A Massachusetts town that adopted an unusual ordinance banning the sale of tobacco to anyone born in the 21st century is being looked at as a possible model for other cities and towns hoping to further clamp down on cigarettes and other tobacco products.
  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    01·
    8 months ago

    Because those aren’t substances which people want to use

    They clearly are, as we’d been using them prior to the enacted ban for decades.

    I thought I made it quite clear we’re talking about prohibitions of substances, not bans on toxic paints.

    Do you believe paint isn’t a substance? FFS, have you ever heard of huffing paint?

    To pretend you don’t understand the difference

    This isn’t a question of pretending. This is a question of economic incentive to do trade and the impacts regulation/prohibition has on those incentives.

    REGULATION =/= PROHIBITION.

    Both increase the cost of transactions for the purpose of discouraging certain forms of trade by assigning bureaucratic hurdles and civil penalties with legal transactions. A regulation on gasoline that prohibits including lead in the formula is both a REGULATION and a PROHIBITION.

    Are you on heroin, currently?

    Analysts say the opioid epidemic started with the overprescription of legal pain medications in the 1990s, but it has intensified in recent years due to influxes of cheap heroin, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids supplied by foreign drug cartels. The crisis has become a scourge on the economy, a threat to national security, and a major foreign policy challenge.

    This was the root of the problem. Prohibiting reckless prescription of opioids in the 1990s would have averted the crisis in its infancy.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 months ago

      They clearly are, as we’d been using them prior to the enacted ban for decades.

      Would you stop being this childish? Do you not understand what “using a substance to facilitate an altered state” means?

      Unless you plan to argue that people were eating paint to get high, these semantical shenanigans will get you nowhere.

      “haven’t you heard of huffing paint”

      You apparently don’t actually know what it means to “huff paint”. The lead and the paint isn’t what you’re after. It’s the volatile solvents used, which will vanish when the paint dries. Do you know when “huffing paint” became a thing? When prohibitions were tried. People will get to their altered state, no matter what you try to do to stop them.

      Prohibiting reckless prescription of opioids in the 1990s would have averted the crisis in its infancy.

      I repeat, are you on heroin currently? Because the US isn’t the only country in the world, and prohibition of psychoactive substances (since you’re anally, pedantically, and utterly childishly still pretending not to understand what the context of this conversation is) has never worked, anywhere

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        01·
        8 months ago

        Would you stop being this childish?

        My guy, I’m laying out historical facts and your response only ever seems to be name calling.

        Unless you plan to argue that people were eating paint to get high

        There’s quite literally a name for it - Pica. And lead paint, which is sweet because it contains lead, is a common substance people with pica would consume.

        You apparently don’t actually know what it means to “huff paint”.

        The incentives to include lead in paint, to enhance the color, and in gasoline, to prevent engine knocking, have existed for decades. Exposure can be recreational, but it can also simply be by way of chronic exposure. Nevertheless, there are economic incentives for including lead in the product in both cases. And the prohibition overrode that incentive.

        Because the US isn’t the only country in the world, and prohibition of psychoactive substances (since you’re anally, pedantically, and utterly childishly still pretending not to understand what the context of this conversation is) has never worked

        It has successfully deterred the sale and consumption of a variety of psychoactive substances, ranging from LCD to oxytocin, by eliminating them from drug retailers’ shelves.