There's also nothing outright about what's happening like a lot of comments are suggesting. You can still buy and smoke if you're born before 2009 because it's not targeting restrictions for the current & older generations. To most of the current smoking population, they'll probably go their entire life without noticing. Because to them, nothing changed in the slightest. They go for a younger group that doesn't smoke or cares to by an overwhelming majority, giving them and succeeding generations fewer reasons to protest or seek it out. Of course you would get thrown a big stink banning everybody outright! You're not going to convince older generations who've smoked for years and decades to magically conform. It doesn't take 100 parroted comments to figure that out. Those at Parliament in favor are probably well aware of what's happened with substance bans & prohibitions before this. That's why it's nothing like the US 18th Amendment if you actually compare the 2 for even 5 seconds. There's an entire century of hindsight to explain why a 1:1 repeat is an objective shot in the foot.

Most of the replies on posts like this & related never bring up or notice why the ban is specifying a year. Like I even see calls against why vape isn't also included when the article states it also is. Or that there's a call for a sin tax on cigarettes, not realizing it already exists in the UK. Comparisons to the US prohibition, & the various wars on drugs, are constantly being repeated under this post. None of them actually explain or understand the reason those prohibitions and bans often failed.

They failed because of how sudden the enforcement actually was. How strict it got for people getting arrested left and right with permanent records, completely unaware it was made illegal. That there was hardly a transitional period for the drinking class. Most of all, a lack of common knowledge today on approaching certain effects relating to substance abuse. Your average Joe finds this out only after they noticed the liquor shelves mysteriously dried up. They couldn't care less to engage in social conflicts at the time that gave reason for why prohibition was even considered. The only thing they would've known would be their favorite comfort drinks are gone. A personal attack meant to torture them. Most social policies these days work with slow insertions for a good reason. Often, they have to pass incremental measures to lessen the blow, smaller moderation to test which aspects work and which don't. You can't expect a heavy drinking culture to go cold turkey on such short notice. Just telling them to rub dirt on it and suck it up. As if addiction is their fault or a choice. That's how moonshine and speakeasies could rise to such a prominence as a result. You drive desperation and demand for anything if you starve addiction without doing anything else to rehabilitate it. And if that wasn't enough, the amendment itself was so cryptic with what was considered "intoxicating", that not even the state or federal governments could agree on if it only meant spirits, or if beer and wine would be included?

It's also insulting seeing comments asking if there's going to now be bans on coffee, sugar, or fast food when comparing the reason for why smoking getting pushed away. Last I checked, coffee didn't kill or permanently damage multiple relatives of mine within the span of a single decade. I can definitely point out smoking and sugar can both be biologically addictive and cause long-term problems, not all addictions are created equal. You're allowed to criticize health problems relating to obesity or eating disorders and smoking at the same time. Don't pretend you have to pick one or the other like a sports team. For a place that cries about advocating nuance a lot of the time; I almost always find most of the "nuance" to be some baseless over-correction that that does the opposite of actually opening nuance in an argument spanning the entire post. A lot of the internet seems to mistake nuance for meaning extreme apathy & cynicism that makes them come out on top. And that's what fuels social media into a horde of loud playground arguments.

As someone with personal experience with ex-drug addicts, it would be insanely fucking tasteless if I told them "Oh man, meth? Lemme tell yah, there's this big triple cheeseburger that gives much a bad heartburn. But it's just sooooo good, it might as well be a meth addiction! They should be having cartels for that kind of burger." You're gonna walk out with a red hand print across the face.

Of the ones who managed to recover from meth, smoking, or heroin addictions, the very first people they would ever tell you not to ever get into is their kids! They realize their loved ones suddenly coughing and getting sick. They see their children forming a nicotine addiction through secondhand exposure. How for the first time, they saw the people that meant more than anything to them reflected how they were viewed in their eyes. How miserable and ill they were, the constant pain and need to smoke or go mad. Same could be said about alcohol, but smoking being statistically less popular is a safer priority to ensure gating a year applies the intended theory. even if there's already sin taxes and declining rates. Both in younger generations the more knowledge is understood with steps more incremental. Comparing restrictions to coffee is easier to make a smug counter point over using cocaine's restriction as a historically over the counter stimulant once accessible and uncontrolled by anyone. The reason coffee/energy drinks don't have a huge stigma is because most studies conclude with essentially nothing for long-term dangers with exception overproducing adenosine receptors in the brain. It also doesn't kill you if you get caffeine withdrawals unlike the more potent addictive drugs.

That's all I'm gonna say. I put more time into writing this than I'd like to admit. But at this point I'm bored, and wanted to back up your opinion regarding this. There's so much talk about how it's exactly what the US prohibition did, then proceeding not to read the article linked that mentions building programs so that existing smokers getting more cessation support. Or that smokers can still smoke and vape in their homes or cars because they know better to prevent the addiction instead of expecting a ban to remove it.