UK to ban tobacco smoking completely, citing "socialized medicine" as the reason

Joined
Aug 31, 2007
Messages
117,545
Was that empire really worth it? Who is this wog presuming to rule the British people?

ETA - Told you so.

ETA 2 - Makes one wonder what hidden benefits there may be to tobacco use, when you have totalitarian governments working so hard to ban it.

ETA 3 - Adolph Hitler was a literal "anti smoking Nazi"


UK Announced New Zealand Style Plan to Ban Smoking Altogether

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/20...zealand-style-plan-to-ban-smoking-altogether/

OLIVER JJ LANE 4 Oct 2023

The United Kingdom is to phase out smoking altogether, the government says, by banning young people from buying cigarettes at all with a minimum age to buy rising from 18 every year until there isn’t anyone left alive old enough to enjoy the habit.

Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his intention to steer the UK towards becoming tobacco-free by increasing the minimum age to buy products every year from here on, so the teenagers of today will never be old enough to legally take the habit up. Sunak acknowledged restricting personal freedoms was not always an easy choice for an instinctive Conservative but — underlining the way government decisions are driven by socialised healthcare — said it was important because smokers cost taxpayers through needing more hospital care.

This is about “preventative care” to keep people out of hospitals, the Prime Minister said and told his governing party’s annual conference that: “I propose that in future, we raise the smoking age by one year every year. That means a 14-year-old today will never legally be sold a cigarette, and that they and their generation can grow up smoke-free”.

This would work, Sunak said, because the UK’s previous experience with increasing the smoking age from 16 to 18 saw a drop in the number of people starting smoking. The Prime Minister said he would also look at cracking down on ‘vapes’, the electronic tobacco alternative.

A report explaining the system as already implemented in New Zealand, which is becoming known for its draconian health interventions, stated in 2022:

The law states that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009 – and from now on, the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep going up and up.

In theory, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old. But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.

New Zealand also took other measures in its law shakeup, including making getting hold of cigarettes more difficult for those who could legally use them. They are no longer sold in regular stores, but can only be bought at specialist tobacconists, cutting the number of locations where smokes are sold nationwide from thousands of locations to hundreds.
 
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his intention to steer the UK towards becoming tobacco-free by increasing the minimum age to buy products every year [...]

LMAO - he's literally doing the Malice quote:

"Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit." -- Michael Malice

Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his intention to steer the UK towards becoming tobacco-free by increasing the minimum age to buy products every year from here on, so the teenagers of today will never be old enough to legally take the habit up. Sunak acknowledged restricting personal freedoms was not always an easy choice for an instinctive Conservative [...]

Rish Sunak: "I' m not a conservative ('instinctive' or otherwise) - I just play one on TV."

[...] underlining the way government decisions are driven by socialised healthcare [...]

Governments do not make decisions. Individual people do.

And if the decisions of Rish Sunak, et al. are "driven by socialised healthcare", then it is because Rish Sunak, et al. are socialists.

The Prime Minister said he would also look at cracking down on ‘vapes’, the electronic tobacco alternative.

Of course he'll "look" at it - because none of this has anything to do with achieving "health care", but everything to do with flexing control and inculcating submissiveness to arbitrary edicts.
 
When you have no principles or value of freedom, there is no argument against central government doing things like this for the "greater good".

(I also see nothing about him citing "socialized medicine". Breitbart is doing their job as conservative herders, but don't let them distract you. This is not about socialized medicine forcing statists to take away your freedom. This is about statists taking away freedom because there is no strong opposition to it.)
 
We invented Medicare to drive up health care costs. Now you need socialized medicine.

[the following week...]

We give you socialized medicine. Now your body belongs to the government whether you ever go to a doctor or not.
 
(I also see nothing about him citing "socialized medicine". Breitbart is doing their job as conservative herders, but don't let them distract you. This is not about socialized medicine forcing statists to take away your freedom.

These are Sunik's direct quotes from his Manchester speech to the UK Conservative Party, on which the story was based:


For a Conservative, measures that restrict choice are never easy.

But to ease the more fundamental burden of demand on the NHS, we need more preventative care to stop people having to go to hospital in the first place.

We must tackle the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability, and death and that is smoking.

Smoking places huge pressures on the NHS and costs our country £17 billion a year.


This is about statists taking away freedom because there is no strong opposition to it.

You won't get an argument from me over that however.

There is no doubt that is the case...especially in the UK.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top