zlacker

What did work for smoking? From my understanding, that dropped significantly. Could we do what worked for smoking?

>>Fire-D+(OP)
I suspect what worked - at least in Canada - is making it very very inconvenient. The number of places you can smoke outside of your own house is very limited now. And "going outside for a smoke" at -20C is miserable.

>>Fire-D+(OP)
A large part of it was public awareness of the health risks and relatead damage to the image of smoking as cool and classy.

Now, the proportion of people who still take up smoking today do so in spite of all this, which is probably down to them having various specific user profiles that are unaffected by this (IE they live in communities/work jobs where its ubiquitous or are huge James Dean fans).

For gambling, you could possibly go a long way with awareness and labelling, but I think an issue is that gambling is a lot less visible than smoking. Nobody can smell that you popped outside to blow your paycheck on tonight's game. Making gambling deeply uncool might make some people not take it up, but most of the existing addicts would likely carry on in secret. They're already commonly hiding their losses from spouses and friends, so what's one more layer of secrecy?

At any rate, what worked for smoking wasn't making smokers quit, but making fewer and fewer kids start doing it, so making it a pain in the ass to place your first bet might help.

>>Alexan+02
It was already dropping a lot by the time most places implemented smoking bans, though I think it certainly helped push rates even further down.

>>Fire-D+(OP)
Other replies have mentioned the positive reasons why smoking declined, and I'd like to believe that because I want to imitate it in my country. But in my most skeptical heart I suspect it's because of marijuana and vape instead. I haven't researched further to support this hypothesis but the first Google hit I get looks confirming.

>>komboo+j3
Smoking, in many countries, is no longer aggressively advertised (if it's advertised at all).

Gambling in some of those same countries is now very aggressively advertised.

>>mcmoor+oC
The decline of smoking started long before vaping existed and weed was popular. Smoking peaked in the US in 1965.