this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
93 points (97.9% liked)

United Kingdom

4094 readers
126 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This is about smoking tobacco

Not exclusively. Please re-read the article and then familiarise yourself with the bill, particularly the following excerpts are relevant:

From the government: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/smoking-ban-introduced-to-protect-children-and-most-vulnerable

Subject to consultation, the government is considering extending restrictions in places that are currently smoke free to also become vape free, especially in areas where there are children and young adults.

(Emphasis mine)

This may sound reasonable, but surely the issue of e.g. a child vaping outside of a school is covered by the fact they shouldn't be vaping as a child anywhere, and thus would either have the vape confiscated by parents taking them home or school staff? Is it currently a large problem of adults vaping outside of schools? Who would do this specifically? Such regulation placed on adults seems just unnecessary.

Unless of course: it's not actually about the children as it tends to be with Murdoch newspaper moral panic-steered policy and is instead a much broader attack on vaping as a culture war issue, which is supported by the broad far less "reasonable" powers granted by this bill as per below:

This sits alongside a ban in the Bill on vape advertising and sponsorship, as well as powers to restrict the flavours, display and packaging of all types of vapes, as well as other nicotine products.

As you can see, your statement

Disposable vapes will be banned. That’s it.

Is flat-out untrue. This is by far not the extent of it clearly.

If I cared to speculate I'd say this is an attempt to win back the elderly vote after the winter fuel payments turned off a lot of those voters.

Probably you do so because you got your fodder in the Murdoch papers and just need to regurgitate your breakfast. Judging by the lingo.

I'm really very sorry, and I do not want to embarrass you, but it appears you're referring to yourself there. It's okay. No one is immune to propaganda and we cannot all dive deep on all topics all the time.

[–] bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It’s all about the language I guess. Fucking off the nanny state or sensing a culture war against vapes, really?, is the language currently used by the aforementioned press.

It seems the government is going to consult about extending a vape ban, while the disposable ban and the smoking ban is what is coming now.

Vaping used to be a cool thing for quitting cigs, but it’s become a zombie and is making a lot of kids addicted to nicotine.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

sensing a culture war against vapes, really?

Isn't there? Every time someone dies who happened to also vape the first to report is the Daily Heil and The Sun etc, then follow the Tory establishment mouthpieces who shy away less and less from culture war shite as long as they dress it up all nice for Surrey wine moms.

It's almost as if the old business like Murdoch and Philip Morris interests are playing you to hate vaping so they can get it banned and win back marketshare from the shenzen vape/gadget mega industry that absolutely obliterated them.

It's almost as if the people in charge of these have read a history book once and know prohibition of drugs - including nicotine - doesn't work and they want to corner a market which is still a ton of money.

And it's almost as if the disposable grift from the shenzen slop factories gave them the perfect storm to jump on this due to bad optics (stickers on bins) and you're a pawn caught in-between, forced to abandon all reason and even a pretense of objectivity, driven to a steaming fervour about things that have zero impact on your life to push for illiberal restrictive authoritarian policies restricting the freedoms of some unknown "others".

If you could just realize this, instead of defending conglomerates on your free time, then maybe we'd be in a better world right now. I hope it makes some sense.

It seems the government is going to consult about extending a vape ban

Yes, this bill gives them the power to do so, which in itself signals intention fairly well when you add onto it the specificity of other restrictions mentioned (packaging, flavour) and the existence of the new vape tax alongside it.

but it’s become a zombie and is making a lot of kids addicted to nicotine.

Yeah this goes without saying - don't smoke, kids. Don't vape, either. Even if it's harmless it's a waste of money and while I like it most people wish they never started.

That also however doesn't mean that adults shouldn't get the option of vaping without the morality police peeking in.