I see smoking as a separate category owing to the existence of second hand smoke. Smoking in a room with other people adversely affects those people. I think government is the correct body to be intervening in that scenario.

Smoking is already banned in public spaces and workplaces. It's pretty rare to be in a room with someone smoking unless they're friends or family.

No indoor smoking makes a major difference, but there still are enough semi-stationary semi-close-up situations where smokers can be still rather annoying, e.g. outdoor seating in cafes and restaurants, popular lunch break spots in parks and plazas, public transport stops, next-door neighbours… And even if you manage to position yourself upwind of all pre-existing smokers, there's no guarantee that a few minutes later somebody upwind of you suddenly won't light up…

> Smoking is already banned in public spaces

In what countries? Certainly none I've heard of.

Smokers are incredibly obnoxious. Smoking at a bus stop? Why not? Under open windows? Sure. On sidewalks, so that I have to breathe that stuff in when behind them? Sure.

What's that? Smoking at bus stops is banned? No problem — just move 5m away and smoke all you want, the wind carrying the smoke towards the bus stop all the same :)

And such laws are not realistically enforceable anyway.

I think health costs are the bigger issue

Yes, this is one of the reasons there is resistance to socialized health care. People view it as opening the door to the government controlling what they due due to health care costs.

Sure, I dislike smoking, I really don't drink that much either.

But then it leads to questions such as; What about birth defects? What about extreme sports(risk of permanent injury)?

There was a scandal in Canada recently about veterans asking for medical care and being push to assisted suicide: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... >MacAulay walked the committee through what his department knew, thus far, saying the first case that came to light occurred last summer where the caseworker repeatedly pushed the notion of MAID to an unnamed veteran who had called seeking help with post-traumatic stress.

IMO they should just charge a premium for smoking that about covers the expense overall

Solving it with money doesn't really solve it unless there's "real" competition.

Look at automotive insurance points systems. People have to buy it so the sellers lean on the legislatures and before you know it a ticket costs the same points and screws you out of just as much money as an actual accident.

That seems appropriate. A small fraction of people cause most of the losses, they should pay more.

>That seems appropriate. A small fraction of people cause most of the losses, they should pay more.

Surely that was a satirical comment and was meant to be an illustrative example of exactly the sort of mindset that runs political cover for a system as it pivots from providing enough value to become entrenched to using that entrenched position to behave in an extractive manner.

In my state if grandma gets pulled over for an out of date inspection sticker it's the same number of points as actually causing an accident. Someone is being fleeced.

I have zero faith that letting the government choose at the behest of industry who ought to pay more for healthcare that it wouldn't devolve into the same exact sort of exercise in finding a reason to charge everyone more.

I’ve never seen having an expired tag be a points violation, that seems very wrong. IME it’s only ever moving violations that impact safety. For that, higher rates are absolutely appropriate.

Safety inspection. It's a moving violation in this state (of course it wasn't initially, frogs are best boiled slow). That's the magic of it. Frame it as a "safety" issue and everyone who can't think critically about how that sausage might be made will knee jerk approve.

If I was an auto insurer, I would want to know that my policy holders were properly maintaining their vehicles. I would also have a strong interest in ensuring that non-policy holders did the same.

And as a driver, I certainly want everyone around me to be required to properly maintain their cars.

I'm not gonna let the goal posts move here. That still doesn't make it a moving violation on par with driving like a dick and/or causing an accident.

What you're saying seems to make sense on face value but in reality letting insurance leverage safety inspections is just a politically less thorny wealth proxy. The inspections themselves don't provide all that much value (IMO this is because of how comprehensive they are, 90/10 rule and all that) and multiple states have ended their programs because they don't actually provide meaningful improvement for the money.

Regardless, even if there is somme hand wavy justification for it that some people agree with, it's flawed to the point it's probably not something we want to do with medical because it would make insurance unaffordable for so many people on flimsy at best pretexts.

Cigarettes are usually sold at an increased tax rate already.

In the UK taxes on tobacco earn more than the (socialised) healthcare financial cost of smoking. So this argument is a fallacy.

I don’t think the argument as a whole is a fallacy, it’s true that the exact cost to the NHS is more than covered by tax, but most estimates of wider cost to the economy (e.g. lost productivity, disability benefits, etc) is higher. https://fullfact.org/health/farage-smoking-revenue-nhs/

It's equally a fallacious argument to try to fit "cost to the economy", whatever that means, to the healthcare cost (usually this is done to inflate costs to fit the narrative). By that logic, ban everything and allow only what allows individuals to maximise their productive labour... what a nightmare.

Drinking in a room adversely affects those people.

Not directly. I can sit in a room full of drunk people and my health will be unaffected, but a single smoker will cause me active harm.

That's not a separate category, that's the general principle in a free society: There is a limit to "doing what you want" when it impacts others/imposes on them.

That's why smoking is already heavily regulated in order to limit and minimise the impact that your choice has on others.

I think you could make the same argument about alcohol and drugs (road fatalities + some absurd number of convicted criminals were high/drunk when perpetrating the crime) - I’m not taking a side either way but I don’t think smoking is unique in terms of harm to society there besides the user.

The same argument is made and accepted about alcohol: You can drink as much as you want but you cannot put others in danger by drink driving.

You can smoke as much as you want but smoking in public places, especially indoor, is banned not to impose your health choices on others.

This is how liberty works in a free society as mentioned in my previous comment.

Banning smoking altogether, on the other hand, is deciding for you and exactly what the "nanny state" refers to.

On reddit, not so long ago, they were inventing interesting theories about how seat belt laws were justified because without seat belts people would be ejected from cars and kill by standards when their flying carcasses cannonballed through them.

The claim that "it impacts others" is, at very minimum, exaggerated, but just as often completely fabricated out of pseudoscience and absurd movie plots.

Smoking is heavily regulated because there was a resurgence of teetotaling in the late 20th century.

Remember when seat belt laws came out in the United States, they (at least in the states I was in) vehemently promised up and down that it would always be a secondary offense and never would be allowed to become a reason to pull you over?

I agree that having other people smoking nearby can be unpleasant, but you might find some comfort in Sir Richard Doll's opinion on second hand smoke - that the risks were politically and publicly exaggerated beyond what the epidemiological evidence clearly supported.

Personally - aside from the smell - I have no concerns about people smoking near me outdoors or even in very well ventilated areas. I understand though that for some people (such as asthmatics) it can be a real problem that goes beyond simply being unpleasant.

in the UK you cannot smoke on public transport or inside buildings, and this is strictly adhered to.

In fact one of the most important fire disasters in England, the Kings Cross fire started because nicotine addicts used to light up on their way out of the tube (which had already prohibited smoking, it's kinda crazy to imagine people in the 1970s used to smoke on the fucking underground railway, deep under the ground where you are unavoidably breathing the same air as everybody else)

Somebody probably drops a spent match, it's still smouldering and it drops inside the escalator where it finds plenty of fuel and begins a fire. From there you mostly just need bad luck - yes the staff could be better trained, but even when they do summon professionals the firefighters don't arrive in time to tackle it while it's still small, the then-unknown trench effect allows the hot gases to pool and initiate flash over suddenly, a bunch of people die.