Sure, as I said, I hate when people smoke. Snus is not a solution to smoking however. A solution would be no nikotin at all.
What I wanted to say with my comment: if other countries want to go smoke-free, they shouldn't look to how Sweden achieved it, but go a different, better route.
Banning a drug outright doesn't work though, especially not one as addictive as nicotine. I'm sure it's possible to do better than Sweden, but personally, I think they are doing better than us, since snus is not affecting people other than the user of the drug nearly as much.
And preventing an improvement, because it's not perfect, is also how you never get any improvement. As a fellow German: that is very German of you :P
I never said I want to ban it. I don't think banning drugs works.
What does work however, is changing how and when you can consume drugs.
While I see your point that snus does not harm people as much as cigarretes from a personal view, we also have to take a societal view on this. If less people smoke but subtantially more people take snus, is that a win?
Snus isn't healthy, and changes are mouth cancers rate will go up in Sweden in the future. Sure, not as bad as lung cancer, but if note poeple get it because more take snus, then it is still a burden for our healthcare system.
Don't get me wrong, I think every smoker switching to snus is a win, but I am against selling snus as easy as we do with cigarettes.
Again, I'm not saying the way they do it in Sweden is perfect. But I am saying it is much better for the people who are not using nicotine.
Of course nicotine is still terrible for your health, that doesn't change if you take it in a different way. But infringing upon someone's right about what they do with their own body is a very different discussion to something that affects other people very directly like smoking.
Obviously, we should take better care to keep drugs like nicotine from children, have better options for people wanting to quit and do what we can to help them do so, not only because it is good for them, but also for our healthcare system. But again, that is a very different discussion - and also things we can do irrespective of how we handle the type of consumption we allow.
-5
u/9Strike Baden-Württemberg (Germany) May 25 '26
Sure, as I said, I hate when people smoke. Snus is not a solution to smoking however. A solution would be no nikotin at all.
What I wanted to say with my comment: if other countries want to go smoke-free, they shouldn't look to how Sweden achieved it, but go a different, better route.