Govt thinks prohibition will work!

Stuff reports:

The Government will ban young people from ever being able to purchase tobacco in their lives under world-leading plans to make New Zealand smokefree.

This will make NZ smoke-free only in the sense that NZ is cannabis free or America was alcohol free in the 1920s.

It seems bizarre that a Government which told us (correctly) that prohibition is the wrong strategy for cannabis, thinks it will work for tobacco. They wanted to legalise cannabis and ban tobacco!

“We want to make sure young people never start smoking, so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoke tobacco products to new cohorts of young people,” she said. “People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco.”

It’s nice that the Government is so keen to help gangs diversify their revenue stream, so they don’t have to apply for $2.75 million government grants so often.

We have already seen the black market in tobacco explode in the last few years. What this move will do is allow drug dealers to also sell tobacco.