[A_D_E_P_T]

The UK government seems hell-bent on the control and micromanagement of its own population.

Their recent smoking ban -- which is sure to make cigarette smoking cool again with young people -- was a joke. This hyper-surveillance measure is a lot less funny.

[simonbarker87]

The smoking ban is incredibly popular and supported by most people across all generations, also given we have tax payer funded healthcare this is a clear win for the nation.

[lonelyasacloud]

Popular but stupid. Surely we've learnt by now that outright prohibition is only good for funnelling money to criminals?

[simonbarker87]

Only if smoking is seen as cool, which it isn’t any more. Vaping is the way to go for kids these days and whilst still not great it seems like it’s better than smoking.

[A_D_E_P_T]

Spare some thought as to why it's no longer "seen as cool."

That's about to be turned on its head. Banning smoking will make it seem edgy, transgressive, and alluring. Still worse, banning it only for people below a certain age will make it seem mature and sophisticated to those below the cutoff. The forbidden fruit.

The UK Govt couldn't possibly devise a better way to popularize cigarettes with young people. And they'll create a nice little black market, to boot.

[nmca]

suppose we design a reasonable experiment here, like taking a random sample of teenagers and mitigating for anonymity concerns. are you seriously claiming that this would show an increase after the ban?

or to put it another way --- the phenomenon you point to is real but completely swamped by the more direct impacts

[A_D_E_P_T]

If we were talking of the USA, or of a European nation like Croatia, I'd bet that smoking rates in youth show a slow but gradual increase in the years following a UK-style ban.

In the UK, however, the way to bet is that the government enforces the ban with maniacal zeal, so smoking rates will probably go down slightly in the near term. (For better or worse -- usually worse -- the UK has more state capacity to enforce a ban than the US or indeed the vast majority of other countries.) But smoking will become, once again, a prestigious activity. All the cool kids will smoke, if only for the social signaling benefits. Over more than a decade, youth smoking rates might surpass what they were before the ban.

[posix_monad]

The taxes paid on nicotene products more than offset the cost of the healthcare.

[simonbarker87]

If it were additive to the base cost of healthcare for the nation but it’s not, taxation isn’t ring fenced like that.

[extraduder_ire]

Would that matter outside of optics? Tax money is fungible.

[trinsic2]

The Postmaster debacle is the biggest example of this I have ever seen. Something has dramatically changed when people are not being held accountable for their crimes.

[denton-scratch]

I smoke 40 a day. I don't want my granddaughters to do the same. I strongly support the ban. All the smokers I know agree with me.

[red_admiral]

Cannabis is technically also banned in the UK. As is selling vapes to underage people. Where there's a market, capitalism finds a way.