Item — HN Reader

What about vaping? if it is still OK, then it is not just the drug (nicotine) they are worried about, but the health effects.

Ok then, next ban alcohol please, then junk food. Are these less of a public health issue? I suppose they are just still socially more accepted, that is all. Isn’t this what laws are anyway, social constructs?

2 comments

Cigarettes are bad for your lung health over and above the presence of nicotine.

Of course ! you are not following my argument. I guess I crammed it too much.

I’m having trouble parsing this. Are you arguing doing this for the health reasons is bad versus just a dislike of nicotine itself?

I'm saying:

if you are banning cigarettes because of their addictive effects. Then you should ban every nicotine-based product.

If you are banning cigarettes because of their health effects, then why not regulate other similarly devastating products?

Then I reasoned that law can only do what is socially accepted. Banning cigarette is socially accepted, so they decided to do it.

In the end, it is about social acceptability first, not just addiction or health effects.

Well yes of course. Social acceptability is in fact super important for doing anything in a democracy. Women voting, gay marriage, are other examples of things which at one point were not socially acceptable, even though they violated the stated goals of liberal democracy, but eventually and over time became social acceptable and ingrained into law. This is just how it works.

> Social acceptability is in fact super important

Yes, It is. The issue is that this acceptability is more often the result of propaganda (in the general sense of influencing public opinion.) than scientific/logical diligent public discourse.

Yeah, I know. As you already said too, "This is just how it works."

I mean, if we're talking about propaganda, we probably need to include decades of the tobacco industry pushing it in movies, advertisements, denial (including under oath in Congress) of the health impacts, etc.

We do. The problem is that tobacco is often singled out. It is the easy target. What about the food industry ? [1] (yes again.)

We need to attack other harmful products with a proportional acharnement to that we applied to tobacco. That was my first aim in all this (downvoted) affair.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/sugar/big-fat-lies-sugar-p...

Couldn't the ban reasonably be about the combined set of factors?

It's addictive, very damaging to health, and highly negative socially, in a way that vaping and alcohol don't match.

Ok that is a better argument.

vaping? I agree.

Alcohol? less so. it is debatable, but I’m not an expert, so I will leave the details for someone else.

Junk food? This is the underrated one. In 100 years (I hope earlier), I bet this will be the first on the list

> If you are banning cigarettes because of their health effects, then why not regulate other similarly devastating products?

Or processes? Like maybe incomplete burning of stuff. Wood smoke from campfire is quite similar to tobacco smoke. And has quite the same carcinogenic effects. Maybe banning campfires would make sense and same applies to poorly burning fireplaces.

Exactly ! I was referring to alcohol and junk food, but your point is even more related to cigarettes. The smoke, or course.

And now that I think about it, isn’t "pollution" in general a kind of smoke too? We are certainly not doing enough on this issue too.