Wrong. Prohibition increases demand.

Edit: Based off some replies, I think a lot of people are forgetting some rudimentary aspects of the concept of "demand", so allow me to help:

Demand is an economic concept that relates to a consumer's desire to purchase goods and services and willingness to pay a specific price for them.

When supply decreases, the price of the good increases. Inversely, when the supply of the good increases, the price falls

Addicts will always find a way to justify their addiction. Price of smokes goes up? Welp, looks like Ol Johnny Blacklungs is going to buy less food this month.

Don't forget a lot of the cost of a pack of smokes is often more due to taxation than the cost of the product, even if you include things likes all the overhead for marketing and legal and shit.

Thanks for your opinion.

Sure, and I agree that this should be approached with scepticism and not blind bias.

I'm basing this off tobacco being the third most addictive substance on the planet.

Being that dependent on a substance suggests that practical decision-making and rational thinking, such as adding motivation to quit through price, is certainly not going to be the most effective way to reduce dependency while also further harming those that fail to break their dependency.

Edit: Also I just want to point out, again, that I was never referring to tax. From what I saw there's not enough conclusive data for me to form an opinion one way or the other on the effectiveness of increasing tobacco tax . All of my comments are about this ridiculously assanine ban, or the increased prices that come as a result of this ban.

Hooray for your dad, but one anecdotal claim is hardly a proven method.

There's a reason why people tend to hit rock bottom before they finally kick their drug addiction. If they don't have the means, they will attempt to find it. Your logic is flawed, and only serves to disproportionately impair the poor while bolstering the very industry you fight.

You're both very welcome and a class act. It's no small feat to kick cancer's ass. Lol

I got bad news for you... cigarette smoke is the least of your worries when stuck in traffic. You're inhaling exhauste fumes from every car near you...

I have to say, pot is getting like that too. While I support that it’s now decriminalized (where I live), now it’s becoming a nuisance. I shouldn’t have to breathe second hand smoke regardless of what you’re smoking

Do you have a source for these claims? No one is smoking cigarettes for the taste, nor is "bad taste" a common reason for anyone to quit. Smoking is both a chemical addiction (nicotine and such) and a psychological habit (place and timing, having something in the mouth, forced breathing exercises, etc).

If we really wanted to hinder big tobacco, they'd start requiring producers to document all their ingredients, additives, and processing methods.

No it doesn't. It's purely a preference. There are tons of smokers who can't stand menthols but love regular cigarettes. I even know someone who smokes menthols because he said it makes people less likely to bum cigarettes off of him.

If they banned all alcohol for everyone, its indiscriminate, and I would not consider it to be discrimination (I'd consider it a bad idea based on the obvious). In your example, a ban on wine, but not whiskey, with the publicly stated intention of reducing alcohol intake among women, would be the equivalent, and I'd absolutely consider that misogynistic. In the case of a wine ban, yes, it would be immoral to impose that ban, because it would be targeted at women specifically.

They aren't banning cigarettes. They're banning menthols, and the publicly stated intent is to affect use of cigarettes among minorities. The policy is specifically intended to affect a demographic. Not because I say so, or because I think it does... it's what they're citing as the basis of the policy... they published it as such.

The pragmatic solution is to ban cigarettes. That would still affect the minorities disparately, but it's no longer an inherently racist proposal at that point, because it's about tobacco use period, not just the tobacco use specific to the minorities.

It's not a false analogy, it's just brutally logical and completely disregards the merits of the situation...

Logging is the deadliest occupation on earth. Banning minorities from the logging industry would greatly improve their odds of survival. It's exactly the same as banning their chosen cigarettes.

I don't really have a preference on tobacco bans at all tbh. I do think people should have options, but I don't disagree with the intent of smoking bans either... the issue here is, it's not a choice between those two for everyone, it's a selective ban that removes the options from a singular group, and the selection is based on race and orientation.

The merits of the ban are, in my opinion, not all that relevant. I don't disagree with banning cigarettes entirely, I don't disagree with onerous taxation as an incentive to reduce sales, I don't object to any measures that are indiscriminate, because I don't really care that much tbh, I switched to vapes in 2012.

I object to the specificity.

From another perspective, were talking about a ban on tobacco that selectively preserves tobacco use for straight white people... does that make it more clear why I object?

My argument is that since illegal drugs have significantly fewer users, prohibition does reduce usage.

Fuck prohibition.

Prohibition=Oppression.

Good tobacco is .. not insanely addictive

Nah, nicotine is very addictive by itself. But yes, the additives make it even worse.

I agree though, it's disappointing that governments don't have better labeling regulations on "sinful" products. Alcohol: why not require a list of ingredients and calories? Cigarettes: same thing, show what it has been processed with, etc? Like how the EU used to require showing how much tar and nicotine each cigarette contained, but realized all the producers started to fake the testing machines by designing holes in the filters (like "light" cigs) where the user's lips would otherwise cover when smoking.

So's hemlock, what's your point?

But parents are allowed to expose them to the smoke.

The theory that when you smoke, the nicotine binds to surfaces the smoke touches, causing cancer to anyone who comes near surfaces that nicotine has touched.

It was a "truth" run around in the 80s as we were discovering the nature of radiation, so lots of war on drug "research" papers got published functionally saying nicotine and radiation are the same thing.

There's already too many people in Colorado.