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[Doomblade187]

There's nothing nice about ramping up the drug war, again.

There is a balance between the war on drugs and letting tobacco companies sell to youth via pervasive marketing. While I would prefer a marketing ban, raising the min. age isn't the war on drugs in if itself.

Holy shit, yes it fucking is. The only reason this is less harmful than all the shit that goes down with alcohol in high schools and colleges, which gets people killed constantly, is that tobacco is a less harmful drug overall. This will be used to destroy the lives of young people and increase police brutality, mostly on children.

And this thread is even worse for my health than either, because all the government has to do is listen to their PR people when doing something and I find you all in here fawning over it!

MSH, you know damn well my stances are more aligned with yours than the gov's. I am anti-corporate abuse in this case. Not pro drug-war.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This isn't doing anything to the corporations. They don't give a shit what the age limit is, because it doesn't stop anybody. It's trivial to subvert and always has been.

But there's nothing trivial about cops beating on kids, robbing them, cavity searching them in high school offices. This is a drug war policy, plain on its face, and it's beyond frustrating to see you all just going along with it.

That isn't good enough. If you want a different ethos than police state bullshit you have to believe it, even when it's not a problem with an easy solution.

[Doomblade187]

Well, it should be noted that cigarettes are already prohibited from high schools. Hence, this shouldn't significantly modify the existing abuse of police violence against students, especially minority students. Your point is valid, yes.

[Dunamisdeos]

I did some googling and easily found a lot of examples of students being strip searched or cavity searched for nonexistent drugs against their will while at school. I will straight up admit that I would be hard-pressed not to beat the perpetrator of these acts to a quivering pulp before I knew what I was doing if someone did that to my kid. That is a serious problem.
 
Oddly most of the ones I found are in NY. Not sure what that's about.
 
I still don't really see where this modified law will affect that situation in any practical sense. I also don't really see how restricting sales on cigarettes is contributing in any way to that situation. It's meant to stop illegal sales of cigarettes to kids, and doesn't have anything to do with police policy in regards to minors caught with them. It should be illegal to sell addictive substances to kids.
 
What would be a better policy in this case? Is there different legislature that would better prevent the use of cigarettes by minors?

[McTraveller]

You can't legislate that sort of thing really - the best thing you can do if you don't want kids to do something, is not to tell them not to do it but to just not do it as an example.

One thing I'm learning by watching my young kids is that actions really do speak louder than words to them - they copy what you do, not listen to what you say.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah I can certainly second that in regards to kids.

So would the alternative be to simply not legislate the sale of cigarettes to children? I feel like that would be much worse, but then how do you restrict the sale of addictive substances to kids while also not giving the police/school staff/whoever the kind of excuse they need to engage in brutality/horrifically invasive searches?

Maybe the best option would be to focus on the police brutality problem rather then the addictive substance sale problem?

[Trekkin]

Maybe the best option would be to focus on the police brutality problem rather then the addictive substance sale problem?

In a larger sense, certainly, but we do run into an issue with scope creep here where eventually only the wholesale adoption of luxury gay space communism en bloc will do because anything less falls short of someone's policy ideal. The causes of police brutality are larger than police brutality, etc.

There are alternatives where nothing the kids do is a crime but there are still legal tools for stopping the flow of cigarettes to children, but they aren't really worth mentioning.

[Frumple]

So far as we're aware, this legislation will pretty certainly work even with minimal enforcement, especially if it's the retailers targeted for punishment rather than users or purchasers (and as near as I can tell, the actual change seems explicitly aimed at retailers, so whatever fucked up shit schools do in response is them being fucked up rather than the law change demanding anything) The age bump has already been attempted on a state level in a few places (and by that i mean apparently like 19 states or somethin') and it demonstrably works for reducing the rate of addiction among youth (from what I understand mostly by making it harder for high schoolers to get a hold of).

So far as I'm aware, though, both alcohol and tobacco are largely divorced from most of the varying atrocities cops inflict on our youth. Presumably the penalties aren't as fucked up so there's not the same incentive to use those particular substances as a lever for abuse, I'unno.

[Egan_BW]

Well, guess we'll just have to all adopt luxury gay space communism then~

[Greiger]

As a retail worker that sells cigarettes, last night when I refused the sale of cigarettes to someone who was 19 or 20 according to their ID they did threaten to just rob the store of them next time they visit.  I don't think they actually will, but there is the new risk of the ages between 18 and 20 who already are addicted committing crimes to get their fix they were allowed to get addicted to but then got taken away.

Even without things like that I bet theres going to be a new prevalence of fake IDs going around.  Don't get me wrong I like the idea of raising the minimum age, but wouldn't the minimum age being increased every year until it's 21 be a bit better?  Older folks I discussed this with at work said that's what happened with alcohol.  Kinda grandfathering in folks who were of age before the law changed so those kind of things would not happen.

[Dunamisdeos]

Well, guess we'll just have to all adopt luxury gay space communism then~

Hail to our Eternal President Gay_Minority_Lenin.EXE. May her next self-patch remove human extermination bug 002034.

[Iduno]

Yeah I can certainly second that in regards to kids.

So would the alternative be to simply not legislate the sale of cigarettes to children? I feel like that would be much worse, but then how do you restrict the sale of addictive substances to kids while also not giving the police/school staff/whoever the kind of excuse they need to engage in brutality/horrifically invasive searches?

Maybe the best option would be to focus on the police brutality problem rather then the addictive substance sale problem?

Fewer police, especially in areas where they're known to abuse (around women, children, and non-whites). I was going to post an example of a local officer who earned the nickname "Officer Slam" for regularly picking children up and throwing them to the ground/walls/desks, but I got too many results to refine it. It's been a few months, so stories of police beating the shit out of children have buried the story I was looking for.

Tobacco, as bad as it is, is just another excuse for police to do what they love.

[McTraveller]

he ages between 18 and 20 who already are addicted committing crimes to get their fix they were allowed to get addicted to but then got taken away.

Yeah this is just an implementation flaw. I think we need laws that state that whenever a statutory limit changes to a more limiting scheme, you are grandfathered in if you were previously allowed.

Similarly, there needs to be a law that financial-based laws cannot have hard thresholds but rather smooth transitions instead.  That is, get rid of things like "companies with 49 or fewer employees are exempt from X, but at 50 employees or more those companies must do X" - this causes companies to suddenly incur a huge marginal cost with that 50th employee.  Same thing for things like health benefits - "if you work less than X hours a week you don't need to provide benefits, but as soon as X+1, full benefits are required", causes companies to put a hard stop at X hours.  We need laws that say Y hours is full benefits, up to X hours is OK for no benefits, but between X and Y hours you have to prorate the benefits."

[Max™]

So uh... is it just me or is this like... the most deranged looking crowd you've ever seen?


I mean, what the fuck is wrong with America?

[Kagus]

They want the T.