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jack_spain 
Joined: 03 May 2008
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| Post subject: Hypocrites! Why don't they just ban cigs. |  |
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I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, although I tried a cigar once. But I've never been worried about cigarette smoke (my partner's a smoker), and frankly I enjoy the company of people who transgress against conformist society.
But then this story surfaces again:
| Quote: | Victorian doctors are calling on the state government to raise the cost of cigarettes to $20 a pack to help cut smoking rates.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) Victoria has called on the government to introduce a new tobacco transaction tax that would raise the cost of a pack of 30 cigarettes to about $20 from July 2012.
AMA Victoria president Harry Hemley said that in a survey this year, three quarters of smokers said they would quit if the price of cigarettes rose by half.
"A significant price increase should be the next step in reducing the addiction, disease and death we see from cigarette smoking," Dr Hemley said.
"Children are particularly price sensitive, so a steep increase in the cost of smokes should see less children taking up this destructive habit." |
Geez the wowsers are firmly in control of society now. Just watch as their next target is drinks. Sin taxes are forms of social engineering. Why don't we go the whole hog and tax all forms of pleasurable activity. Watch as they bring in fast food taxes as well.
I would like to see them try to introduce a bedroom tax. You pay double the rate for sex out of wedlock. 
The hypocritical politicians should just bite the bullet and ban cigs like other contraband drugs. But then prohibition NEVER works does it.
Roger Scruton is right, "The health fanatics who have poisoned all our natural enjoyments ought, in my view, to be rounded up and locked together in a place where they can bore each other rigid with their futile nostrums for eternal life."
They seem to forget: Life is a terminal condition anyway. May as well enjoy the few years we have on earth. |
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John Wren 
"Look after the game. It means so much to so many."
Joined: 15 Jul 2007
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| Post subject: Re: Hypocrites! Why don't they just ban cigs. | |
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| jack_spain wrote: |
They seem to forget: Life is a terminal condition anyway. May as well enjoy the few years we have on earth. |
so why fast track yourself to death? i think it is an absurd passtime and should be banned full stop.
i gave up seven years ago and on reflection wish i had never smoked.
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Purveyor of sanctimonious twaddle. |
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OEP 
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Location: Perth
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| Post subject: Re: Hypocrites! Why don't they just ban cigs. | |
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| jack_spain wrote: | | They seem to forget: Life is a terminal condition anyway. May as well enjoy the few years we have on earth. |
Fine if people that can't stop smoking want fast forward their deaths that's their decision, my problem is when they do so in an area that affects other people who abstain from the habit. Yet these people then have to breath in their deadly second hand smoke.
You want to smoke, fine go and do it where you don't affect others.
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A Collingwood supporter since the egg was inseminated. |
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Pied Piper
Joined: 20 May 2003
Location: Pig City
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| Post subject: Re: Hypocrites! Why don't they just ban cigs. | |
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| jack_spain wrote: | | They seem to forget: Life is a terminal condition anyway. May as well enjoy the few years we have on earth. |
I can assure you my partner's mother wasn't thinking of a life well and fully lived when she died, in agony when not rendered senseless by morphine, of smoking-related cancer and emphysema a couple of years ago.
I can also assure you my partner and her sisters weren't thinking that at least she died doing something she loved, either. They were thinking of how their mum was taken from them too soon. She was only 59.
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"The greatest thing that could happen to the nation is when we get rid of all the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquillity, and no one would know anything." - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen |
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Pied Piper
Joined: 20 May 2003
Location: Pig City
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| Post subject: Re: Hypocrites! Why don't they just ban cigs. | |
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| jack_spain wrote: | | Roger Scruton is right, "The health fanatics who have poisoned all our natural enjoyments ought, in my view, to be rounded up and locked together in a place where they can bore each other rigid with their futile nostrums for eternal life." |
I was also curious about Roger Scruton so I wiki'd him. Interesting result:
| wrote: | Scruton has been involved in various business ventures, most notably Horsell's Farm Enterprises, a consulting firm advising clients on public relations, which he co-founded in 1999. This firm has been the source of some controversy, since among its clients is one of the world's largest tobacco companies, for which a quarterly briefing paper, The Risk of Freedom Briefing, has been prepared and circulated to press and politicians since 2000.
In early 2002, The Guardian disclosed a leaked confidential e-mail in which Scruton asked Japan Tobacco International for an increase of £1,000 over his existing fee of £4,500 per month and discussed his aim of getting opinion pieces published "in one or other of The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Independent or the New Statesman" on "major topics of current concern" to the tobacco industry.[13] As a result of the disclosure, The Financial Times dropped his weekly column, "This Land". Scruton asserts that his relationship with JTI was never concealed, and the new proposal was never acted upon, but his critics respond that his previous articles failed to mention any links to the tobacco industry. |
I wonder if he was being paid extra for the quote Jack has cited above.
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"The greatest thing that could happen to the nation is when we get rid of all the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquillity, and no one would know anything." - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen |
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| Post subject: Re: Hypocrites! Why don't they just ban cigs. | |
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| jmcp wrote: | | jack_spain wrote: |
They seem to forget: Life is a terminal condition anyway. May as well enjoy the few years we have on earth. |
so why fast track yourself to death? i think it is an absurd passtime and should be banned full stop. |
Exactly. You do indeed only live once - so why ruin great chunks of it with cigarettes?
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Dr Pie
Dr Pie
Joined: 08 Nov 2007
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If the world had known as much about the medical effects of cigarette smoking a century ago as they do now, cigarette smoking would be treated as drug abuse and Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds et al would be treated as drug pushers. They have killed far more people than Robert Trimboli, Terry Clarke, Carl Williams and the other convicted criminal drug pushers.
Cigarette smoking is as addictive as heroin and kills far more people. It is much more dangerous than marijuana. It does not have the positive effects of alcohol in small doses. With wine, one glass can have positive health outcomes, it only becomes a problem when you have many glasses. One cigarette is bad for you, two cigarettes are worse for you.
If the truth about nicotine had been known in the nineteenth century, cigarettes would have been outlawed. Instead, by the time the facts emerged, cigarettes were being produced by large companies whose shares were owned by the rich and powerful and no government dares to ban smoking. It is much easier for governments to tax smokers than to take away the profits of millionaires with all the right connections!
Cigarette smoking is not transgressing against conformist society, Jack. Providing profits for millionaires through dumb consumerism isn't remotely transgressive. It's like people who think that they are rebels because they own vicious dogs, own guns and wear or display a Confederate flag in Australia. Actually all they are doing is following stereotypes that they picked up from second rate Yank TV.
In the interests of disclosure, I smoked heavily until the age of 40. As a consequence I contracted bladder cancer, which fortunately has a survival rate of 95% if caught early enough, which mine was. Quite a few of the people with whom I smoked cigarettes in the 60s and 70s are no longer with us!
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Born and raised in Black and White |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Jack, you'll get strong support blocking Conroy's net filter, but you won't for this. It's game over for smoking. Not to mention pro-smoking outrage is officially the most overdone stand-up comedy routine on the planet. And for all the hoo-ha we all know society won't touch drinking except around the edges, it won't touch porn and we've already legalised prostitution and gambling. Of course it's all arbitrary - morality always is - but we're hardly being overrun by restrictions as libertarians keep claiming.
Pursuing the legalisation, control and taxation of certain illicit drugs that do little but increase the crime rate of the lower-income classes and clog the courts is a far more worthy cause than trying to wind back smoking restrictions. But then one would have to be consciously on the side of reducing societal control of the lower-income classes to do that, and of course we all know that aside from lip service, in reality the only political interest in the lower-income classes that libertarianism has is opposing affirmative action. |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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If smoking was illegal nobody but addicts would bother with it because it's a pointless drug. There's no "high" or euphoria only a slight buzz that's not even as good as a red bull.
Taxing it into submission works fine for me, the addicts can still indulge their uncontrollable behaviour and very few kids will take up a ridiculous addiction. Like someone has said, tobacco would've been illegal long ago if it's effects where known during the widespread banning of mind altering substances in the early 20th century. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| Who? |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Stop stalking me you malfunctioning robot. |
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rocketronnie
Joined: 06 Sep 2006
Location: Reservoir
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I'm quite a heavy smoker (in a permanent state of contemplation regarding quitting) and I say ban them ASAP. Spain is talking out of his ass, there are no enjoyable outcomes from smoking. Those who wish to maintain a nicotine addiction can use the gum. That's what I'm thinking of doing when i finally cut the cigarette ties in 2010.
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"Only the weak believe that what they do in battle is who they are as men" - Thomas Marshall - "Ironclad". |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| And people who say prohibition doesn't work... how many heroin addicts do you know? It does work, there's just some flotsam and jetsam left in it's wake. Obviously it's never a perfect solution and some less harmful drugs like marijuana get caught up in it, but overall it's preferable to prohibit things like heroin than have a nation of junkies and addicts. |
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Pied Piper
Joined: 20 May 2003
Location: Pig City
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| Wokko wrote: | | And people who say prohibition doesn't work... how many heroin addicts do you know? It does work, there's just some flotsam and jetsam left in it's wake. Obviously it's never a perfect solution and some less harmful drugs like marijuana get caught up in it, but overall it's preferable to prohibit things like heroin than have a nation of junkies and addicts. |
More than a few in my time, unfortunately. Some of them are no longer with us. I'm not sure if that would be the case if their addiction had been treated as a health problem rather than a criminal one. To describe them as no more than "flotsam and jetsam" offends me, actually, but that's a separate debate for another topic, so if you want to start one go ahead.
In the meantime let's stick to smoking, and yet another of Jack's ludicrous attempts at attention-seeking (which I think he's addicted to)...
Ronnie, may I suggest a recent drug made my Pfizer called Champix. It's quite incredible. I've seen it cure several of my heavily addicted friends already. One of them had a 40-60 a day roll-up habit and she's now clean as a whistle and loving it.
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcmed.nsf/pages/pfcchamt/$File/pfcchamt.pdf
_________________
"The greatest thing that could happen to the nation is when we get rid of all the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquillity, and no one would know anything." - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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Apologies for the flippant language, I've actually got an uncle who is a heroin addict, my point is there's not very many due mainly to illegality, and prohibition unfortunately doesn't really help those who flaunt the law and use anyway. I agree however that users/addicts need to be treated somewhat differently than pushers/dealers/suppliers and at the moment they're not really. However they chose to use in the first place... tough one.
I smoked in my early 20s, no idea why. Kicked it pretty easily just by choosing not to smoke anymore. Just not a born addict I guess. |
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