Finland embarks on plan that will ban all smoking

[snusjus]

[i]Finland plans to completely abolish smoking, starting with a ban on displaying tobacco products and smoking in cars carrying minors.

Finnish State Secretary Ilkka Oksala said the new laws were the start of a move to get rid of tobacco “once and for all."

Although several European countries now ban smoking in public buildings, including restaurants and pubs, Finland would be the first country to adopt a total ban.

New Zealand’s Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) director Ben Youdan said the same approach was needed here.

“We need to set a clear deadline to get rid of smoking and remind ourselves this is an urgent health priority. The Maori affairs Select Committee inquiry into tobacco is our chance to call for that deadline,” he said.

Submissions to the committee are due by January 29, 2010, and the committee will then report back to Parliament.

He said New Zealand needed to set its sights on making the country tobacco free by 2020.

“The tobacco industry needs to be held to account and it looks like Finland intends to do exactly that.”[i]
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/finland-embarks-plan-will-ban-all-smoking-117181
Yikes. It seem America is headed in the same direction, along with the rest of Europe.

[lxskllr]

Well that's no good. I wonder what makes them think adults need another set parents?

[GoVegan]

I think America is way past that point already. In California it is already illegal to smoke in a car with a minor (not a bad law IMO) and to smoke in many places outside like in certain parking lots (plain stupid IMO). We would have banned smoking a long time ago if it wasn't for the tax revenue they like to siphon from smokes.

[snusjus]

I think America is way past that point already. In California it is already illegal to smoke in a car with a minor (not a bad law IMO) and to smoke in many places outside like in certain parking lots (plain stupid IMO). We would have banned smoking a long time ago if it wasn't for the tax revenue they like to siphon from smokes.

I heard there is a city in Northern California were all cigarette smoking is banned, whether it be in the privacy of your own home or in the middle of a nowhere. Is that true?

[aj01]

Sh*t or get off the pot

America should have banned cigarettes ages ago, but it can't cut itself off the teet of taxes from 45m consumers, and purports, on a state level, to use increased excise taxes to fund health initiatives for kids. So, if I stop smoking, the kids get less money. If I don't, the cost of curing my emphysema becomes a burden on the state. Why not allocate the increased tax revenue to treat dying smokers? Just like a tax refund! Won't fly.

Finland will fail dismally if it imposes a ban. It's a northern country with a population partially stuck in darkness and snow half the year. They have typically high alcoholism, smoking and suicide rates. Their current snus consumption, all illegal, is 20m cans per year, the same as Norway. Banning cigarettes will create a full-on black market supplied mostly out of Estonia (low prices, too), and will increase smoking rates dramatically. When smoking is fully banned, age restrictions mean nothing, so young people are at increased risk. If they introduced snus legally, they could do what Sweden and Norway have done and seriously decrease smoking, and get taxes off the snus their retailers sell.

[sgreger1]

When will people learn, you can't ban anything. I mean they can't even ban heroin and crack cocaine here, how could they ever ban cigs?

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it?
-Harlon Carter

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-C. S. Lewis

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.
-Justice Casey Percell

I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights.
-Abraham Lincoln

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
-Winston Churchill

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
-H.L. Mencken

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.
-Jacob Hornberger (1995)

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
-Thomas B. Reed (1886)

[Roo]

Smoking in public is illegal in Turkmenistan.

[Snusify]

Smoking trade on the black market would thrive and then the Finish government would just loose out on revenue.

I would wager tax on cigarettes makes more money than they spend in the health costs of treating smoking related illnesses.

They should also relax the tax on importing snus.