tobacco

ᔥ NZ Herald

The Herald editorial today is sensible in its attack on plain packaging as the silver bullet in stopping fools from smoking:

Diehard smokers must be accustomed to the legislative insult by now. Banished from public places, taxed mercilessly, assailed with simple health warnings, assumed to be helpless victims of tobacco companies, they are now to be saved from branded packaging.

The Government has been persuaded to follow Australia’s decision requiring cigarettes to be sold in plain packs.

The theory seems to be that if all brands are forced into the same style of packet – perhaps a dirty light brown, dominated by health alerts and grisly pictures, the manufacturer identified in small type of a standard font – smoking will lose much of its remaining appeal. This must be the insult to trump them all.

It is utterly ridiculous to suggest plain packaging wills top idiots from killing themselves slowly.

The tobacco industry has suggested that they will initiate a legal challenge to the proposed legislation. The Herald thinks differently:

In a vigorous response to proposed plain pack legislation in Australia the industry went so far as to threaten to slash the price of cigarettes if it was passed. Price, not packaging, is the most effective weapon against smoking, as the anti-smoking campaign well knows.

Fortunately, the price response was only a threat. When the legislation was passed, one company found a less harmful way to reply. Winfield put a line of cigarettes on the French market in packets branded with a leaping Kangaroo and carrying the slogan, “an Australian favourite”.

Humour is the proportionate response for a heavy-handed policy that will probably have minimal effect on the industry’s profits or the incidence of smoking. Plain packs seem unlikely to bring the anti-smoking campaign much closer to its goal of a smokefree New Zealand by 2025. That goal, endorsed by the Government, could require much more drastic steps, especially in taxation.

The tobacco lobbyists seem blessed with a special kind of stupid…instead of being creative they go for corporate legalese as the solution.

If I was a tobacco company I would have announced that they welcomed the plain packaging rules. The legislation would remove the costly need to brand marketing and consequently allow them to make even more money from selling tobacco products because plain packaging is much cheaper. It is after all the rationale behind plain packaging of supermarket home brands. They could also standardise their offerings as well removing the need to brand testing and they could also further increase profits by using lower quality tobacco, since branding is gone, so too should taste and flavour. All in all they could even lower the price of cigarettes and make bigger profits.

Plain packaging won’t stop idiots smoking.

Here is the audio from yesterday:

The topics for discussion were:

Icky sex offender in schools - finally caught.

The manufactured “outcry” over the welfare reforms – the usual montage of bumper sticker slogans from the usual suspects.

And finally more ridiculous calls for Mike Moore to be censured/sacked/hung from the gallows over the trade function he hosted which was partly sponsored by a tobacco company.

Andrew Sullivan make a good point on talk about prohibition of tobacco:

Crazy talk. Can you imagine the costs of prohibition? Let alone the power of a government dedicated not to providing liberty but to extending life, regardless of liberty? I hate cigarettes, partly by growing up an asthmatic in a house where cigarette smoke hung always in the air. But I find the attempt to ban them, stigmatize them and ostracize smokers to be creepily authoritarian. Sure, keep them out of the public. But if you want to die young because you love tobacco, who on earth am I to tell you otherwise?

Hone Harawira demands such a prohibition. After the Exclusive Brethren smokers are the most vilified people in New Zealand society. Yet they contribute to this nation far more than non-smokers. I think smokers should have a “Gold Card” instead of pensioners.

The Greens are big fans of banning things. There is even a massive list of things they want banned. In the past several days they have posts adding more things they want banned. controlled or taxed.

Today they are talking about banning and controlling again, this time it is the Super Fund and where they invest.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman today said the fund had a “long record of complacency towards ethical investment” and it was no surprise it been caught investing in tobacco.

“The fund directors have been caught out previously for unethical investment behaviour after it was revealed they were profiting from the whaling industry and the cluster munitions industry,” he said.

“This is not a professional way to manage a $19 billion investment fund and risks serious damage to our reputation as a responsible member of the world community.”

I totally support the Greens attack on the Super Fund for investing in a company with a subsidiary that makes cigarettes .They should instead invest in cannabis and Kronic production which the Greens tell us is totally healthy and is about the only things they want un-banned.

Psycho Milt exposes Peter Dunne’s rank hypocrisy over the banning of synthetic cannabinoids:

Stuff, 2 August 2011:

tupeka

(loan) (noun) tobacco.

hikareti

(loan) (noun) cigarette.

pūahi

(noun) cigarette lighter.

Modern Usage:

The Maori party want to ban the word tupeka.

They hope that their people will then stop using the pūahi to light up their hikareti.

Using this approach the maori party will also seek to ban the words tūkino, kōhuru, apuapu and waipiro.

That will stop the child abuse, the murder, obesity and alcoholism in Maori for sure.

That will fix it bro, ban them nasty words that make our people suffer.

Prisoners with alcohol and drug addictions have to deal with it. We don’t offer alcohol to prisoners with alcohol addictions or P to prisoners with methamphetamine addictions. This is a prison, it’s not a home.

Judith Collins

The hand-wringiners are out in force.

A comprehensive cessation programme must be available to prisoners if smoking is banned in jails, the Rethinking Crime and Punishment group says.

The Government is reportedly looking at making prisons smokefree from next year, with Corrections Minister Judith Collins expected to make an announcement early this week.

The Corrections Department is concerned taxpayers could be liable for legal action from prison officers exposed to inmates’ second-hand smoke and also the potential threat of lawsuits from nonsmoking prisoners, bunking with prisoners who do smoke.

Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon told Radio New Zealand prisoners did not like change.

“People coming off nicotine can be very unpredictable, can be very anxious, aggressive and we’re going to have a large part of our prison population going through that and we’re (prison officers) going to have to manage them,” he said.

You can’t get a more comprehensive cessation programme than cold-turkey. Once the crim enters the doors of the prison, they stop smoking, and they stop for the entire stretch. My bet is that troughers like Shane Bradbrook will be lining up to line their own pocket to provide smoking cessation programmes to criminals in jail. They are not needed. Cold Turkey will stop them smoking for sure.

Implementation is simple too. Announce a date when smoking ceases, enforce it, end of implementation  programme.

I don’t like smoking, well actually I do, but the health issues mean I don’t smoke. Still a fine cuban cigar is something to be savoured.

For me smoking has always been a personal choice issue. However our governments over the years have deemed tobacco to be evil and that people shouldn’t smoke. Despite all the evidence about the negative health effects there are people who still choose to smoke. The government doesn’t want them to smoke but no politician, until today, has ever had the gumption to ban tobacco outright.

Smoking will be banned in all prisons from next year, the Herald on Sunday has learned.

Corrections minister Judith Collins is expected to announce this week that a 12-month preparation plan will be rolled out that should see all prisons go smoke-free by July next year.

Department of Corrections bosses found taxpayers could be liable for lawsuits from prison guards exposed to inmates’ second-hand smoke.

The potential threat of legal action was heightened after the Government’s decision to “double bunk” inmates in a single cell, raising the possibility of non-smoking prisoners suing the Government for being housed with smoking inmates.

There goes another cushy reason for life-time criminals to want to be banged up. No more baccy, and their health improves along with it so they get to feel the effects of being banging up a whole lot better.

The dangers of legal action were found after Collins instructed Corrections staff to investigate a ban, and its success rates overseas.

They found tobacco was used as currency inside prison and was the cause of disputes. Further reasons for the ban included the use of cigarette lighters and matches to melt plastic into which blades could be embedded, turning cell possessions into weapons.

Anti-smoking Maori Party MP Hone Harawira supported the move but warned a total ban could lead to an outbreak of violence among prisoners.

Hone Harawira is at least consistent in his approach to tobacco, but the threat of violence in prisons should be no barrier to making them smoke-free.

To my mind this is a move long overdue. If our veterans aren’t allowed to smoke in the RSA then why should criminals be allowed to smoke in prisons. Judith Collins is clearly a politician of her own personal convictions, and she will fight tooth and nail for things she believes in rather than the politically expedient. Oh that other politicians would have a spine such as hers.

I will be called a racist for saying this but I don’t care. I have come to the conclusion that Maori are thick. Dumber than your average bear. Stupid. Dumb and Dumber rolled in one. Dumber than a sack of hammers.

Exhibit 1: Tau Henare, whinging and moaning about Phillip Morris. Fuck’s sake man take some personal responsibility and man up. You deserved the kicking you got on Facebook too. Only Maori would be the best in the world at quitting being quitters.

Exhibit 2: Foreshore and Seabed. Only Maori could take venality and pimp it out.I say in the Gisborne theatre last election and listened to Derek Fox explain just exactly what it was that maori wanted. The right to go to court like everyone else, and Helen Clark got scared and legislated that away. National offered to listen and provide a solution, and did exactly as they promised. Now Maori have decided that national’s solution isn’t good enough, that IWI really does mean I Want It, all. Well they can get fucked. My patience with Maori is at an end. They are venal, corrupt, lying, lazy useless fuckers. If I was National I would give them exactly what Derek Fox explained, the right to go to court and nothing more. Fuck them.

Exhibit 3: Veteran troughers who manufacture puff pieces about “strategies” to stop maori smoking that repeaters dutifully repeat. FFS Shane Bradbrook is a legendary rorter of tapayers money and it sounds like he has done it again. Time for some more OIA’s. “Developed a strategy“, pah!

The strategy will prohibit tobacco from events under control of the iwi’s governing body, including the annual general meeting, kapa haka, and various celebrations, tournaments and festivals.

The timeframe indicated by the strategy is within two years, although the exact date is yet to be set.

Four years is the suggested time for persuading the iwi’s whanau and hapu to follow suit and ban tobacco from their marae, cemeteries, sacred places, ancestral mountains and rivers.

The bans on tobacco possession will be preceded by prohibitions on smoking.

These moves will be coupled with greater promotion of smoke-free homes and vehicles, and greater encouragement for smokers to make more attempts to quit.

Four Years! To do what should take fucking five minutes, only a trougher would develop a stragety that enables him to cream it for 4 years when the description consists of no more than a sentence here or there. Dear taxpayer this is what you undoubtedly will have paid for:

The Ban:

* Not just a smoking ban.

* Tobacco to be prohibited from events under direct control of the iwi’s governing body.

* The iwi will encourage members to ban tobacco from their marae and other places.

Whoopie, fucking group hug and a big fuck yeah we’re cool high fives and hand signs!

Actually I take it all back it isn’t Maori that are thick, It is National and white middle class liberal pany-waist New Zealanders, can’t even tell when the Maori is up with with their dog as well.

Maori? They is cunning eh boy?