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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 10:48 AM EDT |
Irrespective of your views on smoking, this barking idea is just the latest
salvo from the anti-smoking lobby and an attempt to extend the successful
banning of Tobacco product advertising.
By insisting on indistinguishable plain unadorned packaging, they are
effectively writing a criminals charter, and many much more lethal substances
are likely to find a place in the plain boxes.
Thanks to the extremely successful taxation/pricing campaign this is now a
higher margin black market product than cocaine or heroine, with none of the
associated risks.
The "Obvious" solution to this problem of course will be to ban
tobacco products entirely.
Setting that aside, there are many in the anti-smoking lobby who believe they've
pretty much won and it's just now an exercise in waiting for the current
generation of smokers to die, unfortunately as it turns out to be not exactly
*very* toxic, this could take many decades. In the meantime they've set their
sights on the next most lethal substance responsible for killing thousands;
Alcohol.
This is already evident in the 'minimum price per unit' campaign which is a
thinly disguised attempt to reduce alcohol consumption through the technique of
pricing it out of reach. Once it is accepted as a valid idea, phase 2 will be a
dogged campaign to continually increase the minimum price/taxation level (as per
tobacco), and in the meantime you can just follow the extremely successful
techniques employed in the anti-smoking campaign.
Benzene and Water in plain glass bottles labelled in mono space courier font
"vodka" and "rum" anyone?
Incidentally, the most significant beneficiaries of the "Success" of
the anti-smoking campaign are the giant pharma companies who have secured the
distribution network for "Tobacco Replacement Products". In the UK at
least these products are largely funded by the state as an aid to "Cure the
sick" smokers, because as we know, addiction is a sickness.
In the main, these products are used by happy smokers to tide them through long
haul journeys where no smoking facilities are available.
Be careful what you wish for.
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| Authored by: complex_number on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 01:27 PM EDT |
| [www,reuters.com]
To be honest and as an ex-smoker who gave up
in 1972 the sooner 'fags' are banned the better.
I once spent three days
working in an office with three guys who chain smoked. They got through at least
40 a day each. This was at the Steelworks in Linx, Austria. At the end of the
third day I tried to drive to Vienna to get my flight home. By the time I was
sitting in the departure loungs I was suffering the shakes, sweating and
everything else associated with Nicotine withdrawal. The ground staff very
nearly didn't let me on the flight. I explained what had happend and one of the
laughed. He was from Linz and had working at the Steelworks when younger.
I
am saddened by the numbers of young women who smoke. IT seems that there are far
more young women than men taking up this filthy habit. The prevalance of smoking
amongst so called supermodels might have something to do with it.
I am all
for civil liberties but there comes a time when things like this are past their
sell by dates(should that be their smoke by dates) and should be banned. We have
reduced the incidents of drink driving by making it socially unacceptable in
many places. It might be that tobbacco has had its day.
---
Ubuntu &
'apt-get' are not the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything which is of
course, "42" or is it 1.618?
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