Opinion of New Zealand's laws on smoking

[Antonio the Sixth]

Extremely based. I wish other countries could be as brave.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I am supportive in principle, but I am curious as to the justification for this particular form of implementation. Is there any other law anywhere that works like this by banning something for all people born after a particular date forever?

Not that I know of. It's a drastic approach to be sure, but the rationale for it seems pretty clear to me. Quitting smoking is a fairly taxing process, and it would genuinely be kinda authoritarian for the state to force it on so many people. On the other hand, never picking up smoking is not something that negatively affects one's quality of life in any way (and of course is a net positive in the long run), so it makes sense to target people who are too young to have started smoking and make sure they never get the chance to.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Don't understand how many people on the left argue the war on drugs has failed and we should legalize it, and at the same time we should absolutely ban cigarettes for an entire generation because that's obviously going to work very well.

tbh I consider marijuana to be more the exception than the rule here, owing both to its milder effects and to its grossly disproportional impact on mass incarceration. But generally speaking, yeah, selling harmful addictive substances is not something that society should condone. Of course I completely oppose criminalizing personal usage, and even for sales I'd generally privilege fines over incarceration (unless we're talking about stuff that actually kills you on the regular).