[pessimizer]

The particular politicians who pushed it are who I'm talking about; I'm not talking about politicians in general. They might as well be pushing for even earlier childhood education, higher penalties for child abuse, higher sentences for drug sales near a church, or other random fake progress that will always get votes from the public. It's a vaguely benign version of law-and-order politics. Let somebody write a dubious paper insisting that cigarette packs are too easy to tear open, and they'll be pushing for legislation to freeze cigarettes in a block of ice, and to force people to lock their chisels and icepicks in a safe.

The people who work for NGOs make their entire living from pushing initiatives like this of dubious value but that look good on a flier or a picket sign; they're just as guilty. In the US, they're so paycheck- and opportunity-guided that their attacks on vaping have pushed people back into smoking (multiple orders of magnitude more dangerous.) That's not actually a flaw - if smoking rises they can just fundraise off that again.