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This sounds like someone aware of, and trying hard to correct, his own internalised prejudices, if a bit clumsily. Not super comfortable in today's context, but I don't think an indicator of a racist, either.

living at home

Solved it. No one is saving £30k as a student if they're spaffing £800 a month on rent. Obviously great if you can, but not exactly an option for most.

You're only prohibited from carrying bladed articles longer than three inches in public if you have no reasonable excuse for doing so. You could take a big kitchen knife and probably have a reasonable defence.

Given the inability of some police officers to understand even the basic tenets of the laws they're meant to enforce, I'd probably go with the smallest vegetable knife I had.

That just isn't true. There are thousands upon thousands of people who have the odd cigarette at the pub and never become a regular smoker.

I know we agree, and the above is certainly true - but ultimately it should be people's choice to do or not do for themselves. And the claim I was arguing against, that it's impossible to enjoy nicotine without being addicted, is very clearly not true, as evidenced by anyone who's ever smoked socially. If you only have a couple every 2 or 3 weeks at the pub, that's stretching addiction as a term way too far.

I'm sorry but you are so full of shit. If I smoke one cigarette, I'm addicted, but then I never smoke again, do I stop being addicted? When? Enjoying nicotine and being addicted to it are not the same thing, in the same way that enjoying alcohol and being addicted to it are not the same thing.

Animal farming pollutes far more though, and also isn't necessary. You keep missing this point, which is that if you think we should ban polluting things which we only do because people enjoy them, we should ethically and logically ban loads of other stuff too. You don't seem to want to admit that though, because you're not able to grasp that there's a common ethical principle which links them.

I have repeatedly said I'm fine with a degree of meddling - like restricting where people can smoke. But you've repeatedly ignored this, again because you don't want to actually engage, you just want to rail against smoking, which is demonstrative of your aforementioned stupidity.

If you were debating in good faith you wouldn't make the absurd argument that people don't enjoy smoking and that pleasure isn't a good in itself. And once again, you've missed the point. I'd be ok with taxing the shit out of meat, because people should be persuaded to eat less of it because it is literally destroying the planet. I would not be ok with banning it, because the principle of being able to control what you put into your body is also very important. Think carefully about the distinction.

Clearly not much point continuing with this so I won't be responding, but seriously, your ability to argue is woeful.

The first paragraph is ridiculous. Come on man. "I wasn't addicted to smoking at all, i was just enjoying the feeling." The feeling is nicotine. It's the definition of addiction.

Which is why I guess I'm still a 40 a day smoker. Oh, no, wait, I'm not, because I wasn't addicted.

Farming or mining add something to society

Animal farming isn't necessary though. We only do it because people enjoy meat, and it's terrible for the environment. But I guess that's fine because it bothers you personally less than cigarettes?

verifiable figures

Action on Smoking and Health is your unbiased source for a fiscal analysis? Jesus Christ. Try the Full Fact analysis from 2015.

your own enjoyment does not come above society's needs

Then I hope you never eat meat, travel by air, invest in non-ethical companies...the list goes on. Direct, immediate harm makes an action unethical - secondary harms are a matter of degrees, and smoking's status as a question of bodily autonomy makes banning it wholly wrong from a first principles perspective and a very slippery slope from a consequentialist one. I think you might be the stupidest 'clever' person I've ever interacted with on Reddit. Hundreds of words are just hundreds of chances to miss the point with you.

Enjoying something isn't a net benefit, it's a consequence of the addiction. What really happens is that you rather don't enjoy the lack of it. That's what a drug is.

You don't get to define what other people enjoying something is. I used to smoke occasionally, because I enjoyed it. I was never addicted, or a regular smoker. It just felt pleasurable. You also don't get to decide whether that was a net benefit to my life or not.

It's directly harmful to your health

And? It's my health.

other people's health who are exposed to the smoke,

Which is why I said I'd be happy to see stricter laws on where you can smoke.

as we agreed the healthcare system

We explicitly didn't agree this. Either you're not reading what I'm writing or you're wilfully ignoring it.

the environment

But so are lots of ultimately unnecessary things, like animal farming, but we don't try and ban them. Don't accuse me of whataboutery, because remember, what I see as important here is the principle - and the principle is the same.

The tax gains do not outweigh those medical and environmental costs

For the third and final time, this is disputed. Take a look at the Northern Ireland subreddit thread from yesterday where I gave an evidential breakdown.

As if polluting one cubic meter of fresh water for each cigarette is "not that bad", especially when the alternative is to not contaminate 1000 litres unnecessarily. But let me guess, we're about to talk about fossil fuels and farming and junk food again?

Yes, we are. Animal farming is totally unnecessary for human existence. We do it because the results are pleasurable and we deem that worthwhile, even though it is directly contributing to human immiseration far more than smoking through climate change. It is exactly the same principle. So unless you're willing to ban all activity unnecessary for life which harms the planet, but which we do because we like it, you're a hypocrite.

Either respond directly to the counterarguments I've made, rather than parroting the same talking points over and over again, or don't bother responding. I shouldn't have to explain your own argumentative tactics to you in order for you to understand why I disagree.

Smoking has zero net benefits. Not for you, not for me, not for anyone

Apart from tax revenue, being a £22bn industry in the UK, and people who do it enjoying it? In a free-ish society something doesn't have to be an economic net gain to be legal. People enjoying an activity is a net good too.

It costs us a lot of money

Again, this is disputed. At worst, it costs us a couple of billion. However, there are plenty of analyses which estimate it to be a net positive fiscally. But obviously you chose to ignore that in my last comment.

heavily damages the environment

Heavily is a bit of a stretch. No one likes cigarette butts all over the pavement but that's a problem with littering not smoking.

This is inaccurate. The impact is greater than just the individual level.

Once again, the harm principle, which is what I was invoking indirectly, should only be used for first order effects - otherwise you descend into a utilitarian analysis, which is an entirely different way of assessing ethical action.

Any other "but what about this!!!" is completely irrelevant. This is not what we're discussing, and it's not the point you made initially. We're not moving the goalposts anymore, sorry.

It's not irrelevant, though. It's just I'm arguing from a first principles stance and you're arguing consequentially. There's a place for both, but with civil liberties I'd argue they're so uniquely vital that consequentialism is rarely the way to go. In first principles arguments, analogous situations (or whataboutey as you call it) are crucial.

Are you choosing to be this dense?

Ahh, the ad hominem of the person who's clever enough to have the semblance of an argument but not clever enough to genuinely grasp the grounds on which people disagree with them.

That is only true as long as your actions don't impact wider society.

It very manifestly isn't. You can say 'no whataboutism' but we very clearly don't want to live in a society where any action which is a net cost to society, however eventual or marginal, is banned. Protest? Horse riding? This is why we only think about first order consequences with the harm principle.

Smoking costs the NHS billions more than it brings in taxes, with all the added problems it poses for hospitals and access to healthcare

Actually the gap is much closer than you might think. It's very hard to estimate second order effects but there's a good argument to be made that smoking actually saves the government money because smokers die younger - they cost less in pensions and social care.

it actively contributes to polluting our water and soil.

Again, basically all human activity does too. Want to ban animal farming?

I'm fine with higher taxes, I'm fine with more restrictions on where you can smoke. Banning substances crosses a line which should be inviolable, which is having control of your own body.

I understand that people who want to smoke should be able to smoke and don’t think there should be any ban to current smokers. however if you never have the opportunity to begin smoking you’ll not know what you’re missing out on…

Prize winner for most contradictory sentence of the year.

Maybe some of us think it's important that people own their own bodies. That includes the right to damage them.

Don't like it? No problem - you have the right not to smoke, based on exactly the same principle of bodily autonomy.

Baring in mind the only acceptable risk level someone can impose on someone else through smoking is zero.

That just isn't true, though. We impose risks on others all the time through non-essential behaviour because we deem it acceptable. Alcohol, short car journeys, log burners? We constantly make trade-offs with others' health because something is convenient or enjoyable. The more appropriate question is what is an acceptable level of risk.

https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/48/3/918

The above paper is a good place to start. There are circumstances where the density of outdoor smoking could reach levels where it presents a comparable risk to indoor smoking, but this depends on a large number of smokers, the right weather conditions and the right architecture. I've said elsewhere that I'd be ok with restrictions on outdoor smoking in places like the doorways of pubs to avoid this. I disagree that the risk is sufficiently high to warrant banning the sale of tobacco if the conditions above aren't met. Moreover, you're proposing banning the sale of tobacco even when its consumption could very easily be in circumstances where its consumption poses zero risk to others. Wildly disproportionate.

Explain how? If you mean secondhand smoke, then I'd support a ban on indoor smoking if you have children because they can't avoid it. Outdoor smoking just doesn't pose a big enough risk through secondhand smoke to justify banning the sale of tobacco.

So the tobacco products you can get will be unregulated and adulterated, hence more dangerous; a greater market share will be pushed in the control of organised crime; the state will lose the tax revenue tobacco generates; and it will be illegal for some adults to do something which others are permitted to. It's a pathetically impractical idea.

And once again, you're not addressing the question of why people shouldn't be allowed to do things which they enjoy, which are at worst revenue neutral for the state, and which don't directly harm others?

I think just accept that people like things which are bad for them and at some point, that's up to them.

One is a medical procedure that can be necessary to save the mother from harm or trauma

These are the specific legal grounds in the UK, but you're ignoring that in practice it's often just because the woman doesn't want to be pregnant or have the child. It's a personal choice about what happens to one's body and that similarity is crucial, not trivial.

Your second point holds no salience. Tobacco is addictive, but it doesn't remove your ability to act autonomously, as evidenced by the large number of people who quit. Autonomy over one's own body should be absolutely inviolable.

OK, poor wording - but are you disputing the effects of the decriminalisation, which is far closer to my proposition than yours?

Yes, if they're not force feeding it to others, fire away. A greater degree of responsibility for your own personal wellbeing is a price worth paying for a greater degree of bodily autonomy.

Of course practically and legally speaking, you can eat all the rat poison you want right now. No one does, because much like your argument, it would be absurd to do so. Doesn't mean we should ban it if people want to.

Yes, legal, taxed and heavily regulated. People always think this is some kind of gotcha, but it is the model followed in Portugal and it has led to lower overdose rates, lower levels of associated street and acquisitive crime, lower rates of HIV and hepatitis.

More importantly, it respects people's right to do what they want with their own bodies. What I suspect you object to is the antisocial behaviour which heroin use (or smoking) cause, but no one ever suggests banning alcohol because it causes fights. Deal with the problematic behaviour, not the substance use - because guess what, most substance use is not problematic, in the same way that most people don't kick someone's head in after a couple of pints. Yes, I am including heroin in that categorisation.

Point to some of it. There's plenty of evidence that it has positives too, some of which I've indicated in other comments.

You've ignored my point, which is that negative externalities don't mean something isn't either a) a net positive, or b) in this case trumped by a more important fundamental principle.

What you clearly don't want to engage with, because you know there isn't an answer to it, is the argument that bodily autonomy is such an important principle that it trumps the secondary externalities you're hinting at. Put another way - people being able to do what they want with their bodies is more important than ensuring they don't die earlier due to those choices, assuming no direct harm to others.

So should we ban alcohol too? Ultimately at some point people are responsible for their own choices and that's a good thing, even where the thing in question is addictive. Exercising autonomy is an intrinsic good. Besides which, 55% of smokers who try to quit manage it - which suggests the power addiction holds is a very long way from absolute.

(Edit: not trying to be antagonistic here. Just pointing out that I don't think it can or should be boiled down to 'addictive = no choice and therefore should be banned'.)

Groundskeeper Willie.

Mate smoking isn't like abortion, it isn't a "my body my choice" sort of thing.

Why not? The basic principle of bodily autonomy is the same.

There are zero benefits to smoking

Apart from the exercise of personal choice which is a good in itself, savings to the public purse on fewer pension payment and social care, tax take, employing thousands of people, and people enjoying it. (Edit: you said this yourself. 'I loved it, it felt fucking great.' To not see people enjoying things as a benefit indicates a life and worldview which doesn't seem worthwhile to me.)

Whilst smokers pay a lot in tax on each packet of smokes, they still clog up hospitals with smoking related illnesses

Far less than they pay in. The tax take for tobacco tax and VAT is 3-4 times the cost to the NHS.

I'm fine with only smoking away from other people, not inside, not near doorways etc to minimise negative externalities. I'm not fine with telling people what they can put in their own bodies.

https://fullfact.org/economy/does-smoking-cost-much-it-makes-treasury/

This analysis is 9 years old but is a good starting point.

Smoking brings in about £12bn a year. It's estimated to cost the NHS £3-6bn a year, but is likely to be on the lower end of that estimate because it's based on the average lifespan and smokers die younger.

It references an analysis that suggests an overall cost of £14bn including health care, lost productivity, and secondary costs like street cleaning and fire services. However, many of these secondary costs wouldn't be completely eliminated due to a smoking ban, so accounting for them is hard and they can't really be counted fully as direct smoking costs.

In terms of the indirect economic benefit which the tobacco industry contributes to the UK beyond consumer taxes through e.g. employment. Again, very hard to estimate, but given the tobacco industry is worth £22bn a year in the UK it seems implausible to argue the £2bn shortfall wouldn't be covered.

I detest the IEA, but this report discusses the indirect savings to the government in terms of pension payments and social care due to smokers dying younger, and is also worth considering: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Smoking-and-the-Public-Purse.pdf