The country’s new center-right coalition is repealing a ban on the sale of tobacco to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009, which critics say will cost lives.
Health and tobacco campaigners said Monday that New Zealand’s plan to repeal laws that would ban tobacco sales for future generations threatened lives and put international efforts to curb smoking at risk.
The country’s new center-right coalition will scrap the laws introduced by the previous Labour-led government, according to coalition agreements published on Friday.
The package of measures would have seen bans on selling tobacco to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009, reduced the amount of nicotine allowed in smoked tobacco products and cut the number of retailers able to sell tobacco by over 90%.
They marked some of the toughest anti-tobacco rules in the world. A ban on smoking for future generations was subsequently proposed in Britain, with other countries also considering similar rules.
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As someone who smoked for almost 30 years, this would have been a great thing if it had been enacted before I started smoking. Without easy access to cigarettes, I never would have started in the first place. But that’s entirely anecdotal.
On the one hand, I started smoking weed before it was legal (and thus I shouldn’t have had access). But on the other hand, I wouldn’t have gone to the same lengths to get tobacco as I did to get weed.
Even we find it stupid
Let people smoke what they want.
If secondhand smoke is the issue, then ban smoking in public areas. Ban it around children. But don’t ban it for everyone. That’s encroaching on personal freedom.
Unfortunately, most ‘adults’ these days have the view “if I don’t like it, then neither should anyone else!”
