I think it was the prime minister (or spokesperson) who made this very clever argument: (paraphrasing) “we are not taking away choice… cigarettes are designed to inherently take away your choice by trapping you in an addiction.”
I’m not picking sides here, just pointing out a great piece of rhetoric to spin the policy as taking away something that takes away your choice. Effectively putting forward the idea that you don’t have choice to begin with.
(sorry to say this rhetoric was not mentioned in the linked article; I just heard it on BBC World Service)
I can kinda support raising the ages for drugs, alcohol and tobacco to 19, 21 or even 25. Major human brain development is still ongoing until about 25. Or perhaps restricting the quantity they can buy.
We already see car rental companies restricting rentals to those ages and insurance companies having higher risk premiums.
And I would also put limits on things like gambling and credit card debt for those ages. And yes, stop student loans in totality.
But the idea that we are going to ban 30 and 40 year olds from consuming cigarettes is just laughable.
There was some research finding that people who use psychedelic mushrooms are made more psychologically flexible (open minded) for the rest of their life. But the caveat is that the permanent open mindedness effect only happens if the shrooms are consumed before age 35 – presumably precisely because the brain still has significant neuroplasticity.
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I consumed more LSD than one could fathom from ~16-21. Maybe that’s why I’m onboard with so many of the things younger people care about at my age. It’s an interesting idea.