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Yeah, kids should be able to wander into bookies and place bets as they please. Let's let them buy cigarettes too while we're at it.

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I don't know, maybe I'm an old fart, but I hadn't held a sum of money large enough to buy a pack of cigarettes until I turned 16.

I presume my parent knew what they were doing, so, yeah, nanny state.

Regulating gambling is not "nanny state", esp in relation to kids. Your personal experience as a kid, about whether you had money or not, is completely irrelevant as an argument.

Not at all. My experience in this case indicates that there is a correct behavioural pattern which avoids the issue entirely and requires zero government's intervention.

But if you insist on having a regulation, okay, I'm fine with it. What about the following regulation: each time a minor is found gambling or smoking, his/her parents are fined 100x times the stake/the price of cigarettes?

So now you've made it impossible to actually stop a child from smoking. They're free to smoke as much as they want, because it's the parents that get punished, not them. And regardless of who gets punished, the fact remains, they can go to the store and buy cigarettes.

You really think not being given money by parents is going to stop kids from accessing smokes?

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