Once upon a time humans had to memorize log tables.
Once upon a time humans had to manually advance the spark ignition as their car's engine revved faster.
Once upon a time humans had to know the architecture of a CPU to code for it.
History is full of instances of humans meeting technology where it was, accommodating for its limitations. We are approaching a point where machines accommodate to our limitations -- it's not a point, really, but a spectrum that we've been on.
i still don’t think the current generation of AI is building better software than strong humans. it excels at writing code, because a computer will always be faster at generating typo-free code than my fingers, but without expert guidance and oversight the best it can do is on par with what we can.
There are two separate issues here: 1. will this work (will the UK stop smoking) 2. is this something the UK government should be doing
Setting aside 1 and looking at 2, it seems silly to me to point out that other things (alcohol) that cause problems and are not being restricted. You take the wins where you find them, and the government isn't a magical force that can impose its will on the people arbitrarily. This is obviously the government responding to the general sense of the people (perhaps putting its thumb on the scale). The UK doesn't support cigarettes, so the law gets passed. If someone has a public opinion poll there showing less than 50% support for this, I'd love to see it.
> other things (alcohol) that cause problems and are not being restricted
Alcohol is heavily restricted, though. You can't sell it to minors, younger minors can't drink it in public, you can't sell/buy/make it above a certain proof, you can only resell it from authorized distributors, it is taxes, and so on.
Sure, banning cigarettes for a specific generation is a much more stringent restriction, but plenty of other restrictions exist.
Sounds like a great way to avoid alcohol addiction, prevent drunk driving deaths, and save countless generations from being negatively impacted in one way or another by alcohol.
Prohibition doesn't work because people want to modulate their consciousness, chemically force-relax, reduce inhibitions, etc. It didn't work before, and it won't in the future. The more things are forbidden, the more taboo and attractive they become.
This banal, smiling, petty authoritarianism sickens me. Bodily autonomy trumps "common good" arguments, and where it somehow doesn't, injustice abides. Society's job isn't to crush individualism in order to create the safest and most financially efficient outcome. Shall we throw everyone in prison for their safety and protection next, and control their diet to ensure maximum healthspan and potential for participation in the labor market?
Rather than banning anything, point out at an early age that cigarettes stink, get you addicted, cost money forever, and cause health problems. Point out that alcohol makes you fat and causes heart problems and cancer. The accept that each person has the right to make a decision for themselves about what risks they're willing to accept to achieve a desired outcome, and that they have to own those consequences.
Don't want to pay for smokers' lung cancer treatment? Then only fund palliative care for smoking-related cancers. Man enough to smoke a pack a day, man enough to buy smokers' insurance. There, now we can live free.
Smokers already more than pay for their healthcare so punishing them further is silly. Not only is their lifetimehealthcare cheaper, because smoking disqualifies you from many procedures and kills most users right around retirement age before the expensive age-related care becomes common, but the sin-tax collected from smokers in most countries is larger than the average lifetime medical care cost.
It's basically taxing people for saving everybody else money.
An interesting point. So over the next ~60 years, the UK has committed itself to having to find a replacement for all the tax revenue that will be lost by eliminating tobacco products. Additionally, the number of people with longer lifespans will increase, necessitating more late-life care delivery through the NHS, which will also have to be funded.
Outcome: this will cost everyone a lot of money. Time to raise the retirement age to 80!
In huge agreement with you. But can it be done in a different way that doesn't create the black market problems of the prohibition era? (Do we have a better chance now with gen z's aversion to drugs/alcohol?)
It’s awesome to decide what your children, once they are adults, can’t do? Seems borderline psychopathic. Kinda sums up democracy in current times though.
> It’s awesome to decide what your children, once they are adults, can’t do?
You do realize that this is what basically every single law in existence does, right?
That my kids, and likely yours, once they're adults, can't drive under the influence, rob a bank, impersonate a cop, lie under oath, exercise medecine without a licence, walk downtown naked, jaywalk, evade taxes, criticize the King?
I've seen confusion about this before with people that I know.
You tell them it's against the law to drink, and they'll point out that it's restrictive and controlling. You tell them it's against the law to commit tax fraud, and they'll have no objection.
Why? I think, at least with the people that I know, it's related to what they want to be able to do. They want to be able to drink alcohol, so it feels controlling to tell them they can't. They aren't interested in committing tax fraud, so they're not bothered by that being restricted.
If you check it the other way around, you'll get consistency. Almost everyone that is against taxation is also against restrictions on consuming drink.
If you ask an addict then yeah you'll get some gibberish that enables them whether it fits into a logical paradigm or not.
Well to be fair, it's not that they can't, it's that society is telling them there will be repercussions if they're caught. You can still technically do whatever you want.
Laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted and the police are basically an occupying army.
People have been using tobacco for many thousands of years. if they want to use it knowing full well the consequences, they should be able to. Unless we also ban things like skydiving, rock climbing, and fast cars and motorcycles, it makes no sense to me.
Why isn't prohibiting something known to cause harm a good thing? Plus, smoking doesn't just harm the individual doing it, its harm extends to those in the immediate (and sometimes not so immediate) vicinity, as well as the environment. There is literally zero good to gain from it.
If future generations want to smoke, they can change the law as easily as yours passed it.
Running government budgets further and further into deficit, believing that, as a result, your children will, some day, be in a stronger financial position to repay the resulting debt that, until that day, continues to grow at an ever-increasing rate?
That's not how politics works, and you probably know it. "Easily passing laws" is not a matter of voting demographics but of political power, and any thinking person knows political power usually does not belong to younger voters.
I’m having a hard time coming up with a better way. Simply banning all manufacturing and import is not going to work when it’s heavily addictive. In the case of alcohol, quitting cold can kill you.
Banning it today and expecting people to cope, or attempt to fund recovery efforts for a whole nation would completely misunderstand the addicts mind. If you don’t want to quit, you never will.
Instead we have a total ban that is timeboxed to allow the addicts the rest of their lives to quit one way or another.
If they wanted to ban cigarettes, they should have banned cigarettes. The whole "let's pass a law that only affects people who can't vote" strategy applied here is tyranical.
That doesn't sound like a win to me, it sounds ultra authoritarian and restrictive. Prohibition has never cured us of a drug problem and tobacco is no different. You think jailing someone for decades for selling tobacco should be a thing? Because that is what such a policy will do.
I think making a society more healthy should be a goal.
You already can’t legally do a lot of things that appear to only be about yourself because society as a whole said it’s not good for everyone. You can’t buy cocaine. You can’t commit suicide (it’s illegal almost everywhere) . You can’t ride a motorbike without a helmet, or drive a car without a seatbelt. You can’t even build a house without a smoke detector or remove the airbags from your own car.
To some degree, if you want to, go buy 100 acres in the middle of nowhere and go nuts. Or move to a country that doesn’t care about all those things.
If you want to be part of a modern clan, it’s not helpful to do things that indirectly hurts everyone, even if on the surface it only impacts you and your body.
If you want all the benefits of a modern society, it asks you to not be a net negative.
This is 10x important in countries with universal healthcare, ie all but one.
Ideally yes. But clearly all the examples I listed and many dozens more show that, at times, for the greater good we have to stop people doing certain things.
Would you argue we should teach empower people to be more responsible and let them all own surface to air missiles?
Surely we should empower people to be healthy and make smart choices and let companies put arsenic in food to save money. Let people build homes with asbestos insulation because it’s cheap and works and let people connect their house to the gas main because it will encourage people to be resourceful ?
I’m all for encouraging people to make good choices, but the consequences are very obvious in certain circumstances.
The US did the same thing with cockfighting. It was already illegal in all the states, but they passed a federal law binding on all states and territories to stop Puerto Ricans (who had no such law against it), who have no meaningful federal representation.
No, but my point is this argument isn't really consistently applied. The excuse about a law made specifically to apply against people that can't vote is quite popular and accepted. The cockfighting law was cheered by most the mainland US, while Puerto Rico desperately fought against it, though they weren't able to get cert in SCOTUS to challenge it.
There was never really much of any concern of "wait, Puerto Rico has no representation in the law that was essentially drafted to target specifically them." All these people claiming to not support the smoking laws on this kind of basis were nowhere to be found. The law passed like a thief in the night.
Alcohol is quite different to cigarettes. It's fun and part of the culture - most people drink and the country is full of pubs and restaurants serving it. You couldn't ban it without most of the country, including me, objecting.
Cigarettes on the other hand are not so popular. If you ask most smokers if they regret starting about 90% say yes. They mostly want to quit but are addicted. Quite different from booze.
If you look at the US about 50% have ever smoked some form of tobacco at least once. Only 11-15% currently do.
For booze it's much 'worse.' Nearly 80% have ever drunk alcohol but 50% of them still do. A much higher rate of ongoing use.
Also note a very large portion of people that have ever smoked have had a nice cigar or pipe, smoked once in a blue moon is extremely unlikely to cause cancer or addiction. This likely represents a 'quiet' large portion of the statistic that have ever used tobacco. The loudest are the pack a day smokers who loudly proclaim everyone else will be like them and therefore everyone else should suffer restrictions that presume the same.
I think it is also part of a trend. More and more control over people's lives, more and more bans.
Beyond whether something is "bad for you", the key aspect in a free society is whether the State should decide for you (we're entrusted with the right to vote, after all).
Demolition Man has turned out to be the most accurate prediction of the future regarding those issues among all the 90s movies. Quite interesting.
I see smoking as a separate category owing to the existence of second hand smoke. Smoking in a room with other people adversely affects those people. I think government is the correct body to be intervening in that scenario.
No indoor smoking makes a major difference, but there still are enough semi-stationary semi-close-up situations where smokers can be still rather annoying, e.g. outdoor seating in cafes and restaurants, popular lunch break spots in parks and plazas, public transport stops, next-door neighbours… And even if you manage to position yourself upwind of all pre-existing smokers, there's no guarantee that a few minutes later somebody upwind of you suddenly won't light up…
Smokers are incredibly obnoxious. Smoking at a bus stop? Why not? Under open windows? Sure. On sidewalks, so that I have to breathe that stuff in when behind them? Sure.
What's that? Smoking at bus stops is banned? No problem — just move 5m away and smoke all you want, the wind carrying the smoke towards the bus stop all the same :)
And such laws are not realistically enforceable anyway.
Yes, this is one of the reasons there is resistance to socialized health care. People view it as opening the door to the government controlling what they due due to health care costs.
Sure, I dislike smoking, I really don't drink that much either.
But then it leads to questions such as; What about birth defects? What about extreme sports(risk of permanent injury)?
There was a scandal in Canada recently about veterans asking for medical care and being push to assisted suicide:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig...
>MacAulay walked the committee through what his department knew, thus far, saying the first case that came to light occurred last summer where the caseworker repeatedly pushed the notion of MAID to an unnamed veteran who had called seeking help with post-traumatic stress.
Solving it with money doesn't really solve it unless there's "real" competition.
Look at automotive insurance points systems. People have to buy it so the sellers lean on the legislatures and before you know it a ticket costs the same points and screws you out of just as much money as an actual accident.
>That seems appropriate. A small fraction of people cause most of the losses, they should pay more.
Surely that was a satirical comment and was meant to be an illustrative example of exactly the sort of mindset that runs political cover for a system as it pivots from providing enough value to become entrenched to using that entrenched position to behave in an extractive manner.
In my state if grandma gets pulled over for an out of date inspection sticker it's the same number of points as actually causing an accident. Someone is being fleeced.
I have zero faith that letting the government choose at the behest of industry who ought to pay more for healthcare that it wouldn't devolve into the same exact sort of exercise in finding a reason to charge everyone more.
I’ve never seen having an expired tag be a points violation, that seems very wrong. IME it’s only ever moving violations that impact safety. For that, higher rates are absolutely appropriate.
Safety inspection. It's a moving violation in this state (of course it wasn't initially, frogs are best boiled slow). That's the magic of it. Frame it as a "safety" issue and everyone who can't think critically about how that sausage might be made will knee jerk approve.
If I was an auto insurer, I would want to know that my policy holders were properly maintaining their vehicles. I would also have a strong interest in ensuring that non-policy holders did the same.
And as a driver, I certainly want everyone around me to be required to properly maintain their cars.
I'm not gonna let the goal posts move here. That still doesn't make it a moving violation on par with driving like a dick and/or causing an accident.
What you're saying seems to make sense on face value but in reality letting insurance leverage safety inspections is just a politically less thorny wealth proxy. The inspections themselves don't provide all that much value (IMO this is because of how comprehensive they are, 90/10 rule and all that) and multiple states have ended their programs because they don't actually provide meaningful improvement for the money.
Regardless, even if there is somme hand wavy justification for it that some people agree with, it's flawed to the point it's probably not something we want to do with medical because it would make insurance unaffordable for so many people on flimsy at best pretexts.
I don’t think the argument as a whole is a fallacy, it’s true that the exact cost to the NHS is more than covered by tax, but most estimates of wider cost to the economy (e.g. lost productivity, disability benefits, etc) is higher.
https://fullfact.org/health/farage-smoking-revenue-nhs/
It's equally a fallacious argument to try to fit "cost to the economy", whatever that means, to the healthcare cost (usually this is done to inflate costs to fit the narrative). By that logic, ban everything and allow only what allows individuals to maximise their productive labour... what a nightmare.
That's not a separate category, that's the general principle in a free society: There is a limit to "doing what you want" when it impacts others/imposes on them.
That's why smoking is already heavily regulated in order to limit and minimise the impact that your choice has on others.
I think you could make the same argument about alcohol and drugs (road fatalities + some absurd number of convicted criminals were high/drunk when perpetrating the crime) - I’m not taking a side either way but I don’t think smoking is unique in terms of harm to society there besides the user.
On reddit, not so long ago, they were inventing interesting theories about how seat belt laws were justified because without seat belts people would be ejected from cars and kill by standards when their flying carcasses cannonballed through them.
The claim that "it impacts others" is, at very minimum, exaggerated, but just as often completely fabricated out of pseudoscience and absurd movie plots.
Smoking is heavily regulated because there was a resurgence of teetotaling in the late 20th century.
Remember when seat belt laws came out in the United States, they (at least in the states I was in) vehemently promised up and down that it would always be a secondary offense and never would be allowed to become a reason to pull you over?
It impacts first responders. Not only is it bad to respond to an accident with a fatality, it's worse if you can see the would've likely been fine had they worn a seat belt.
I agree that having other people smoking nearby can be unpleasant, but you might find some comfort in Sir Richard Doll's opinion on second hand smoke - that the risks were politically and publicly exaggerated beyond what the epidemiological evidence clearly supported.
Personally - aside from the smell - I have no concerns about people smoking near me outdoors or even in very well ventilated areas. I understand though that for some people (such as asthmatics) it can be a real problem that goes beyond simply being unpleasant.
In fact one of the most important fire disasters in England, the Kings Cross fire started because nicotine addicts used to light up on their way out of the tube (which had already prohibited smoking, it's kinda crazy to imagine people in the 1970s used to smoke on the fucking underground railway, deep under the ground where you are unavoidably breathing the same air as everybody else)
Somebody probably drops a spent match, it's still smouldering and it drops inside the escalator where it finds plenty of fuel and begins a fire. From there you mostly just need bad luck - yes the staff could be better trained, but even when they do summon professionals the firefighters don't arrive in time to tackle it while it's still small, the then-unknown trench effect allows the hot gases to pool and initiate flash over suddenly, a bunch of people die.
My suspicion is that alcohol is mind-altering in ways smoking is not, and has a large effect on social interactions in business and romance and coping with the drudgery of daily life.
Take away smoking from the next generation and they move to caffeine or vapes. Take away alcohol and there are revolutions and religious extremist revivals.
Sounds like you're using the wrong fuel. If we'd switched all the petrol cars over to propane instead of having "scrappage schemes" to sell people new "cleaner greener diesels" - and you see how that worked out - then we'd have pristine fresh air in our cities now.
Second hand smoke is a large (almost overwhelming) factor in SIDS. Also for people who don't smoke, it smells f--king disgusting. Nobody wants to deal with that in their life.
>> the government isn't a magical force that can impose its will on the people arbitrarily
You must live in a democracy. If you ever lived in a country where the government curtailed freedoms by fiat, you'd understand that it can and it will. I happened to be living in Vietnam when the government just randomly decided one day that smoking would be banned everywhere, effective immediately. You might think that's simply putting a thumb on the scale; but you also haven't tried to visit the New York Times website from there and later found yourself in a room with officials asking for all your passwords. And clearly you're not familiar with the preferred way of clearing traffic jams, which is driving a jeep through a crowd of motorbikes while a guy with a long bamboo cane whacks anyone who's in the way.
Thumb on the scale my ass. Totalitarianism is control over the little things.
They appear to have taken a specific reference to "the (UK (implied by context)) government" as an arbitrary generic reference to any government on the planet.
> The UK doesn't support cigarettes, so the law gets passed. If someone has a public opinion poll there showing less than 50% support for this, I'd love to see it.
Isn't the impetus on the makers of this bill to show there is more than 50% support for this.
I'm not a fan of smoking but this isn't the governments job imo. Not to mention the odd precedent of do what I say not as I do, with different laws for different generations.
I'm a non smoking Brit and figure maybe give it a go and see how it goes down?
Perhaps let young people who deeply want to smoke apply for some sort of smoking pass? You could do similar for other problem drugs too maybe. A lot of addictive drugs don't do much harm if prescribed - the NHS gave some fentanyl to help chill out which was good - but having illegal dealers causes no end of problems.
People used to be able to smoke in pubs. But I agree it wasn't quite so culturally foundational.
I'm not going to lose sleep over the idea of a smoking ban, since it was already driven to the margins, but the implementation of it by age is really weird. Clearly a move to avoid annoying pensioners, like everything else.
It makes sense to me, we're talking about a highly addictive psychoactive substance. It's much harder to get out of addiction than not get addicted in the first place, and people born after 2008 did not have a legal way to get addicted yet. That's exactly how I'd approach having a transition period to not cause unnecessary suffering in the process.
But nevermind culturally foundational, if you take away drinking at pubs then they're not pubs, it's immediately more of an impact, and more of an effect on local economies, small businesses, etc. too.
I disagree that age-based is weird: these are people who can't (yet) already do it, so they're not having something (current) taken away from them. It's a lot harder and crueller to say you're taking away something someone likes/does, even if they're not fully addicted to it.
Yeah, except for alcohol all the other drugs are heavily controlled (contrary to the medical or scientific evidence). Tobacco doesn't offer any benefits*
*yeah, I struggle to find significant benefits of alcohol, but there are some. There's nothing that would be beneficial in smoking.
From the government's perspective, this may (or may not) be silly.
But putting that aside, if a citizen supports banning cigarettes for people born after a certain date, but not alcohol, that certainly seems hypocritical to me.
I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that they're a different degree of societal problem. I think there's quite a few people who drink on special occasions, but not every week or even every month (I'm one of them).
I think it's very rare though for a smoker to not smoke several a day. A friend of mine was that rare breed and would buy a 10 pack occasionally - usually on a Friday and it'd be gone by Monday - but that would maybe be once a month. I think every other smoker I've met though goes through that amount every day.
So it seems to me the average smoker is much more likely to become a burden on a nationalised health service than the average drinker. There's more to this of course, smoking to excess generally doesn't increase the chances of you getting into a fight like drinking does for some people, but social pressure counters that partially too.
Smoking may be a burden on the healthcare system, but the effects of alcohol are a burden to everyone due to the resulting erratic and often directly destructive behavior.
Being a burden on the healthcare system in a country that has nationalised healthcare is being a burden on everyone through increased taxes and reduced spending in areas the money could be more useful.
Those erratic behaviours you talk about are generally illegal in most countries as well with drink driving, public intoxication, assault laws etc.
Drinking does have some positives as well, pubs are one of the few third spaces we have remaining. I know there are alternatives, but there are people who won't socialise in a cafe or a book club, but will go to the pub to see the regulars. Considering lots of Western countries have loneliness epidemics I think there'd be a downside to removing that option.
Drinking does seem to lubricate social situations, weed can help with pain etc. The only upside from smoking for the individual as far as I can tell is that it fixes the problem it created from you being addicted to it i.e. you get calmer when you get your fix.
Don't forget gambling. Though given that the gambling lobby were the only donor's to Starmer's leadership campaign that out-donated the pro-Israel lobbyists, I wouldn't bet on them doing something about it. Pun intended.
Edit: just realised I posted under the wrong comment. Doh.
>But putting that aside, if a citizen supports banning cigarettes for people born after a certain date, but not alcohol, that certainly seems hypocritical to me.
Why does everyone on HN seem to have a hate boner for alcohol? The main problem there is car culture, not the alcohol.
In any case, the hypocritical part is where the UK, like many US states, has legalized marijuana for medical use and is well on its way to legalizing it for recreational use. Pipe tobacco at least smelled good. Cigarettes, not so much. But marijuana smells like a mix of stale cigarettes and body odor. AND the second hand smoke isn't just harmful, it can make you high along with the dirty smelling marijuana smoker. At least with nicotine, it sharpens your concentration. THC on the other hand makes you a lazy Cheeto eating couch potato with no future.
> Why does everyone on HN seem to have a hate boner for alcohol? The main problem there is car culture, not the alcohol.
I don't really see how car culture has anything to do with stuff like domestic violence, child abuse, or various other side-effects of alcohol culture.
As with the cars, those are not alcohol issues, they are violence issues. Whether a drunk person turns to saccharine displays of affection or destructive acts of violence is likely driven by cultural norms and the underlying conditions of their lives.[0] Blaming alcohol for violence is akin to blaming the internet for increases in fraud.
Globally, 38% of violent deaths are alcohol-related81% of male perpetrators of intimate partner violence in England and Wales test positive for alcohol at arrest
Perhaps. The viability of that aside, I would rather attempt to create that world with things like education rather than the government mandating it. That tends not to work out as intended.
There is a difference that someone smoking nearby automatically harms people around you. With alcohol, the effect is more unpredictable, but it is equally real.
Alcohol is a factor in an automobile crashes, and a factor in a significant proportion of violent crime, especially domestic violence (https://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/09/17/mark-kleiman/taxatio... edit: this source isn't as great, Kleiman has written elsewhere about the subject, but google is failing me). If we could wave a magic wand and cause drinking to cease to exist, many lives would be saved.
Note: I do in fact drink, I am not a teetotaler. But what I said above is factual. I personally believe that prohibition would be worse, and it's reasonable for individuals to make their own choices. But that does not entail denying that it goes very badly for many.
Second-hand smoke does affect people around you. It is how people get addicted to nicotine. It is how new smokers are created.
And there are some people who are more sensitive to temporary exposure to smoke (and pollution in general) than others.
That is why smoking tends to be is banned around hospitals and day care centers — because those are places where you will find those people.
My father was one of them, after he had got his larynx removed for throat cancer after having smoked for decades. He could not suffer being subjected to even small amounts of second-hand smoke again because then the breathing hole in his throat would get irritated, fill up with mucus and have to be cleaned with a suction device.
And if you drink alcohol next to me, it does not make my clothes and my hair stink so much afterwards that I will want to wash my hair and change my clothes before going to bed.
If you just ignore alcohol fueled violence, birth defects, deaths from drivers hitting people and cars and the emotional health toll to others from dealing with an alcoholic, sure.
iirc alcohol is the drug with the highest amount of 3rd party harm due to the high number of people beating their spouse, children and sometimes random strangers under the influence. (+ 3rd party property, car crashes, ...)
Keep in mind this was evaluated with current laws, which bans most kinds of indoor-smoking.
Still a good idea to ban cigarettes and force people to consume their nicotine in healthier ways.
That is, until that person gets behind the wheel or on a (motor)bike and impacts you - and with that, your health - directly.
Having said that I don't like the nanny society which acts like it knows better. People sometimes want to do stupid things and I think they should be able to do so. They should also not burden society with the consequences of their stupid actions so smokers either pay in more for health insurance or get relegated to the bottom tier - e.g. "palliative care for smoking-induced illnesses, no life-extending treatments for smoking-related diseases". No smoking where it impacts others negatively - this includes minors living in their house - but if they want to smoke where it doesn't impact others just let them do it.
> That is, until that person gets behind the wheel or on a (motor)bike and impacts you - and with that, your health - directly.
Which is something weirdly North American - it's insane how okay USians are with drinking and driving considering how Puritanical they are about drinking generally.
Are they? I have not experienced this myself. The Americans I met seemed to have the same position towards DUI as the north-western and northern Europeans I know: it is a bad idea which leads to needless accidents, injuries and death. Being a north-western European living in northern Europe I know far more of the latter two than I know Americans but, having visited the country many times for business and a few times for pleasure (north, south, east and west) I haven't met anyone who considered it 'OK' to drink and drive even though I did meet a few who did so anyway. The same is true for the Europeans I mentioned, some do get behind the wheel while they know they shouldn't.
I say this as someone who quite enjoys his drink–you haven't seen a hardcore drinking culture until you've dodged multiple projectile vomiters in SoHo at like 5PM on a random Tuesday.
I'm a bit late responding on my own sub-thread, but if you haven't seen these photos before, this is roughly what every city centre in the UK looks like after dark. https://www.maciejdakowicz.com/cardiff-after-dark/
Not Havant, though I was there to 18 and would've only had the independence to examine the nightlife for the two years in which I was doing my A-levels; not Aberystwyth as a university student, nor Plymouth city in my industrial year even though I lived here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Capitol+Students+Central+P...
Likewise, Cambridge was far too genteel for that, when I lived there.
Sheffield managed one night that would've fitted in with those pictures. When my partner and I walked past the football stadium as everyone was leaving.
There’s still a difference, surely? Drinking alcohol can lead to drunk driving and it can lead to abuse. Thankfully in the vast majority of instances it doesn’t.
Second hand smoke, however, inflicts damage the moment it’s inhaled.
I'm not saying there's no difference. I just don't that difference is as pronounced as some people think, and I don't think it excuses the apparent double standard.
Brief Googling also suggests that second-hand smoke affects at least similar levels of people as drunk driving, if not more - to say nothing of e.g. domestic violence.
Not to mention, there are already various laws designed to mitigate the effects of second-hand smoke, such as not smoking indoors or in cars with children.
Overall, I am just not convinced that it's necessary to focus so much more on cigarettes over other drugs.
> there are already various laws designed to mitigate the effects of second-hand smoke
And there are already various laws designed to prevent drunk driving and drunk domestic abuse.
I think the broader picture here is a simple one: drinking alcohol is more societally acceptable than smoking. A government is going to be reflective of its voters, “necessary” or not, a law to ban drinking would be enormously unpopular in a way a law to ban smoking would not.
> I think the broader picture here is a simple one: drinking alcohol is more societally acceptable than smoking. A government is going to be reflective of its voters, “necessary” or not, a law to ban drinking would be enormously unpopular in a way a law to ban smoking would not.
Sure, and this is why I put aside the issue of whether the government is doing the "right" thing in its position and focused on the people who it supposedly reflects - because it doesn't make sense to me that one is more acceptable than the other to an individual, and thinking so doesn't seem to reflect any sort of realistic view on alcohol and its impact on society, while holding cigarettes to a much higher standard.
There is when that person is traveling at a high rate of speed...
Look, I get that you're anti-smoking along with the rest of us but both things are bad. Drinking is bad, smoking is bad, a lot of things are bad. The question is, which of these bad things did you try out and are now stuck with? That's the real issue. Products shouldn't not be allowed to be physically addicting like that. Arguing about it on HN to a bunch of addicts is like arguing with an alcoholic on their drinking problem. It's an echo chamber or a brick wall. Someone's going to walk away with a black eye.
Is second hand smoke dangerous? Not the same way inhaling soldering fumes could be or if you ever welded, the fumes could cause damage to your lungs. It's more subtle and requires prolonged exposure.
Oh, the hysteria people get over smelling a whiff of secondhand smoke. While you walk down a street full of diesel trucks, inhaling microplastics, microwaving your food in plastic, drinking water from plastic bottles, eating processed foods with nitrates, corn sugar soaked in round-up, standing out in the sun, getting body scans and dental X-rays.
You know the only people who got lung cancer from secondhand smoke were people who worked in airplanes and bars and casinos for 20 years and were in condensed, extremely smoky environments day in and day out, right? I smoke. I understand that everything is a cumulative risk factor. The absolute crazy freak-out hysterical reaction people have to cigarette smoke versus all the things I just named is purely a product of decades of expensively paid-for indoctrination. No one in their right mind would argue that smoking doesn't cause cancer, but if you literally think you are being harmed by smelling smoke, you must surely have a problem living in this world without a filter on your face at all times, because there is a lot more poisonous shit you encounter every single day, everywhere you go - and that's if you're lucky enough not to work in a plastics factory or somewhere that makes microwave popcorn.
[edit] While I'm at it, I just want to give a shout-out to all the people I know who heat up teflon pans before cooking in them. Who would never let someone smoke in their kitchen!
> purely a product of decades of expensively paid-for indoctrination
No, it's because being around a smoker is deeply unpleasant.
I'm old enough to remember going out before the indoor smoking ban took effect. The next morning I'd step into the shower and the smell of smoke would fill the bathroom as I washed it out of my hair. I would have a sore throat. It was all absolutely disgusting and we're so much better off where we are today. I'm sorry that your vice of choice is such a gross one.
Being against things like TFA does not mean one is against things like banning indoor smoking. Just like being for alcohol doesn't mean one wants to legalize drunk driving.
> No, it's because being around a smoker is deeply unpleasant.
Being around anyone who's disrespecting your own preferences sucks. There are two useful things to do and one antisocial thing to do in that scenario.
Useful: Don't go there, or ask someone near you to be considerate.
Antisocial: Hide and wait for the government to ban people doing it, until some theoretical future day where you feel comfortable being in a public space around people who may make you uncomfortable.
I'm a very considerate smoker. I'd never smoke by someone who was bothered by it. It truly pisses me off when smokers are inconsiderate.
On the other hand, shaping other people's behavior to your liking strikes me as sociopathic. Using the government to do so strikes me as spineless. If I'm going into their happy space, to a yoga retreat or an orgy or a wedding, I have to accept that they will do lots of things I might not enjoy. The difference is that I don't have a sense of superiority because I lack their mental flaws and sociopathic addictions to whatever they believe, but they have that sense of superiority in judging mine. And only because they have safety in numbers, which makes it even more pathetic.
This is also how I feel being an all night coder. Everyone is fine with making noise during the day and waking me up, because that's "normal" and my schedule isn't. But if I feel like playing piano at 4am, that is a problem, even if the asshole next door takes out his lawnmower at 7am. This is a division between people who want to be nice to each other, and respectful, versus those who think there is a single correct way to live and that anyone deviating from it doesn't deserve equal respect.
"Live and let live" seems to have lost its currency among the hysteria of everyone who righteously disapproves of other people's behavior. Not everywhere in the world needs to be safe for someone's individual bundle of neuroses. What's unfortunate is that we can't rely on individuals respecting other individuals now, so via the government the most repressive scenario presented by the least imaginative party in each case largerly wins. Everyone who wants to ban someone else's behavior should have the opportunity to have one of their own banned as well, to understand this phenomenon. But the safety in numbers overrides this. Which is also to say that the mass of humans are conformist cowards.
Incremental change isn't a thing? Focusing on one health area, which will certainly be a massive undertaking, instead of trying to wipe out all unhealthy things at the same time?
What mechanisms do you foresee for it to fail? If stores stop selling cigarettes, the UK will have no other choice but to stop smoking them. I wonder what will come to replace them though. People have a peculiar tendency of forming addictive habits.
Regarding question 2, personally, I am uncomfortable with the idea of a nanny state.
Is weed legal in the UK? Do people still smoke it?
This might play right into the hands of bootleggers and gangs but also into the Swedish / American nicotine pouch industry which is basically marketing straight at kids.
Also - vapes. Most folks don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. How does this control vaping?
There is a big difference between weed and tobacco.
I am a fairly regular weed smoker. I used to grow my own.
I used to smoke tobacco.
I can go weeks, months and even years without smoking weed. Kicking my nicotine habit took many, many, many tries and I didn't even enjoy it!
They are not the same.
That's a different in the harm, not a difference in the effectiveness of prohibition. In fact, the more addictive the substance, the less effective I would expected prohibition to be (and the more ancillary harms to result, especially from criminalisation).
That's exactly what this is. The money has moved on to pouches and vapes.
It's like how everyone pat themselves on the back for banning child labor after the industrial revolution had rendered it obsolete outside a few niches that weren't economically important enough to put up a real fight.
Politicians "win" by pandering to voters and interests. So this is an obvious move since they can pander to all those people who grew up being told a cigarette takes a minute off your life while only pissing off some niche industry and a few smokers who are unwilling to vape.
Drinking affects others much more than smoking does, it's just that it doesn't affect random strangers. In a study of the harms of various substances, alcohol came out on top by a mile for the damage it does to the family and others close to the drinker.
I should qualify the above: it doesn't affect random strangers as often as second-hand smoke does. But drunk driving and drunk violence are a thing, and both can affect anyone.
Yikes, I don't live in the EU, but I absolutely don't want this. Maybe I'm mistaken and they could have achieved the same with removable batteries, but my phone is completely waterproof, dustproof, and has survived more than a few hard drops with no case. I would definitely take that over a replaceable battery. Again, I acknowledge they might not be mutually exclusive.
As the law is written, the latest iPhones, for example, would be compliant (battery is replaceable with commercially available tools under the self-repair program), and they are completely waterproof and dustproof. Some manufacturers now use glued seals for their phones and would probably need to change their approach in design, but I think the majority would be okay with minimal changes.
Like others have pointed out, if phones can certify using batteries with 1000 cycles of charge above 80%, they'll also be exempt, so this will likely only affect very cheap models.
With respect, maybe read the article? You're against it, because you didn't read what is being mandated and instead just invented worst-case scenarios instead. You're against your own Strawman.
The proposal is: batteries must be removable using commercially available tools, if the manufacturer requires specialist tools then they must provide them for free.
Essentially they're banning specialized tools, and mandating that repair shops and consumers must be able to purchase replacement batteries for "at least five years."
For context the iPhone was already altered to be compliant with this law and none of the issues you raised were notably worse in the iPhone Air, or 17.
This likely will eliminate specialist software to "sync" batteries, and non-standard screws/attachment mechanisms.
> The proposal is: batteries must be removable using commercially available tools
That's exactly what he's against, plus the premise "Making batteries removable prevents them from being waterproof, dustproof, and collision resistant". Which may be true or false, but not a straw man.
Thanks, and yes, exactly this. As I acknowledged in my comment, maybe phones can be made waterproof, dustproof, and dropproof while also being user serviceable. If there is a tradeoff, I'll take waterproof over user-battery-replaceable. Apparently conditionals make me a strawman...
It absolutely is a Strawman. There's no basis in fact for why using commercial tools instead of specialist tools would result in worse "waterproof, dustproof, or collision resistance." It is completely fictional claim invented whole cloth.
Again, multiple phones have already become compliant with this law and didn't lose or compromise any of those things.
So you OR they, will need to explain the basis for the claim, otherwise it is just a Strawman you're poking baselessly.
I guess the headline is what sets up the straw man -- I didn't think we were arguing about the narrower claim "all phones with replaceable batteries should be removable using commercial tools", just whether they should be replaceable at all. I still think it's reasonable to expect that mandating phones be openable would have tradeoffs in waterproofing, so your disagreement should be factual/historical, not about good faith.
N=1, but I started rowing (indoor, on an erg) an hour a day -- not hard, generally 120-140 bpm -- every day starting February 28, after rowing inconsistently for a year or more before that. My resting (not sleep) pulse has dropped by 10% over the past ~7 weeks, from 60 to 54.
General advice: citing absolute HR numbers is pretty meaningless for a broad audience, because they are not intepretable. Express them as percentages of your current max HR to be meaningful to others.
> For example, Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should've authorized the Iran War.
Did he say, "Congress should have authorized the Iran War," or did he say "Congress should have to authorize the Iran War." Those are two very different statements.
More to the point, did he say he would personally vote to authorize the Iran War? Did he say Democrats should vote to authorize the Iran War?
> More to the point, did he say he would personally vote to authorize the Iran War? Did he say Democrats should vote to authorize the Iran War?
Jeffries does not support the war with Iran; he has strongly criticized it as a "reckless war of choice". He is actively leading efforts to pass a War Powers Resolution to force the immediate cessation of hostilities.
Jeffries is about as pro-Israel as any politician gets [1][2]. He absolutely supports the war. It is a war of choice, a war of Israel's choice. And no I don't care about any huffing and puffing about the War Powers Resolution. He knows it's not passing. When a bill isn't going to pass, you're free to propose anything you want.
A lot of people here are saying this will never replace human creativity. It's difficult to know ahead of time which things AI (or more broadly, technology) will succeed at and which it will (for now) fail at. So it's good that people are trying to apply AI to everything: some things will fail, but some we expect will fail will not, and if we had followed our intuition we wouldn't have tried and never would have succeeded.
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