this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.

Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Using the litter aspects of cigarettes as a reason to curb smoking has always been a tough one for me. Say someone quits smoking and takes up vaping. Now we have introduced plastic waste & to an extent e-waste in the form of batteries in the disposable vapes.

I don't have an answer to it but I have at least thought about how there is no 100% environmentally friendly alternative outside of smoking straight tobacco leaf in rolling papers.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The "disposable" vapes are a different issue that needs to be tackled. I'm pretty sure that a meaningful deposit (5 or 10 euros) and the obligation for every seller to accept returns would solve the problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It works for beer cans!

In my part of the US, we hardly ever see beer or soda containers in litter. We do see liquor bottles, wine bottles, and sports-drink bottles as litter. Guess which drink containers have a deposit and cash redemption and which don't?

The "bottle bill" works. It creates incentives for all sorts of people, from frugal homeowners to homeless folks, to collect and return containers. Applying it to other products that show up in litter would just make sense, especially dangerous ones like vape batteries or cartridges.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I mean smoking itself isn't environmentally friendly. You're taking all the nicotine and smashing it with oxygen, producing lots of carbon particulates including CO2 and CO - greenhouse gases. Yes, it's only a tiny amount, but you don't get that with vaping. With vaping you just extract whole molecules, rather than breaking things down, at least as long as the temperature is properly controlled.

A good vape should have next to no waste. The vape itself should not be disposable, and batteries should last a year minimum even with heavy use. That just leaves whatever container you get your liquid in, which wouldn't be hard to recycle. Alternatively you could use a dry herb vape, along with pipe tobacco - but if we're honest if you have a dry herb vape you're probably not putting tobacco in it. You're going to put in things like lavender and thyme, of course.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can always ban disposable vapes? Requiring anyone that wants to vape to carry around those massive refillable batteries would do wonders to discourage people picking up the habit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There are refillable vapes that aren't that size. Though you do throw away the coil/juice container.

Haven't seen one of em biguns in a while.