Baby steps to prohibition

New Zealand used to have a reputation as a relaxed, free-and-easy kind of place, but more recently it seems to have succumbed to a growing authoritarian trend. This was exemplified during the Covid crisis when it tried to turn itself into a hermit kingdom in a largely vain attempt to keep itself free of the disease. They have now doubled down on this tendency by announcing the implementation of a kind of creeping prohibition of tobacco. This is something that has often been proposed around the world, but never so far put into effect in any developed country.

How it will work is that anyone born in 2008 or later will never be allowed to buy tobacco products, so in effect the legal purchase age will increase by one year every year. However, as I understand it there is no intention to criminalise possession and use, which in any case would be extremely difficult to enforce, so young people will simply obtain tobacco from older people who buy it on their behalf. As smoking in indoor public places has already been outlawed, the range of situations in which young smokers will stand out and be stigmatised has already greatly reduced.

The obvious result of this policy will be to greatly expand the size of the black market. In the article, one man says “Because right now there's a lot of young kids walking around with smokes in their mouth. Public are asking how they're getting these smokes.” But those kids are already below the legal purchase age, so raising it will only serve to intensify the problem. At the same time it is planned to reduce the number of outlets able to sell tobacco products from 8,000 to 500, which will damage the trade of many local community shops and give further encouragement to the black market.

"This is all 100% theory and 0% substance," Sunny Kaushal, chairman of the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a lobby group for local convenience stores, told New Zealand's Stuff news site. "There's going to be a crime wave. Gangs and criminals will fill the gap".

The use of many drugs that are illegal to purchase at any age is already widespread, so any hopes that this will stamp out tobacco use are likely to be dashed. It may be denormalised, but it certainly won’t be eradicated, and young people might reach the conclusion that if they can’t buy tobacco legally they might as well go for something stronger. At the same time, in New Zealand and many other countries there are moves towards a more relaxed enforcement regime for illegal drugs, and it is not hard to see the two policies meeting in the middle. Indeed, I have been told (although I don’t have a source for this) that in the US state of Colorado it is now illegal for employers to discriminate against cannabis users, but not tobacco users.

But of course such measures will never be extended to alcohol. The idea is completely unthinkable. Or is it?