At the risk of starting a struggle sesh: If China did this, it would be praised here.
Doubtful. Drug prohibition is viewed pretty negatively across the entire left nowadays.
Even if Tobacco smoking is awful and should be reduced to a minimum, criminalizing it and hitting people with fines or even jail time for smoking cigs is yikes no matter which government does it.
I'm cool with a country that went through a century of humiliation and opium wars having shit to work through regarding drugs.
I've seen other "nanny state" stuff get support here, and the site sometimes overcompensates in defending China, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say those factors would equal a non-insignificant percentage of people here going "well, it's okay when China does it, I'm sure they have their reasons".
No one is gonna go to jail or be fined for smoking cigarettes.
Capitalists building a profit-making enterprise out of selling cigarettes - maybe.
I don't think many in the left have a problem with prohibition per se, but the implementation of it must be actually good. The implementation of prohibition most of the time however is usually just an attempt to imprison people in for-profit prisons without doing anything at all to address the material conditions creating the drug use.
Prohibition that isn't criminal but sends people into programs that also act as a signal for wider issues with societal conditions in an area could be effective. You need to do it without ruining lives further than they already may be suffering though.
yeah im sure my life is gonna be totally fine when im mandated to attend a program for smoking fuckin cigarettes lol
Your life isn't but the state can use it as a signal for issues in your area of residence that needs to be addressed.
With a state that actually gives a fuck this would result in changes being applied to the conditions that brought about your problems.
This comment is nothing but bait. What answer are you expecting exactly? NZ is not an AES but it is possible for some small amount of good to happen anywhere in the world regardless.
Government policy can be used for good, it all depends on implementation. This article is nothing but a copy paste of this previous article.
Maybe we need some native NZers here to tell us what the left is thinking but it seems the only ones complaining are right wingers and libertarians with the usual "but mah small business owners" and "but but big government supposed to be bad!11!".
I can understand why some people react negatively too, we are accustomed to being doomers, everything sucks or everything promising will eventually prove to be shit.
I understand and sympathize with the struggle with addiction and I hope NZ is prepared to help people quit like one of the other proposals mentioned is gradualy reducing nicotine.
But at the same time I have to say is that the pandemic should have already proven that only decisive government action actualy changes the world and if NZ is finaly doing it then good for them. I'd say the same thing if it was alcohol too. Spending another 50 years arguing among the """"""left"""""" about whether or not it is actualy good or shitty to forcibly stop people from ruining their bodies is another 50 years of people losing their family and friends to shitty capitalism induced preventable diseases.
At the same time you can rest assured you wont have to think too much about this because there is zero chance places like the US could ever even consider an actualy good public health policy anyway so.
China is worthy of uncritical support, everything they do is good.
This might actually work. Tobacco is hard to grow. So it would be on smuggling to supply it. I dunno if tobacco is the kinda drug that would stand to support a black martket .
Tobacco kinda just sucks as a drug though. It isn't like weed where it is pleasant and mostly harmless. Like, even heroin has a strong use case if we'd regulate it properly.
With the exception of it being useful for managing schizophrenia does it offer anyone any real benefit?
I dunno if tobacco is the kinda drug that would stand to support a black martket .
In the US at least there's long been cigarette smuggling operations by organized crime to buy up a bunch of cartons in states with low tobacco taxes and then break them up into individual packs or loose cigarettes for sale in states with high taxes.
With the exception of it being useful for managing schizophrenia does it offer anyone any real benefit?
Whether someone finds nicotine/the other psychoactive chemicals in tobacco relaxing or pleasant seems to be a highly individualized thing, like how some people find the high from weed to be pleasant and for other people it feels like a hangover and sleep deprivation all rolled into one shitty package. That said, tobacco basically just gets used poorly to self-medicate undiagnosed and untreated anxiety and depression in the people it actually has an effect on, and would probably be better replaced with full, free access to actual treatment.
In the US it takes a U-haul and if they find you holding there is a good chance they won't know you have hot cigs.
Slightly more hard work to boat en enough to justify the expense
If people smoked cannabis in the way that they smoked tobacco, cannabis is absolutely not pleasant and mostly harmless, and I say that as someone who smokes daily. 90% of the "problems" with tobacco are based around people burning a cigarette constantly like they did a generation ago vs weed smokers maybe having a gram a day as heavy users. With vapes and dabs and legalization, you're gonna see cannabis have pretty much the same health problems show up as tobacco, and the same public health pants-wetters will ban weed again.
I have seen a kid almost die from hitting a dab too hard and burning his lungs. Blew my goddamn mind they turned weed into an actual hard drug.
Jesus its not a "hard drug" because some dumbass roasted himself
Dabbing is a hard drug. Weed is fine, at the point you are playing with a blowtorch and hot glass a line has been crossed
Tf is this boomer "it looks scary so I hate it" mentality. For fucks sake you dont even heat up glass, that is how little you know about this.
You didnt even take shit that matters like physical/mental side effects, addiction, withdrawal, or anything else into consideration, just blowtorch scary. If i hit a dab with a self heating nectar collector, is it no longer "hard"?
Do better
It is a qualitatively diffrent experience.
If you took a random nomie off the street you would feel comfotable havibg them hit a joint right? Of course, maybe you tell them to take it slow but it will be fine.
My claim is that you could not in good faith give a random normie with no experience with it a dab. similar to how you would not have them eat a brownie. Without skill and preperation they are just going to have a bad time and possibly get hurt.
...So your qualifying mechanic for if a drug is "hard" or not is if a total fuckin rando can do it and "handle it"?
lmfao WHAT
...i dont think the term "hard" with liquor is interchangeable when talking about "hard" drugs. Id say anything that has significant physical/mental side effects with prolonged use, or a damaging way method of delivery would qualify as a "hard" drug. You know most randos can eat some weak opiates/other prescriptions and feel totally fine, a lot of them do, and drive on that shit lol. does that make xanax and hydrocodone "soft"
Yes, objectively some eating a bar is safer and likely to be in a better place than someone who drank too much.
fam if you think eating an edible is "harder" than taking xanax i really do not know what to tell you lmao
Have you ever hit a dab? It's legitimately a smoother experience than smoking a blunt/joint because it's just the good stuff.
Only reason you use a blowtorch is because you can't burn wax (unless you put it in a joint). There are vape pens designed to smoke it that work basically identically to regular vapes too.
I got no tolerance. I would green the fuck out if I hit a dab. Least wise I would definitely not be in a safe state to handle a torch.
You can control the size of a dab, and this is coming from someone who greens out with edibles and joints.
It’s legitimately a smoother experience than smoking a blunt/joint
Lmfao, no, it's not. It's way hotter and has a weird taste unlike a joint or bowl which is just "weed smoke". The dab pens are less reliable and less smooth than flower vapes as well.
You have way more control over your high, a small dab is easier to smoke then a whole joint. The effect is faster and you have the ability to maintain a high without also inhaling an insane amount of smoke.
My mileage definitely varies in this case, but it's amazing that we have so many choices now!
Yeah but by that logic edibles are hard drugs too and I definitely wouldn't agree with that
Considering (legal low dose) edibles are the first drug I ever tried, including alcohol, I would disagree. I don't know what the common definition of hard drug is but to me it means one that has some level of toxicity or otherwise physical danger to it. If you smoke or eat too much weed the worst thing that happens is you'll have a panic attack and feel really shitty, but it won't physically hurt you
Jesus. I took 5mg at a time a few times and got basically nothing (worth noting I was like 250 lbs at the time) so I actually gave up for like a year before giving it a shot again this year and I'm glad I did
I would still say the odds of an unprelared person doing that well and having agood time are low enough it should be considered under a seperate level of precautions as just chuffing a doink.
I think you're also assuming that the edible would be a really high dose, in which case would downing an entire bottle of vodka at once be considered a hard drug too? The only difference I see is that eating a brownie with a lot more weed than expected is easier than drinking a bunch of alcohol if you don't like the taste...
It is difficult to controll dosege without special skills. Similar you just don't give people hard alcohol without checking. You can give anyone a beer and it's cool.
You say vodka, specifically that we call hard liquor.
Dabs, and edibles are hard weed
Fair enough about the "hard liquor" point, but I still feel like if there's not a significant risk of physical harm it shouldn't really be considered a hard drug (though the person in this thread who got ill from a tiny edible may be a counterpoint to that so ¯_(ツ)_/¯)
Booze is a hard drug cause if you drink too much you can throw up and you get a headache the next day. Most people don't like headaches or vomitting, normies can't handle that.
Yes, I would much rather people smoke than drink. Never seen a stones guy wrap his car around a telephone pole. Seen a drunk guy do it.
Weed is safer and healthier than alcohol. I watched a man drown in his own blood from long term alcoholism. Known plenty of heavy smokers with only the most mild side effects
Would casu marzu be considered a hard food then since a normie would probably hurl at the sight or taste of it?
Wtf lmaooo that's such bullshit
It all depends on the dosage. I've had edibles that feel like nothing and others that hit hard.
Obviously if someone inexperienced is making the stuff they're going to mess it up most likely and make the dosage too high, but that can apply to anything
Nah, you really can't fuck up a joint so bad you end up in a hospital.
A plate of brownies can send an entire slumber party in though. And people instinctively think it is safer cause nom nom.
Yes you can. Any amount of weed sends some people I know into a serious panic attack that they need sedation for.
Ironically dabs are less bad for you, easier to take, and much more controllable. A properly sized dab would unironically be way better for the average non-smoker. Your definition of “hard drug” is silly.
Yes, thats why you have safety proceduces in place so you don't burn your self or set shit on fire.
I dunno if tobacco is the kinda drug that would stand to support a black martket .
This will probably work for New Zealand. It wouldn't work for anywhere that isn't an island though, not without widespread simultaneous adoption.
Given that vaping and other nicotine products will remain legal, I doubt there will be much of an unregulated market.
I love that for some reason the fire on the Australia emoji is huge unlike all the other ones
nicotine addiction does not give relief.
I want to counter argue this with adhd. When I quit smoking I discovered I have adhd and my issues with it went through the roof, it turns out I was unknowingly self medicating with cigarettes for concentration.
Not a defence of the drug for the record. It's fucking expensive and kills a massive number of people, but I am absolutely certain that stopping smoking fucked me up.
This law doesn’t restrict vapes, so I am 1000000% fully behind this. Cigarettes are dumb and kill so many fucking people, and this law still gives them another much safer option to get nicotine. Everywhere should do this, fuck cigarettes. And because of that it’ll almost certainly be really effective too. No one is gonna bother smuggling cigs to an island far from everything when they have a safe legal alternative available.
As someone who admittedly vapes like a goddamn chimney, I can agree with this position.
Yeah, I love my pipe tobacco but I would gladly give it up without a fight if it was due to all tobacco being banned. Big tobacco companies are incredibly evil.
That said, this will never happen in the US because muh states' rights and also we love our treats and love dying.
The libs are going to try to ban anything that gives ordinary people any modicum of relief or pleasure, aren't they
I wish I never started smoking it was one of the worst decisions of my life. I'm fine with this
Here's another wrinkle: After adjusting for age, gender and ethnic differences, adults living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas were 4.5 times as likely to be current smokers as adults in the least deprived areas
Smoking is also the highest among the native Maori and Pacific Islander populations.
[source:]
hell yeah, as long as vapes remain legal I'm on board, nz vape naysh
I feel like this is them banning an outdated and (for them) culturally irrelevant drug delivery method that drives significant health risks - inhaling combusted plant matter.
Nicotine is the active ingredient and doesn’t cause most of the issues associated with smoking, and can have a lot of benefits as a stimulant. To my knowledge vapes still have issues with lung damage, but gum and patches are alternatives too.
Nicotine on its own can still cause cardiovascular problems long term I think, but the harm is relatively small and literally every drug, whether used for pleasure or medicine, is associated with something bad, and it’s about level of risk vs benefit. My Prilosec can kidney damage long term but it’ll stop me from getting esophageal cancer and also let’s me not be uncomfortable 24/7.
Itt: china bait, shitposting, and someone who has never done drugs before desperately trying to appear like they have
:meow-popcorn:
Xi's law: the longer discussion goes, the more likely someone will blame China for something.
