this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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I agree that smoking is bad for you, having quit myself - but the idea of outlawing a plant / prohibiting humans who just happened to be born in one specific part of the world from burning it and inhaling the produced smoke just goes against my views on ethics.
Instead, why don't we fix the real problems? How about getting rid of capitalism, and thus the profit incentive to sell addictive substances for a huge markup? How about we fix this broken society that keeps pushing more and more people towards drugs such as nicotine, the tiny escape, and the little bit of stress relief they provide?
Drugs, from cigarettes to meth, are not the problem..
They're just a symptom.
The war on drugs is nothing more than an effort to sweep the real problems under the rug, and nothing less than coordinated violence targeted at people who are already suffering.
Fuck this.
Going to the doctor in mind melting pain and he says I have a broken leg and it requires an operation and I say great in the meantime can you give me something for this pain and he says no that's just a symptom. Except here the pain is a ton of innocent kids being consigned to an early grave for the stock of tobacco companies.
How on earth is proscribing cigarettes for kids who are thankfully not yet addicted to them coordinated violence aimed at the suffering? Completely rubbish, cigarette-brained take.
Yeah I completely agree, cigarettes are a symptom, but when the actual cute is a long hard road, treating symptoms is a totally reasonable course.
Also, cigarettes don't provide an escape from reality, they only provide an escape for nicotine cravings. Literally the only reason to smoke is because you have to (or you're dumb and curious), it doesn't get you high or anything like that
The problem with your analogy though is that the doctor does have plans to actually help the problem too. It takes more time and effort to set up all the things needed to properly heal a bone, so in the mean time they try to help alleviate the symptoms in the mean time. The system' in place has no plans to actually address the real issues, so it's more like the doctor sent you out the door with painkillers and calls that good enough. Creating laws that attempt to curb cigarette habits might be worth pursuing if paired with actual legislation to handle the causes that drive people to their use.
Also, to me, it is worth looking at some of the other reasons people are draw to smoking. Tobacco companies pour tons of money into methods of encouraging smoking and vaping, with it being well know that some of this is targeted at young people. To be honest, and some may find this a bit of a stretch, I sometimes feel that these laws are a sort of collective societal victim blaming more then a benefit.
As another point, and I don't know if you know this, but banning something does not necessarily curb it's use (see alcohol prohibition in the US in the early 20th century). If anything prohibition just deregulates it, making it more dangerous for those who still continue to participate.