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https://theconversation.com/tobacco-is-still-one-of-the-worlds-top-killers-here-are-the-key-obstacles-to-enacting-generational-smoking-bans-278018>
"Smoking is really bad for you. Most people know that. Even smokers think
smoking is bad for one’s health. But most people don’t know just how bad it is.
More people in the United States die every year from smoking than from alcohol,
illegal drug use, car accidents, suicides and murders combined. Cigarette
smoking costs an estimated US$240 billion annually in health care costs, which
harm not only smokers but also nonsmokers, communities and the economy. Smoking
is the top preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S. and worldwide.
The number of smokers in the U.S. has declined from 41% in 1944 to 11% in 2024.
However, over 25 million Americans still smoke.
This drop is partly the result of many smoking laws enacted in the past 50
years. They include national bans on cigarette advertising on television and
radio (1971), smoking on commercial flights (2000), sale of fruit- or
candy-flavored cigarettes (2009), and sale of cigarettes to people ages 18 to
20 (2019). New policies might seem as strange or unfamiliar as these measures
did at the time.
One potentially transformative idea – creating a tobacco-free generation –
would build on these past laws. It would phase out smoking by banning it
permanently for anyone born after a specific date. For example, a law could
make it illegal for anyone under 21 to ever buy cigarettes, whereas people age
21 or older at the time would not be affected. The focus would be on tobacco
sales, which already require age verification in the U.S., not on criminalizing
tobacco use.
As a psychological scientist, I have studied for decades how people think about
smoking. In my view, the key obstacle to creating future generations of
nonsmokers is that people do not fully understand how dangerous smoking is and
do not realize the formidable influence of the tobacco industry."
Via Clarice Boomshakala.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
