems!
 
Are you really sure? I am usually not a friend of regulations, but I dunno ... outlawing heroin I always thought that one was obvious. Criminalizing the drug addict is a whole different story, and very common in the US and they should be rather seen as sick people than criminals. But the idea seems to be take the drug and you're a criminal. In Germany for example the view is a bit different where they are rather seen as victims than criminals. Unless of course they are also at the same time drug dealers.
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure heroin being illegalized was an obvious one. Crack cocaine, now THERE'S a drug that needs to be legal.
 
Why is it obvious?

Is heroin addition remedied in any thinkable way whatsoever?
Are you guys sitting around going "phew, good thing heroin is out of the picutre, or there would be heroin addicts in the world, living horrible lives!"

1. Heroin sells exactly the ammount it needs to, to make the druglords managing it among the richest people in the world.
2. Like with cocaine, criminalization explodes the price, from what would be just another stupid crop, to one of the priciest comsumables per gram in the universe!
3. Heroin addicts arouuund the world can get their fix whenever they need it - on a daily basis - without fail.

Illegality fails to prevent usage
It only punishes people after the fact

Unlike laws concerning violence, it even fails to act as a deterrent - so many petty acts of violence are thwarted by the fact that harsh punishment act as a deterrent. Many laws are sensible that way, but prohibition of even the most punished substance seems to fail flat - not even a little!

It is SO sought after, it makes most other crimes pale in comparison, very few people yearn to murder, to the point of cold-sweatting and spasming, but addiction to a drug is something thats like a blanket on top of entire populations. Most of us make due with some caffeine here, some nicotine there.

Outlawing one - or other - of these addictions is absurd, since it only criminalizes the addict, and causes unstoppable war-like action in the growing/smuggling centres.
The "more illegal" it is, the higher the cost of transportation and smuggling, and thus the higher the street-price for the drug, as we see in heroin and cocaine.
The higher the price, the more unstoppable the effort of controlling the market - and make no mistake peeps - not only scruffy, unwashed mexicans know and yearn for this market, but obviously, even suggesting that "legit" entities are into drug-money, is to go into "conspiracy-land"
 
No, no way. Government isn't going to control my life and tell me what's good for me.
People can make choices for themselves.
This is like asking "Should the government tell you what to eat?" because that's socialism, and I hate socialism.

Btw, my gramps was a tobacconist for a long time. Owned his own shop. Mostly sold cigars and pipe tobacco. He's retired now.

EDIT: I am for banning drugs like heroin, cocaine, meth, etc.
On a way different level than tobacco and good ol' booze.
 
Delbert said:
No, no way. Government isn't going to control my life and tell me what's good for me.
People can make choices for themselves.
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There's a difference between telling you what is 'good' for you (one might say 'life-affirming', or, on a more concrete level, 'biologically profitable'?), and what you can and can't do m8

I recall a leading member in the tobacco industry basically saying that those who purchase their products are the idiotic poor. The governments know the harm of smoking in public. It's simply too profitable and ingrained within our culture and perceptions. Same could be said of alcohol, which is vastly more harmful than certain illegal substances (location dependent). When it infringes on the health of others is more to the point, and where a debate over liberty occurs on a practical, contextually relevant scale.
 
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Delbert said:
No, no way. Government isn't going to control my life and tell me what's good for me.
People can make choices for themselves.
This is like asking "Should the government tell you what to eat?" because that's socialism, and I hate socialism.

Btw, my gramps was a tobacconist for a long time. Owned his own shop. Mostly sold cigars and pipe tobacco. He's retired now.

EDIT: I am for banning drugs like heroin, cocaine, meth, etc.
On a way different level than tobacco and good ol' booze.
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But ... the government is doing that already ... on a daily basis even. They tell you want you can and can't eat. They bann new substances all the time. They restrict your choices, sometimes depending on the state. But most do. You can't drive as fast as you want. You can't eat what ever you want - endangered species for example, or laws for the food industry, you also can't always buy what ever you want, and you can't kill who ever you want no matter how frustrating that neighbour and your stepmother is. And you have very often to deal with autorities and bureaucracy. So in other words, the government is already controling (parts of) your life and telling you what's good for you.

Unless of course you're saying that you're posting from Somalia. Or from some Oil Platform in international waters - where you most probably have to do what the company in charge is controling your life and telling you what's good for them.
 
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Prohibition is not the only analogy of "making something illegal that was once not". I mean, they used to sell cocaine drops to treat toothaches, morphine and chloroform to treat coughs, and you could get opium and methamphetamines at the drug store. For the most part, trying to control these substances has probably been for the best (we still give meth to kids, but only after they've been diagnosed with ADHD first.) Now certainly the "war on drugs" has been a boondoggle of catastrophic proportions, but telling people "no you cannot (or should not) have heroin" is more or less reasonable.

Now tobacco is nowhere near as bad as any of the aforementioned banned substance, but the real difference is just that there's a longstanding cultural tradition of tobacco consumption in the west. But the trends appear to indicate tobacco becoming less and less popular over time, so it's conceivable that with time there just won't be that much demand for it. So eventually you could theoretically ban it (or certain forms of it) with minimal impact. Though once it's just not popular anymore, you can probably just leave it alone.

But at least in America, taxes on cigarettes pay for all sorts of things (in my state, there's like $1.60 tax on every pack), so I don't see why there'd be any reason to ban it.
 
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Delbert said:
EDIT: I am for banning drugs like heroin, cocaine, meth, etc.
On a way different level than tobacco and good ol' booze.
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If by "On a way different level" you mean "Not even close to killing as many people" then you have a point.
 
All of you are fucking stupid.

Let's go over this again.



Oh wait, I don't give a shit anymore.


 
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For me smoking gives me a big conflict. On the one hand I'm libertarian about it and I say fuck your laws, let the people smoke all they wish to. On the other hand I think if nobody smoked we'd all be healthier and you can't annoy people with your god damn smoke.
 
Akratus said:
For me smoking gives me a big conflict. On the one hand I'm libertarian about it and I say fuck your laws, let the people smoke all they wish to. On the other hand I think if nobody smoked we'd all be healthier and you can't annoy people with your god damn smoke.
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That's the ENTIRE point of "freedom versus safety". You can't have both, even if what you're "saving" yourself from is yourself and your own decisions.

People want to drive without seat belts. Let them. If they have the confidence that they are cautious enough drivers, that they aren't texting or talking to someone while they're driving, that they are looking out for other reckless drivers, and they won't get into accidents for a seat belt to save their life, LET THEM NOT WEAR SEAT BELTS! But no, it's a crime to not wear a seat belt, even though you're not hurting ANYONE in not doing so, except for (potentially) yourself.

People want to drink sodas, packed with aritificially cheapened high fructose corn syrup. Let them. If they want to spend their money on a steak or a hot dog, or municipal water or soda, it's no one else's concern how they ingest their own nutrition, or spend their money on their nutritional well being, LET THEM DRINK SODA IF THEY WANT. But no, we should tax sodas to decrease demand because we need to tell people what they can and cannot eat... Even though we ALREADY tax them so we can subsidize the utter fucking shit out of corn farms to MAKE high fructose corn syrup artificially cheap in the first place!!!

People want to take experimental pain killers. Let them. If someone wants to take a risk of using an experimental pain killer that may have negative repurcussions in the long run in order to overcome some debilitating pain in the present, that's THEIR choice, not for someone else to make. It's for them to decide and weigh the benefits over the consequences and determine if it's a worthwhile trade to make. Their body. But no, we need to make plenty of these drugs illegal, because big poppa government is here to tell us what we should and should not ingest.

It's all the same argument. I don't like the ashen smell of smokers or plenty of other things about smoking, either, but that doesn't change the fact that it's their fundamental right to govern themselves, not any outside party's, to determine how they conduct themselves.
 
Akratus said:
For me smoking gives me a big conflict. On the one hand I'm libertarian about it and I say fuck your laws, let the people smoke all they wish to. On the other hand I think if nobody smoked we'd all be healthier and you can't annoy people with your god damn smoke.
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It's an weak argument.

The whole anti-smoking initiative is fine and all, because it's a crappy habit that does nothing for you.


However it is pretentious the way SJW's handle people who do smoke.


You're not allowed to talk to me about smoking until you start talking about how fucked up the Ozone is and pollution, which is far worse for you.

But that would interfer with your new I-phone being made so you can tweet how much you fucking hate people who don't even effect you at all in day-to-day life.

Plus, if you are an adult and haven't atleast tried a cigarette, you are a pussy coward who hasn't even tried living.


 
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zegh8578 said:
Why is it obvious?

Is heroin addition remedied in any thinkable way whatsoever?
Are you guys sitting around going "phew, good thing heroin is out of the picutre, or there would be heroin addicts in the world, living horrible lives!"

1. Heroin sells exactly the ammount it needs to, to make the druglords managing it among the richest people in the world.
2. Like with cocaine, criminalization explodes the price, from what would be just another stupid crop, to one of the priciest comsumables per gram in the universe!
3. Heroin addicts arouuund the world can get their fix whenever they need it - on a daily basis - without fail.

Illegality fails to prevent usage
It only punishes people after the fact

Unlike laws concerning violence, it even fails to act as a deterrent - so many petty acts of violence are thwarted by the fact that harsh punishment act as a deterrent. Many laws are sensible that way, but prohibition of even the most punished substance seems to fail flat - not even a little!

It is SO sought after, it makes most other crimes pale in comparison, very few people yearn to murder, to the point of cold-sweatting and spasming, but addiction to a drug is something thats like a blanket on top of entire populations. Most of us make due with some caffeine here, some nicotine there.

Outlawing one - or other - of these addictions is absurd, since it only criminalizes the addict, and causes unstoppable war-like action in the growing/smuggling centres.
The "more illegal" it is, the higher the cost of transportation and smuggling, and thus the higher the street-price for the drug, as we see in heroin and cocaine.
The higher the price, the more unstoppable the effort of controlling the market - and make no mistake peeps - not only scruffy, unwashed mexicans know and yearn for this market, but obviously, even suggesting that "legit" entities are into drug-money, is to go into "conspiracy-land"
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Because Heroin is one of the few drugs that give you physical withdrawals.
 
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