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this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Good. Different laws based on year of birth are an absurd prejudice, as much as laws based on which town you're from.
How old you are is as valid as which town you're in. That is equal treatment. But the metric cannot be how old you were, when the law passed. That is creating second-class citizens. That is not a tolerable way for any government to accomplish its goals.
Even if the goal is broadly positive.
Weird take tbh… we currently restrict sale of these products to people over 18 - I don’t see this as much of a change from that conceptually. It’s a clever method as it allows current addicts to continue without a sudden cold-turkey stop, but makes it much harder for future generations to gain access to tobacco.
We need to end the tobacco industry somehow, and this is a reasonable way to taper it out of existence. Other scrapped plans include removing nicotine and other addictive substances from tobacco, and removing tobacco from being sold in dairies and service stations.
Did I not just address this? Was I circumspect?
Any law that forever excludes you from an activity that is otherwise legal - is not the same thing as limiting things to certain ages. No kidding a child born now can't drive. But if they still can't drive, sixteen years from now, while people who can drive now are still allowed to drive, that's obviously not the same thing as saying 'you have to be sixteen to drive.'
It is a fundamentally different restriction.
That form of restriction cannot be tolerated, no matter how grand the goal. It is incompatible with equality under the law. It is treating certain people differently, for life, for circumstances unrelated to ability, capacity, or safety.
If the industry is awful then it's awful for everyone and should be banned for everyone. "Clever" in this case means "unethical, with extra steps."
To me it was the best way of phasing the law in for everyone because it's unfair on addicts to suddenly criminalize their addiction.
Genuinely unintelligent take, to be honest. There is a huge difference between not letting a child do something, and never letting a person do something, even when an adult only a few days older can legally do so.
It's a weird law, and it's probably a good thing it's been repealed.
I get what you're saying but to me the "second class citizens" are really the ones who are exposed to the higher lung cancer rates.
I feel the same way actually, it's a weird law to say the least.