New York City Council raises age to buy cigarettes to 21

[tik 🪀✨]

I'm not a fan of this genre of regulation.. but with the rising availability and popularity of vaporizers as a healthier, less noxious smelling alternative, actual tobacco smoking limitations don't bother me.

But for the millionth time, plenty of people don't start smoking because it's cool (although it certainly is). It gives you a buzz. It is a drug. And a very intriguing one at that. If you are for marijuana legalisation and against nicotine, you are kind of an idiot.

[tik 🪀✨]

Also tobacco is utterly finksing disgusting trash. Sickening worthless garbage. Why should i give an inks if that repellent filth is further restricted?

Your very helpful descriptions of tobacco smoking:

1. Utterly f**king disgusting trash
2. Sickening worthless garbage
3. Repellant filth

do not (and should not) influence broader policy. YOU specifically should care about what happens to groups of people YOU are not a part of because the ramifications of these restrictions could form a precedent where things YOU enjoy but everyone else thinks are 1, 2, or 3 effect YOUR life. Then again, YOU have a unique perspective that overrules everyone else, because YOU are such a little miracle.

I hate libertarianism. Nevertheless, I do agree that people should be allowed to engage in activities that do not negatively impact others specifically*. I personally find just about zero redeeming qualities about strip clubs and gambling. They are useless, ridiculous activities for imbeciles. That doesn't mean I think you should be 21 to gamble or visit a strip club. All that that means is that I won't gamble or go to a strip club. Maybe your predilection to such vices causes you to go bankrupt or to leave your partner. Is this something detrimental but preventable for a society or individual? Yes - but that doesn't mean it's the correct action to restrict an adult's participation based on something as asinine and useless as the number of times the earth has revolved around the sun since they burrowed out of their mothers' proverbial.

* I know, I know: Second-hand cancer death apocalypse air. I don't care very much about smoking bans aimed at reducing second-hand smoke. I do care about the government deciding that action A is only permissible to adult group B, though. If you are going to have this hierarchy of age-related permissible activities, at least be consistent. What's the age where someone is accountable for his own actions - 18 or 21?

[tik 🪀✨]

The problem I have with tobacco that makes it so much different from other drugs is it's so pointless. It just makes you smell bad and kills your lungs. That's it. No cool highs or hallucinations or nice effects from it. Get high all you inksing want and I don't care but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to smoke cigarettes. The only reason people smoke is because of marketing and making it "cool" to get them started and hooked. None of that would happen if it wasn't legal. The only reason there's a tobacco black market now is people who are already hooked want to buy it cheaper. There's a reason why in the last 40 years tobacco consumption has halved, while marijuana and alcohol consumption rates have basically remained the same.

There's a reason why the US and Canada have virtually identical marijuana and alcohol consumption rates, but in the US tobacco has about a 20% higher tobacco consumption rate. In addition to Canadian tobacco taxes being far higher than just about anywhere in the US the packaging and marketing is far more restricted.

Most smartly governed, modern countries have decreasing rates of tobacco use. The US has a higher rate because the US sucks at that sort of thing.

As for your stylishly idiotic first paragraph, I'd submit to you that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I said earlier that the psychoactive chemicals in tobacco are fascinating and I stand by that. They are subtle - and they can produce different characteristics based on the way you smoke. The real kicker is in conjunction with other drugs - a lot of people who only smoke when they drink alcohol can attest to that. Smoking when you've had weed can bring on awful dizziness and headspins, it can reinvigorate a waning high, or it can just make you feel as mellow as hell. A smoke on mushrooms or acid feels beautiful in ways you have to experience to understand (although that is true of most things one might do on shrooms or acid). A smoke after DXM can make you vomit or give your body high a new potency. I've never done coke but from observation smoking after doing a line is the best. A smoke after sex is a perfect combination for the little high you feel after orgasm. A smoke you have after waiting a long time for a cigarette feels completely different from the way a cigarette feels to a chain smoker. A smoke after your morning coffee is relaxing and stimulating simultaneously. If you think cigarettes have no value and don't do anything nice or fun you have no idea what you're talking about.

Don't get me wrong - I don't even like that I am a smoker. I do indeed hardly feel anything after I have a cigarette besides relief that I just had one. It is certainly some dumb sh**t that I can't seem to just not do it again. Nevertheless, the assertion that nicotine and friends in tobacco have zero real recreational use is just flat out wrong.

And Oak Hills, smoking as an activity is most certainly a "cool" thing. Sucking in plumes of visible gas from an object on fire mere inches from your face and exhaling clouds is a spectacle. The ramifications of smoking are the complete opposite of cool - but the singular act of smoking is quite neat. In fact, you saying that it isn't cool actually makes it even cooler - nice work. If smoking caused no real, bad health effects, you would probably agree with me. Even so, just because something is "cool" doesn't disqualify it from being absolutely awful.

[tik 🪀✨]

I disagree with you, Boris, although you do have a point. Like I said in my rant, a cigarette four hours after your last cigarette feels completely different from the cigarette you had ten minutes after the last one. Addiction plays a key role in this - when your body craves something chemically, fulfilling that craving will signal chemicals of pleasure in the brain. The longer the wait, the better (or more relieving) it feels. Now that I am addicted, my daily living experience has subtly changed over time so that I live and cater to tobacco fixes - and said fixes barely ever noticeably affect me. I am ever so painfully aware that this is a hopeless and stupid way to live, but I always conveniently put off another quit attempt. That's addiction.

However, you don't have to be an addict to feel these effects. My most pleasurable tobacco experiences occurred when I wasn't addicted! So it was for me - there will always be curious, ignorant, reckless and indulgence-loving people out there who will try it despite the reputation it has (and that it brings you) and what obstacles are put in place by society. To then think that one becomes addicted to tobacco even though to begin with it's an "utterly pointless" activity with no noticeable effects sort of negates the idea that it's so dangerously addictive. If it weren't activating certain conscious and subconscious pleasure/reward and stimulative/depressive systems and chemical messengers in your brain, the hard mechanisms for addiction just wouldn't be there.

As always it's much more nuanced and difficult the than false dichotomies BRTD subscribes to. Nicotine on its own isn't really very addictive (it's the most addictive when combined with an MAOI, a few of which are present in tobacco smoke). Nicotine itself has a wide, complicated array of effects able to be experienced consciously or that take place deep within the body and mind. Some of these effects are actually very positive. That doesn't mean it's something one should try even once or that its use isn't something to bother trying to change. To me, "smoking tobacco has no effects" is something non-smokers tell themselves so that they don't give in to any temptation and get to feel smug and superior to smokers. Good for them. I'm just here to remind you that such ideas are ignorant and incorrect.