[Spivak]

> New Zealand's Cigarette prohibition

Is brilliant and the only way to realistically ban cigarettes without screwing over entire generations who are already addicted to nicotine.

Let's give a real example. My great aunt in her late 60s has a 40 year pack a day smoker. There is zero chance whatsoever she would be able to quit before she dies and it would be cruel to try and make her. There is no way you can pick a single date after which smoking is banned for everyone, it will be so loudly, and rightly, fought that it would never pass. I don't want to live in a world where a not insignificant percent of the population simultaneously goes through nicotine withdrawal. Because I've seen my friends quit and patches and gum don't keep you from being miserable.

If you don't think cigarettes should be banned, fine. Valid stance. But if you think they should this is the way.

[OkayPhysicist]

The problem with fine-grained approaches like this is that they are much easier to get passed: people are much more willing to restrict the freedoms of other people rather than themselves. For a ban like that to be ethical, it would have to have been voted on by the people it would apply to, i.e., the people below the age cutoff (who in this example, can't vote at all).

[LadyCailin]

They can vote to repeal it later, it isn’t a permanent thing. Unlike fucking up the planet, which is.

[OkayPhysicist]

Sorry, did I miss something? The "fucking up the planet" thing seems to be a non-sequitur, unless you're suggesting that people smoking are fucking up the planet, which doesn't seem like it's the motivation for the bill as much as "stopping people from fucking up themselves" is.

Regardless, I disagree with the line of reasoning that because it can be repealed it's okay to pass it in the first place. The core problem is creating laws that artificially inflate their support by making them only apply to some sub-group. Passing laws that only restrict a minority due to practical reasosns is bad enough. For example, cities' anti-camping laws basically only apply to the homeless, because no-one chooses on a whim to camp in downtown Los Angeles. That's not great, because its a tyranny of the majority situation, but at least in theory the general populace has to weigh the loss of their ability to camp in downtown against the pros of not having homeless camps in downtown.

In a situation where the law explicitly only applies to the minority, especially a minority that no one in the majority could ever eventually belong to, the majority get to have their cake and eat it, too, leading to artificial support for your bill. If you can't find the political support to ban cigarettes outright, back-dooring democracy is not the right way to do it.

[jefftk]

> laws that artificially inflate their support by making them only apply to some sub-group

The NZ smoking case is interesting, though, because over time it will apply to the majority.

> If you can't find the political support to ban cigarettes outright, back-dooring democracy is not the right way to do it.

Requiring all public buildings to immediately retrofit for wheelchair access wasn't practical, but in the US proponents were able to get support for requiring this for new and heavily renovated buildings (the ADA). Having a gradual intermediate choice makes a lot of sense in cases where a full ban is really bad for people (or buildings) that are dependent on the old way and we also don't want to continue to allow it indefinitely.

[OkayPhysicist]

The ADA's significantly different, in my opinion for one simple reason: Buildings don't vote, people do. Everyone voting on the law could potentially be restricted by it, because they could build a new building or renovate an existing one. Therefore, while the people voting for it could be operating under the assumption of "Don't care, already got mine", they're still restricted by it going forward.

In contrast, NOBODY who voted for NZ's law will be restricted by it.

[LadyCailin]

I’m not suggesting smoking is fucking up the planet. But I am suggesting that in general, there are tons of policies in place that further contribute to climate change, which will also only affect younger people and on. Except those are even worse, because one cannot simply reverse climate change by passing a new bill.

So, I get your point, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But if we agree on that logic, then I care far more about stopping climate change, for the sake of future generations democratic welfare, than I do about allowing them to smoke.

Having said all that, I don’t know how NZ ranks in terms of climate policies, perhaps they are already the best in the world.

[OkayPhysicist]

That's a pretty strong false dichotomy. The government is in charge of a lot of things, they must do multiple things at once. Passing unrelated laws and passing laws relating to climate change are orthogonal.

If we vote to, say, ban the sale of new internal combustion automobiles, sure, it restricts future generations. But it also restricts the voting body, today, by restricting their ability to purchase new cars. The voters are weighing the necessity of fighting climate change against the restriction of their freedom to purchase an automobile. Perfectly fair. If we instead are voting on "lets ban the sale of automobiles to anyone born after 2000" or "lets ban the sale of automobiles starting in 2123", then the people voting on it are not, and never will be effected by the restriction that they voted to put in place. THAT is unjust.

[int_19h]

Out of curiosity, how repressive a government would you be willing to tolerate if it consistently used a significant part of its political power to stop climate change?