• Dae@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    Surprised to see no one has said cigarettes yet. Not only are you poisoning yourself, it’s harmful to everyone else around you that has to inhale that shit.

  • p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    People are allowed to make their own decisions. Heroin should be legalized. /s

    This thread: what do you think should be illegal, but isn’t?

    Me: Answers, as asked

    Everyone: how dare >=(

  • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
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    3 months ago

    Smoking. Millions of euros of taxpayer money spent every year on those lung cancer patients which could be well spent elsewhere. It’s also an activity that negatively affects not just the smoker but everyone around them.

    • Kanzar@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      The tax on cigarettes is so high, it’s been claimed they pay more into the system than they claim out, as they die too soon. 🫣 (In Australia)

        • Kanzar@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Haha I had to go digging.

          So it is mentioned in an Australian page about the costs of Tobacco in Australia:

          https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17-2-the-costs-of-smoking#17.2.6

          A report commissioned by the tobacco company Philip Morris, when the Czech government proposed raising cigarettes taxes in 1999, concluded that the effect of smoking on the public finance balance in the Czech Republic in 1999 was positive, an estimated net benefit of 5,815 million CZK (Czech koruny), or about US$298 million. 77 The analysis included taxes on tobacco, and health care and pension savings because of smokers’ premature death, as economic benefits of smoking, and these benefits exceeded the negative financial effects of smoking, such as increased health care costs. The report created a furore; public health advocates found the explicit assumption that premature death is beneficial morally repugnant. The controversy was described by the journalist Chana Joffe-Walt on the radio program This American Life,78 and was reported in the British Medical Journal.79 According to This American Life, Philip Morris distanced itself from the report in response to the controversy, banning its employees from citing the findings. In fact, the report’s claim that smoking was beneficial relies on its inclusion of taxes as a benefit, not any savings due to smokers’ premature deaths80 Costs associated with smoking while the smoker was still alive totalled 15,647 million CZK, 13 times more than the ‘benefits’ associated with early death. The net benefit reported in the analysis arose because the tobacco tax revenue of 20,269 million CZK was regarded as a benefit. As detailed in Section 17.1.1, taxes are not an economic cost (or benefit); they are a transfer payment. The recipient (the government) gets richer, while the taxpayer gets poorer.

          So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.

          • otp@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.

            …in a study funded by a tobacco company.

      • Dave.@aussie.zone
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        3 months ago

        Australian here, in Finland. Holy shit it seems everyone smokes like chimneys here.

        Never really thought about how much smoking has declined in Aus over the last 20-40 years, but yeah coming over here had been an eye opener.

        • Kanzar@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Seems to be a Europe thing, or really a rest of the world thing. It’s very rare to smell cigarettes, particularly after vaping took off.

          • Bye@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            In my country there was like 10 wonderful years when almost nobody smoked.

            In the last 5-10 years all that got reversed by vaping, it’s everywhere now. Not as bad as smoking though.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        At least her in Germany this is apparently still not true as smokers in particular add a huge cost to the healthcare system due to the long-term and repeated damage. For example, once they get parts of their feet amputated from clogged arteries, most actually continue to smoke (“Ah well now it’s too late anyways”), and hence will get half a dozen such amputations over time.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Smoking is something I truly despise, we all know that it is bad, really bad for you, we teach kids about it, yet people still start smoking.

      Do as New Zealand did, set a cut off year, if you are born after 2015, you will not be permitted to buy tobacco at all.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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      3 months ago

      Thanks to taxes (81½% of the price is tax on average), smokers are currently making my government a profit, including all the cancer care. Old people need a lot of healthcare, so people dying of cancer saves a lot of healthcare cost in the long term.

      People need help getting off their addiction to give them a better life. Money isn’t really an issue. Turns out raising taxes for addicts, you can make a lot of money as a government!

      I’m 100% for abolishing smoking. I particularly like the cut-off point approach, just stop people who turn 18 after a certain point from buying tabacco. This will slowly weed out the smoking habit, and in a couple of decades smoking will be seen as something old people and maybe foreigners do.

        • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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          3 months ago

          Tobacco execs generally don’t like the 400% tax.

          I know the tobacco industry has pushed the “smokers make the government money” narrative for decades, but since a few years it’s actually true. Mostly because the healthcare system is collapsing under high demand and retiring boomers and gen X will leave the country with a disproportionate amount of people needing care versus people working to provide/pay for care. Important surgeries can already take years to be scheduled and that’s only going to get worse the coming years.

          This isn’t the “thank the tax payer for paying for themselves”, it’s yet another symptom of decades of terrible decisions and putting off necessary reforms to deal with the demographic changes.

          Also, in general, “at least they don’t cost us money” isn’t a good defence in general for maintaining a system getting people addicted to huffing cancerous fumes. Even if taxes brought in double the money it costs to care for a cancered up smoker, we should still strive for a smoke-free society. That includes huffing other cancerous fumes, such as vapes and weed smoke.

          • Taalnazi@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Exactly, and the rhetoric “it pays for themselves” also doesn’t hold up, since there is still second hand and third hand smoke.

            • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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              3 months ago

              While it seems rather obvious that inhaling carcinogenic fumes is bad for your health, I’ve never really found a study that shows harm by second hand smoke as serious as the harm of smoking itself, to be honest. I don’t think the damage second hand smoking does to the general population’s health is quite as bad as direct smoking is.

              Second hand smoking is bad, but it’s orders of magnitude less dangerous than sucking the carcinogens straight out of a burning cigarette according to the papers I’ve scanned through. It’ll increase the healthcare cost a few percent, but it’s not as significant across the entire population as you’d think looking at the individual risks.

              If we can end smoking, we’ll end secondhand smoking for free. Plus, places and people just smell nicer in general.

    • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml
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      3 months ago

      You just trade out legal distributors for illegal distributors while ruining the lives of smokers by cycling them in and out of prison, feeding their need to smoke even more. Bad idea.

      • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, I’m surprised at how many people here would simply like to add tobacco to the list of controlled substances and add more fuel to the shit firestorm that is the Drug War.

        Do I believe the tobacco industry should be far more heavily regulated than it currently is? Absolutely. I actually feel that way about most legal drugs.

        But imprisoning people for doing what they want with their own bodies in their own homes has already proven to be ineffective at curtailing drug use and abuse.

        Additionally, the inhumane treatment of prisoners and former prisoners is a whole separate topic, but related in that the Drug War is just a corrupt mechanism to feed the prison-industrial complex. Why add another drug (tobacco) to the list of drugs cops can plant on your person and send you off to jail for?

    • Taalnazi@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, and unlike what people commonly think, it doesn’t just directly affect the user (first hand smoke) and the people around it (second hand smoke), but also the furniture and nature around it (third hand smoke).

      I despise those cigarettes laying around everywhere in nature. You can even smell them on remotes if someone was a hardcore smoker.

      They need help in kicking off from it.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I have less problems with the “luxury” items, such as cigars.

      They’re usually hand-crafted expensive stuff that’s made to enjoy once and a while, compared to cigarettes which are mass produced with the sole purpose to get you addicted.

      I think the same is true with alcohol. There’s the cheap, mass produced stuff vs the more expensive “hand”-crafted stuff.

      I wish we could just enjoy these things without corporations trying to get us addicted to them at every opportunity, disregarding any of the dangers associated with consuming them.

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      i hate tobacco but prohibition doesnt work.

      we should have learned that lesson with alcohol and weed but it seems we did not.

    • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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      3 months ago

      ITT: people so used to lobbying that they got convinced it’s a necessary evil so that minorities and common folks can lobby as well.

      It’s clearly absurd. Many places call lobbying with its real name: corruption. And there are laws in place to fight it. Are they perfect? No. Is it then more effective to legalyze corruption? OF COURSE NOT ARE YOU INSANE?!?

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        Lobbying isn’t the same as corruption.

        Lobbying is informing politicians about an issue while pushing your agenda.

        Corruption is giving a politician an incentive to vote as you want.

        • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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          3 months ago

          In what universe a politician does not have, nevermind intrinsecally in its raise to popularity, but explicitly active tools and relationships that keeps him up to date with the issues and needs of his community?

          I guess in a monarchy.

          • stoy@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            Very few politicians have the time get down and understand the issues enough to make an informed decision, which they have aids and use lobbyists to learn about the subject.

            A decision about deciding about subsidiaries for specific crops for instance, lets say that a farmer used to farm wheat, but then realized that he could get more money by farming tobacco, ok, so he switches to tobacco, but the nation still needs a stable supply of wheat, so wheat needs to be subsidized by the government to make it worth it for farmer to farm wheat, most politicians won’t know if there is a need for this or how large it needs to be.

            This is where lobbyists come in, they inform politicians about what they believe is needed, show reports and other data, to influence the politician about how to vote and what to argue for. Wheat farmers and baker advocacy groups will argue for high subsidies, tobacco farmers and cigarette companies will argue against it.

            • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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              3 months ago

              Is that a government for ants?!?

              No dude there’s experts, specialists, entire departments within any (?) human government that knows shit, talks with experts, calculate and runs stuff.

              They don’t just wait for farmers to walk up and explain what vegetables are.

              And why would you think it’s normal that cigarette companies are at this whymsical table? Why put cancer inducing products in a debate with food with baby politicians that knows nothing and wait for the “debate” to play out?

              • stoy@lemmy.zip
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                3 months ago

                Is that a government for ants?!?

                No this is normal.

                No dude there’s experts, specialists, entire departments within any (?) human government that knows shit, talks with experts, calculate and runs stuff.

                Yes there are departments for healthcare, having reports full of stats, that no politician will ever read, lobbying can bring attention to demetia and bring some context to the data.

                They don’t just wait for farmers to walk up and explain what vegetables are.

                Correct, but they want farmers to come up and talk to them about problems that they see that might be missed, for example, how young people can be encouraged to go into farming, or if there is something killing the crops that they can see faster than the governments experts can write a report about.

                And why would you think it’s normal that cigarette companies are at this whymsical table?

                Because they are a huge industry.

                Why put cancer inducing products in a debate with food with baby politicians that knows nothing and wait for the “debate” to play out

                Because farmers need money, and if tobacco pays more than wheat, then the farmer will farm tobacco.

                • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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                  3 months ago

                  You are blind to so many options…

                  They ignore the reports? So why would they not ignore the “people”? Because money? Then it’s just corruption and the policy won’t reflect any genuine need.

                  Why being a “huge industry” has any political weight? Drugs cartel move tons of money, do they get a say in the matter too?

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      I get what you mean, but that would backfire increadibly quickly.

      Civil rights organizations would no longer be able to talk with politicians directly, possibly never, as demonstrations and manifestations could be classified as lobbying depending on how strict it would be enforced.

      Environmental groups could no longer invite politicians to important conferences.

      Lobbying isn’t just something that monolithic companies do, take it away, and it will only be something the bad guys does.

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Keep in mind that the person you reply to isn’t wrong: Big corpos would still be lobbying, as they got the resources to hide it effectively and keep everyone trying to sue them over suspicions of lobbying stuck in litigation hell.

          Anybody less affluent would however find it impossible to do any lobby work. Environmental agencies etc.

          This is one of those situations where just outlawing something does the least affect the very party you would want to hit most.

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          You’d accept possibly loosing the right to demonstrate or to hold a manifestation or protest.

          That is not the world I want to live in.

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            Wut? It is supremely American to think you can only talk to politicians if you have money… and only because so many other people are willing to purchase a slice of their time.

            I can just walk to Peter Julian’s office and, assuming I’m not rude, talk to him about something that matters to me. I’ve had conversations with Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders - I used to board game with a state senator. It it might be hard to get a lunch date with Joe Biden but politicians spend the majority of their time just talking to folks… it’s only when the rich can use their money to monopolize time that shit breaks down.

            • stoy@lemmy.zip
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              3 months ago

              Those meetings you have had with politicians could absolutely be classified as lobbying, and would be made illegal if lobbying was outlawed.

              A company have the resources to make a smokescreen around meetings like that, making it harder to prove lobbyism, the lobbyist just happened to stay at the same hotel as the politician did, they even arrived a week before, and left two days after the politician arrived, it’s not like a meeting was set up on the one overlapping day, that would be crazy…

              • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
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                3 months ago

                Those meetings you have had with politicians could absolutely be classified as lobbying, and would be made illegal if lobbying was outlawed.

                It’s not just classified as lobbying, it’s litterally what Lobbying is about. Meeting politician to tell them that the environmental law reforms means that the factory will close or that the consumer need better protection regarding toxic chemical in their food is what Lobbyist do. It’s sometimes get even funnier when they change employer and therefore political side

      • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Yup, a late friend of mine was a lobbyist at the state level for a mental health lobbying group. His daughter has schizophrenia and that was his way to give back in his retirement. Without lobbying, it’s hard for politicians to know when there is a problem they need to fix. They have a small staff and they don’t just magically know when there is a problem. The problem is when a politician either can’t sniff out unethical lobbyists or just doesn’t care.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      They shouldn’t be illegal, but heavily regulated.

      I mean, hunting and harvesting meat is far more ethical to the normal meat industry.

      • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yes. Every hunter is ethical and will absolutely nail every shot to make sure the animal doesn’t suffer and die a slow death. A hunter missing the killshot and instead wounding the animal? Never happens.

        /s

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          Of course it happens, but for the absolute majority of it’s life, even a wounded animal has lived a life in freedom and nature, a proper hunter would absolutely track and deal with a wounded animal to reduce suffering and preserve the meat.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Most people in countries where guns are regulated would not get access to a gun for hunting, mind you. Unless your job is to be a forester, which over here includes selectively shooting animations to balance populations if something goes out of balance.

        “I want to get my own deer meat from the forest” is not a valid reason to get a gun. Or even a bow!

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          I like the theory of gun laws in Sweden.

          You can only get a gun if you are actively in need of one, there are only two legal way to be in need of one, hunting and competition.

          You need to get a hunting license from a school, join a hunting society and be an active member to get a permit for gun, or you need to actively compete in a shooting club to get a competition permit. You also need to demonstrate competence and skill before you get a permit regardless of if you are a hunter or a competitor.

          Getting a gun for personal safety is not permitted, and to be frank, it isn’t really needed here, we have few dangerous animals, and despite the rise of gang violence, Sweden is still a safe country.

    • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Already illegal (without proper licence) in most first world countries. Or at least not as unregulated as as in Murica

  • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Nutrition information based on unrealistic serving sizes.

    I’ve seen an individually wrapped muffin “servings per pack: 2”.

    Then there’s that Tom Scott video on how “zero calory” sweetener can be 4 calories.

  • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    From my industry: Perhaps the purchase of chemicals for the manufacture of fireworks. It’s surprisingly easy to order pounds and pounds of different oxidizers and fuels.

    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      The one I need is highly controlled. I need to make my own strike anywhere matches since Uco quit, need red phosphorous, don’t want to scrape it off of match strikers for hours, want a big ol’ jar. Apparently it’s also used to make “MeTh” so I can’t buy it.

      Powdered aluminum though no problem, go figure.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Nope, copyrights isn’t the issue, they enable people to earn money from their creativity, the issue is rather that they are way too long.

      Back in the 1780s copyright lasted 14 years after the work was created.

      This is fine, the current obscene legnth of copyright is terrible.

    • metaStatic@kbin.earth
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      3 months ago

      We only really run into trouble when we start treating corporations like people and copyright as a commodity in it’s own right.

      Non-transferable copyright for the life of the author would be perfectly acceptable.

      • KⒶMⒶLⒶ WⒶLZ 2Ⓐ24@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        the statute of Anne was the first copyright law and it was written to stop printers in London from breaking each others’ knees over who was allowed to print the world of Shakespeare who was already long dead.

        copyright is a bill of goods when packaged as a protection for creatives.

      • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Not for something like medicine or crops that people will die if the copyright holder abuses their copyright. In that case we have to act for the greater good and make medicine first, compensate creators later, if at all.

  • J Lou@mastodon.social
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    3 months ago

    The employer-employee contract

    It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.

    Inalienable means something that can’t be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor

    @asklemmy

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Make employment contract toward all company members, not “the company”. Workers are working for each other, not owned by share holders. They are the company.

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      I think that it depends on the nature of the contract. Sure, most of them are terrible.

      On the other hand, NDAs are a form of employment contract that are often a necessity. Non-compete contracts can serve a legitimate purpose, in preventing unfair competition or using company secrets for person gain. They’re usually written in an overly broad manner though, or prevent legitimate employee activities.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        A throwaway reference to another thread on here …. Someone tried to sue a restaurant when he choked on a bone in his boneless chicken wings. The court ruled he can’t sue because “boneless” is just a style of cooking and doesn’t make any claim about whether that meal has bones. …. That kind of misrepresentation, and dodging responsibility should be illegal. All sorts of scamming the customer should be illegal and isn’t

        If I can go on a bit of a rant, I do believe in the power of the market to shape our lives, our economy, our society. Conservatives got that part right. But a market is only “free” when everyone plays by the same rules and has same facts and knowledge, free choice. A market is only beneficial when it is shaped by regulators to benefit society. A market is only sustainable when it incorporates externalities. If Conservatives are gung ho about free markets, they need to step up and do their part. While there’s a nice theory about the usefulness of Marketting, the primary use is to lie, subvert, fool, distort the market, and THAT should be illegal