Canada

Shit policy idea. Banning things never works. Please see all of history as evidence.

Increase taxes on nicotine ten-fold if it's so important. Use taxes in part to ensure that the amount of smokes that fall off the back of trucks doesn't spike. That's about as good as you're gonna get to influence anyone who's addicted.

I like the idea of nobody smoking, but any policy like this probably needs to be coupled with some kind of enforcement. Half or more of cigarette sales are already illegal:

Illegal cigarette sales could comprise up to 67 per cent of Ontario's total tobacco market, 45 per cent in B.C. and 44 per cent in Newfoundland.

Maybe nicotine addiction should be medicalized.

Anyone born after [date] could get it legally through a pharmacy after talking to their doctor/nurse-practitioner and explaining why they need a prescription (ie they are addicted and can't function without it).

I actually like that framing. I'm imagining explaining it to my 5 year old:

What's that person doing?

They took the wrong medicine and now they have to take that medicine everyday. It's yucky, expensive, and very hard on their body.

Why did they take the wrong medicine?

They didn't realize it was medicine and they thought it looked interesting or fun, I'm not sure exactly. You know not to take medicine without talking to mum, dad, or a doctor right?

Yeah sure let's go back to banning drugs.

I feel like as a country, we should be pragmatic more broadly. Not just about tobacco, but about anything a person could enjoy, extending to the black market. Determine the things that people will consume no matter what the taxation, social, or regulatory structures are. Quantify the costs of the consumption of those things openly and honestly, and create systems to build those costs into the price of the thing consumed.

I think we're running aground on that right now, because federal & provincial tax on enjoyable things is set at a rate that isn't indexed to the costs incurred by the enjoyment of those things.

Personally I enjoy Nicotine, and I would like to know that the price I pay for it is fair to the base of taxpayers who fund our healthcare system. It doesn't stop at Nicotine though, of course.

On the one hand I respect personal choice but on the other hand I feel like this is definitely something that should be done (or the recommended idea from undercrush's comment of extremely high taxes on the products to disincentivize use) because the public healthcare system is definitely spending too much time and effort dealing with the ramifications of peoples decisions to continue to hurt themselves.

Yes, quitting sucks, I was at like a pack a day before 16, ended up going cold turkey around 24 and although the first few months suck with the odd craving for the next year or two, it's not that bad. If push comes to shove, changing smokes to sugar free gum would be a vast improvement.

Although a few friends have tried that 'fum' thing and said they succeeded in quitting but I haven't personally tried that. There's a wide variety of ways to beat the addiction these days and if everyone is contributing to a national money pool for everyones health then at the very least we need to do the minimum amount of effort to try to be healthy so as to not overburden the system and collapse it.

... especially when canada keeps losing billions of dollars to corporate tax fraud. Fucken CRA is trash at everything.

This kind of law cannot be tolerated. Not even if the goal is admirable.

'Legal for you, forever' but 'forever illegal for your children' is blatantly not the same thing as 'you must be eighteen.' It's inequality. It's generational discrimination. It is a separate set of laws, based on the circumstances of your birth, without any fig-leaf for safety, ability, or intellect.