There’s a huge black market for tobacco products here in Australia and it’s completely legal, simply having the tax on it so high has led to massive smuggling operations, black market cigarettes in many convenience stores, and a fire bombing epidemic of those same convenience stores for carrying competitors black market cigs. It doesn’t even need to be illegal. Just too expensive.

1930s didnt have overwhelming evidence that smoking was stupid, addictive, and disastrously dangerous to your health.

Smoking doesnt produce the same euphoria and consistency of drugs on the current blackarket. The juice wont be worth the squeeze. Financially, there wont be enough “consumers” for a cigarette black market.

That must explain the reason for having the “T” in ATF then.

Sure, but a lot has changed since then, and while that totally could happen, I’m doubting it’ll be widespread in any way.

I think it might be different nowadays. We know now that smoking causes cancer. Also the world is in color, which makes not smoking more enjoyable.

Outright bans never work with vices.

It can’t be taken 1:1. Vices being banned in the past was typically because they provided pleasure in lieu of productivity, not some external reason. Therefore making those bans inherently tyrannical to habitual users and certain non-users, incentivizing disobedience.

But this time, it’s being banned for a group that’s not habitually using already, meaning extraordinary reasons would require them to become habitual in the first place. And smoking is typically not very pleasant at the start to begin with, so there’s little incentive to start. And, unlike in the past, it’s no longer cool or uncontroversial to smoke. And of course there’s the knowledge that it will give you cancer and cut your lifespan.

There’s just not much vice left, so even if 1% slips through the cracks with an underground market, there isn’t the room for growth that sustains or spreads an illegal market like for eg. recreational drugs, which is why those bans need to be enforced to perfection to work, which is why they never work.

There are so many ways for people to harm themselves that we don’t need to ban because they come with severe risk to the person, so they self regulate. The only reason smoking needs that ban is because of how widespread smoking was, and so even if way less people start smoking than before, that’s still way too many people. A ban just needs to be successful at getting far less people to start, not absolutely halt every single usage, and eventually it will fade from culture on it’s own.

OMG so many dead people from radiator gin.

Maybe at first, yeah. But in 50 years, when almost nobody under 60 smokes and it’s prohibited everywhere, who would go out of their way to start this particular habit?

As a lifelong smoker, one of the hardest hurdle to quitting is going out, having a couple of drinks, then seeing other people smoke and resisting the urge to go buy an easily available pack.

Exactly.

Who is this fantasy person who told you anyone is going to criminalize people for buying cigarettes?

It’s incredibly clear if you bothered to read the article, that the retailer selling cigarettes to someone under the permitted age will recieve a fine. No one is going to prison for this. It will not be a criminal offence. The buyer won’t even face any consequenses, except maybe having their smokes confiscated.

Right, but the idea is that most people under 18 haven’t already started smoking because it’s illegal and inconvenient. So you just keep that ball rolling for anyone who hasn’t started.

Like a ladder that is being constantly pulled up.

Same reason people in the UK think cocaine is safer then cannabis, public stigma.

I think a lot of it is because pharmacies and doctors didn’t want this thrust upon them.

This was an amendment to a really shitty vape ban bill which blew the whole black market up further than it was. The whole thing should never have been passed.

Lucky country policy

Vapes don’t produce smoke but vapor, i.e. nothing “burns”. And inhaling smoke is by far the most harmful aspect of using cigarettes.

Not saying nicotine or vaping is harmless, but I’d be very surprised if vaping turns out to be as dangerous as smoking.

The unhealthiness of the chemicals in cigarette smoke is not subtle. I would be surprised if the vapes turned out to be just as unhealthy.

unnatural addictive chemicals

Using “unnatural” as the main adjective to argue for something being unhealthy is a huge red flag for pseudoscience. Unnatural is not a synonym for dangerous.

As an example, the 100% natural chemicals in even ecologically grown cigarettes are perfectly capable of being extremely dangerous.

100. People downvoting in their feels, but you aren’t wrong.

Exactly!

I’m not sure about the oils, but the cadmium and lead aren’t great.

I mean, I do not think they will, just that that would be less bad.

But having to use a shitty black market for cigarettes every day would surely motivate most of them to try to learn to love the vape.

The black market would then only be supported by irredeemable vape haters. Who got hooked on cigarettes while never in their life being able to buy them legally. Which doesn’t seem like a big market to me - so might not be big enough to be profitable.

That’s because it doesn’t stink and it’s harmless

Vape odors make me want to fucking puke

be fair, you also got the failure part wrong too.

Hmm the biggest problem with it there was that a new government suddenly overturned it despite not having campaigned on the issue at all.

I don’t know if you can take lessons from such a random act.

The article seems to imply the cause was the industry lobby. But really, what could be done differently? If that was indeed the cause, it will be applied to any kind of anti-smoking measure.