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Comment by mcthro | Hacker News Reader

I understand that menthol cigarettes are more attractive because they make smoking more pleasant. I also understand they can be more dangerous, because part of being more pleasant is inhaling being more comfortable[0], so one might take bigger drags and/or hold them longer.

As someone trying to quit (menthols particularly), I can see this move helping some (and I also see it incredibly frustrating for anyone not looking to quit, though they should be!). Part of my difficulty in quitting is how widely available smokes are - in my day to day life, they're only ever 5 minutes away, and that ease of access is a huge barrier in staying smoke-free. I've tried the non-menthols in my brand and I can't stand them. Banning menthols solves the availability problem (for me), and while I disagree with it ideologically, it's hard to argue with it practicality.

[0] https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/8xdx7k/are-menthol-ciga...

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Have you tried cytisine (Tabex brand in Europe)? On the contrary to some other nicotine replacements, it seems to take the enjoyment of nicotine away, so you only get the bad taste from a smoke, which made a lot easier to quit for me.

I quit by using swedish snus; it gave me my nicotine fix, broke all of the habits that had accumulated over 20 years, and was not cool or fun. Quitting snus cold turkey was an order of magnitude easier than quitting cigarettes cold turkey had ever been; it was the same week and a half of frustration with the world, but none of the not knowing what to do with my hands or how to concentrate or how to have a stressful conversation.

Which is more practical? Tackling your lack of self discipline and perhaps growing as a person, or appealing for the government to punish the sellers of the product you enjoy?

What kind of cost does society bear because of smoking?

Since we share finite resources like insurance pools and the medical system, there's a case for society to restrict the actions of others.

Maybe we should force them to exercise too? Or perhaps we should take a vote on what is definitively healthy and restrict the public's diet to pre-approved items? If China has social credits, maybe the west needs government enforced health credits?

As it is, FDA bureaucrats are appointed, not elected.

What are the costs of deferring individuals' choices to a mob's vote or to the whims of appointed bureaucrats?

Advocates of centrally planned societies will always point to the purported benefits of their authoritarian models.

At what point is the individual responsible for his own health? If we absolve the individual of all personal responsibility and replace it with a set of all encompassing dictates - What does it mean to be a free human being in such a society? How would this differ from being property of the state?

Watch out for that slippery slope, the first step is a doozy!

But its not wrong, hes just arguing poorly. Explain to me why I should not have ultimate control of what I do with my body?

Imagine you're a farmer with a bunch of free-range chickens.

Your responsibility is to make sure they all live long, healthy, happy, and free.

There's a poisonous plant that sticks through the fence in a corner of the range. You tell all the chickens to stay away, that it will make them sick and kill them, but every year about 10-15% of them eat it anyway, and you're constantly dealing with the illness and death it causes. And you can't tear out the plant, because it's not growing on your property, it's just coming through the fence.

The problem, is that the plant didn't get there on it's own. A pack of wolves planted it, and at night they plaster the side of the coop with flyers saying how smooth and cool the plant is. But when you try to tear down the posters, or cut back the plant, all the libertarian chickens come out and yell about individual freedoms.

Humans aren't rational actors. We're emotional creatures of habit who are highly susceptible to advertising. If anything, we shouldn't ban the item in question, we should just make it really expensive, and disallow any forms of advertising. That means besides no TV, no magazines, no billboards, no visible smoking anywhere in media, not visible on shelves on any store anywhere, etc.

If we take away tobacco companies' power to emotionally manipulate humans, maybe not as many people will choose to throw their health away.

You're joined by Akerlof & Shiller when you claim:

>Humans aren't rational actors. We're emotional creatures of habit who are highly susceptible to advertising

Adbusters would agree with your claim that:

>we should just make it really expensive, and disallow any forms of advertising. That means besides no TV, no magazines, no billboards, no visible smoking anywhere in media, not visible on shelves on any store anywhere, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Phishing-Phools-Economics-Manipulatio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Athedailybell.com+adbu...

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amises.org+shiller

https://www.google.com/search?q=nobel+prize+in+economics+fak...

Your comparison of a farmer owning chickens for profit/consumption to a government benevolently lording over citizens is illustrative. For the sake of being explicit, I don't think humans should be regarded as chattel. If you find this an apt comparison, we may have to agree to disagree. Thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Reducto ad absurdum only works if the next steps are inevitable and follow logically (an example would be something like a mathematical proof using proof-by-contradiction). The slippery slope fallacy is a case where you use some theoretically possible extreme end-point to justify why the current proposal is unacceptable.

Are you arguing that having health credits in the USA and legally mandated exercise is the only logical next step after banning menthol cigarettes? If you aren't, then you aren't using reducto ad absurdum. If you are, then it's trivial to disprove (in Australia, snuff has been illegal to sell since the late 1980s and we don't have "health credits" today -- many other substances bad for your health were made illegal in the US and you don't have "health credits" today).

I have not suggested that health credits are the inevitable conclusion of banning any tobacco product.

I have posed a specific set of questions about the logic of prohibiting products for heath purposes. You have chosen to tilt by snark & technicality instead of answering these questions.

If we accept that the government (or a group of bureaucrats) knows what is best for the health of divers individuals, then why not?

If we accept that 30 minutes of exercise is good for health and that it is appropriate to compel individuals into healthy choices, then why not?

If we accept that two parallel lines will never intersect, then why should air traffic controllers worry?

It is plain and obvious where this logic leads. Claiming a slippery slope is a dodge imho.

First of all, you didn't originally pose a specific set of questions. You just outlined a nightmare scenario with rhetorical questions.

To your point here, "then why not" isn't an example of a logical deduction.

You're also intentionally ignoring that the discussion here is the banning of a subset of products that we know for certain cause many incredibly serious health problems and is one of the leading causes of premature death in many countries around the world. Smoking is bad for everyone, so making decisions on a "divers[sic] set of individuals" is completely reasonable -- unless you're arguing that smoking is good for some peoples' health?

I agree that if the government (for instance) started banning high-fat foods that there would be reason to say that this is overstepping the mark. But that's not what's happening.

> and that it is appropriate to compel individuals into healthy choices

That's not what's happening.

> If we accept that two parallel lines will never intersect, then why should air traffic controllers worry?

Not only is this a non-sequitur, it's also an awful example of a logical deduction and actually undermines your other examples of "reasonable" questions.

Many would say drinking is bad for everyone. Extreme sports can be dangerous as well. Individuals make their own choices and trade-offs in regards to their quality of life. We have no more right to collectively compel individuals not to smoke, than we do to make them walk 30 minutes a day, stop drinking, never perform bicycle stunts above 5m, abstain from free climbing, or moderate their bacon intake. In my view, this is the strictly logical interpretation.

A little levity in the form of a non-sequitur never hurt anyone.

If you endeavored to answer the questions I posed in good faith, you would have found that I am not predicting some nightmare 1984 scenario at the ski chalet. The answers are obvious and pedestrian. Principles are inevitably dismissed in the name of practicality and pragmatism. This is the reality of governance. This is "why not".

You admit as much when you speak of high fat foods. From where I stand, it is nothing more than an arbitrary hand wave. It is especially ironic after so many nitpicks (which I do not accept :P ) about the nature of argumentative logic.

From this point forward it is strictly subjective sausage making.

The US has found prohibition to be an untenable policy. As I understand, taxes on cigarettes in Australia make the price something like $20-$25 a pack. So how much for a truck load? How much does it cost to counterfeit? It is already happening in the US.

The US has had black markets for cigarettes for 50+ years. Increasing taxes and prohibiting products does not work. It only serves to dilute what little regulatory power the state does have. Eventually people stop caring and say: "Everything fun is illegal anyways", "Returning to prison is inevitable", "My lawyer knows how to fix this", or "What could be more righteous than shirking authority while profiting from my oppression?".

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/divers

By and large, smokers die faster than non smokers, and at an earlier age. This saves costs in health care, pension funds, and social security.

There is a lot of downside to smoking, but the shared burden is not it.

Smokers take more sick leave and they live for a long time with disability before they die.

Personal attacks are not allowed here. We ban accounts that do this, so please review the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again, regardless of how right you are or superior you feel.

Edit: it looks like you've been posting a lot of unsubstantive comments to HN, as well as a lot of ideological comments. Both of those things are against the guidelines as well. If you'd please use the site as intended instead, we'd be grateful.

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