New Zealand aiming to be "smoke free" by 2025

I was going to show you a tobacconist, but when I thought about it further, the only 2 tobacconists I could remember have both disappeared, possibly via bankruptcy.

I still live in hope that when people start listing evil industries/institutions, it will become automatic to include the alcohol industry in the list. Alcohol merchants continue to deny the science that alcohol is a carcinogen, which is straight out of the cigarette industry’s playbook.

Still causes cancer: tongue, lips, gums, throat, oesophagus. Just not in other people.

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I agree, in fact I’m convinced shopkeepers don’t make a single cent from cigarette sales. I sometimes see banners: “cigarettes lowest price allowed by law!” which means all the revenue goes to the tax and cost.
The problem is that if in some business district one shopkeeper decides they’re going to stop selling smokes, then all the smokers are going to get their junk food, sugar soda, lottery, and fossil fuel elsewhere.
The three big chain drugstores in my area are CVS, Rite-Aid, and Walgreens. A couple years ago CVS took a stand and stopped selling tobacco. I wonder if this could only happen because smoking is in decline first?

Yeah it’s more likely that any revenue they lose is because smokers only come into the shop in the first place to buy cigarettes, and without cigs those customers won’t come in, hence revenue from their additional purchases is gone.

But I think people who come in just for cigarettes…just buy cigarettes and nothing else. The cigarettes + a snack people will still come in to buy the snack.

Right, only if all the shops stop selling tobacco. I’m not advocating for prohibition for reasons already mentioned by others, but I wonder if it would be effective to have shops that sold tobacco, and nothing else, and that was the only place you could go to get it. Much like today’s cannabis dispensaries. It would get the product off the shelves where kids would see it (over and over again).

Until recently in my state you could only purchase alcohol in designated shops. Only within the last five years it started to become available in gas stations and grocery stores. A lot of people were like “finally!” But I dunno, I didn’t mind going to a special store just for that stuff. Made it a little more special.

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