I noticed there’s a policy to restrict alcohol but not one for smoking. It’d be nice to be able to implement a public ban on smoking such as we have in the UK in order to increase health.
ETA: I’m really enjoying the game, btw. Although oddly when I play on OS X the UK start is a lot harder due to extra crime…
The OSX version may be one patch behind the PC one. There is a dilemma that lets you choose smoking policy, but it just sounds like it has not triggered for you yet 
Can confirm, the OS X version is at Beta 1.03 at the moment.
Alternatively you can do what I did and knock the smoking tax up to maximum. Within one electoral cycle the level of tobacco use will fall to zero.
Interestingly the game is still telling me that my huge taxes on tobacco use are causing an increase in poverty even though nobody smokes.
aha…that sounds like something I should fix!
There are three dilemmas which I’m always hoping to get, which I’d almost like some way to force as policies. Namely, the alcohol and tobacco advertising bans and the public smoking ban. I can’t immediately think how these would work as policies as they’re binary decisions. Any thoughts?
These would totally work as strong policies, with their real-world counter-parts being far from binary. Like in the U.S., how cigarette ads are only banned on TV & Radio but can be in certain printed materials. And alcohol ads cannot be shown on networks geared towards children. You can only smoke in certain areas and there is no drinking in public domains, like parks (we won’t get into how it varies greatly from state to state). So, you could have the value of the policy be the level of restrictions on advertising. At it’s minimum you could have “NO RESTRICTIONS” and at it’s maximum “TOTAL BAN”. It could be the same slider text for each. It could go: NO RESTRICTIONS–>ONLY AFTER MIDNIGHT–>NO TV ADS–>NO RADIO ADS–>NO PRINTED ADS–>TOTAL BAN. Or something like that. And then there could be ones for both that dictate where citizens can consume them: NO RESTRICTIONS–>NO RESTAURANTS–>NO THOROUGHFARES–>BARS/PUBS/INNS ONLY–>NO PUBLIC SMOKING/DRINKING–>TOTAL BAN.
For clarification, I consider “THOROUGHFARES” as any public area ‘between’ places that connect them such as alleys, streets, sidewalks, etc. Actually, for alcohol maybe “THOROUGHFARES” and “RESTAURANTS” should be switched. People don’t mind other patrons drinking in restaurants as much as they do them smoking, but we may not necessarily want drunken revelers enjoying their spirits while roaming the streets, either. Now that I think of it, that would be weird if you had alcohol totally banned with cigarette smoking allowed in bars. What are the bars there for, then? More importantly, how compatible is the Public Drinking Law with Alcohol Law, which at the restrictive end has “LOW STRENGTH BEER ONLY–>STRONG RESTRICTIONS”? Is this redundant or not, since Alcohol Law deals mainly with age restrictions?
With implementation of these policies I suppose you would lose revenue (resulting in decrease of GDP) and tick off capitalists with increasing values on all four of these. And it would also peeve off the game’s Liberals, with their extreme Libertarian bent. They would definitely increase Health and make Parents happy. And yeah, Youth unhappy. And they would obviously decrease their respective consumption rates. In that regard, I wonder if the respective taxes would add too much of an exponential effect. But with all of these options, you could have an even more complex and varied economic/legal approach to alcohol and cigarette consumption, like the U.S.
Another related concept is a federal agency like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Although, is the “Explosives” necessary? I thought that was always implied in “Firearms”? Anyway, it could cut down on crime, violent crime, and consumption of these substances all at once. Maybe it could even help to deter Security Threats since they handle armed ‘cults’ and civil stand-offs, and apparently now they also specialize in bomb threats. It would increase health and maybe even education a little bit, depending on Public Education funding. How much funding it gets would determine how much it makes Patriots, Liberals, and Youth unhappy and Conservatives, Religious, and Parents happy.
Those are just my ideas. I don’t know if that helps at all. You got me on a roll, though.
Interesting thoughts!
I like the idea of policies to set advertising + public use rules. The only thing that bugs me is that then, we’d have 5 closely related policies dealing with the same end result (alcohol consumption). Even though I initially asked for it, I’m wondering if it’s too much clutter for the end result. In terms of the suggested effects, I don’t think a GDP reduction is justified. Government revenue reduction is handled through reduced consumption leading to reduced tax take, and my gut says that restricting booze sales wouldn’t be a significant enough factor to reduce GDP (just checked - at the moment, the game does not reduce GDP for reduced booze intake directly). I agree that heavier legislation would annoy the liberals. I’m not sure that it’s something the capitalists would care about, and tighter booze laws should please conservatives.
The ATF is a really interesting suggestion. I’m umming and aaahing over whether it’s redundant with the general Security Services policy. I like the idea of it impacting consumption as well as organised crime/crime/violent crime. I think the health effects are best handled through the reduction in consumption rather than a direct link, and the education effect is best left to education policies (wellbeing education, etc.)
I agree that it may end up all being a little redundant. I was thinking about that as it was all rolling out.
I didn’t think about that with the GDP. Thank you for explaining that to me. Economics is my weak spot.
I really like the idea of separate educational policies. I support that. And I’ve also given it some thought as to what those mods would be like.
My justification in those policies making Capitalists unhappy was that regulating advertisement and banning popular products is interfering in the ‘free market’ and taking away opportunities for profit.