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Why Am I Just Not Surprised?

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June 18th, 2007 by ThunderDragon

Why am I just not at all surprised at this story?

“The government is considering a ban on the sale of packs of 10 cigarettes because it believes they encourage children to take up smoking.
The move is part of a new wave of antitobacco legislation being considered by Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, to maintain momentum in the campaign against smoking after it is banned in enclosed public places from July 1.
Other planned curbs on tobacco sales include outlawing the display of cigarettes in newsagents and supermarkets and removing cigarette vending machines from pubs.
Hewitt believes the measures should be targeted at preventing teenagers from becoming hooked on cigarettes.” (The Times)

It is just another really bad thought out and completely unnecessarily intrusive idea.

Smoking is not illegal, and therefore the government should stay away from dictating how people who choose to smoke do it. They may wish to buy packets of ten, twenty, or any other number that is made - and that is their choice. They are already telling people that they can’t smoke in pubs - and virtually all other public spaces - from July 1. Is that not enough dictation into how and where people who choose to smoke do it?! Obviously not for Nanny State.

Next they’ll be saying that off-licences can’t sell beer in single cans or even packs of four or cider in bottles less than 5 or 10 litres in size!

If you really think about it, why would packs of ten make teenagers more likely to smoke? Surely eradicating them would cause more to smoke? After all, twenty is twice as many cigarettes as ten, and if you’ve spent so much money on them, you might as well smoke them… I just can’t see how packets of ten cigarettes can cause teenagers to smoke any more than any other size, especially since packs of twenty cost less per cigarette than ten-packs. If this stupid idea every made it into law, I would fully support, and laugh heartily, if tobacco companies produced packs of 12 or something instead.

Why is Patricia Hewitt saying this sort of stuff anyway? Everyone knows she will be out of a job from June 27!

Image by Cigarette Packet Generator
Source: The Times

Nanny State, Smoking, Smoking Ban

Nanny State Says: Don’t Drink Or Smoke, It’s Bad

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June 5th, 2007 by ThunderDragon

It appears that the government is going even further in it’s efforts to ban pleasure.

First Nanny said “put warning labels on smoking packets”, and so it was done. But people kept smoking because they wanted to. Then Nanny said “let’s put warning labels on alcohol too!” Now Nanny wants to even further, as people have continued smoking and drinking even though Nanny has told them that it’s bad.

Now smokers could be denied surgery - even on operations that have nothing to do with smoking, and that smoking could not possibly have caused or effected. Although emergency operations would not be denied, for any “routine” surgery a smoker has to give up at least a month beforehand.

But smoking is not alone in being attacked by Nanny State as a “bad thing”. Alcohol, too, is under that heading in Nanny’s little red book. And it is Nanny’s aim to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking. Nanny wants to “educate” middle-class wine drinkers particularly, because “[t]hey do not realise the damage they are doing to their health and that they risk developing liver disease .” But I think that, yes, they do know the risks inherent in drinking alcohol. Just like smokers know the risks inherent in smokers, and sportsmen and women know the risks inherent in playing sport. But they choose to do it anyway.

Nanny also wants to legislate to ensure that all alcoholic drinks sold in bottles and cans carry labels with the number of units in that drink and “recommended safe drinking limits”. Drinks already carry that, and as proof, here’s a photo of beer from my fridge [left, click to enlarge]. They already carry the number of units, and anyone who drinks from them isn’t going to pay any attention to the “recommended safe drinking limits” written on them. People already know what is safe to drink, usually through experimentation and feeling the after effects - a far better preventative than Nanny’s preaching.

Raising taxes won’t stop people from drinking. It didn’t [and won't] stop them smoking, after all! It is taxes from alcohol and cigarettes which pay for more than treating any injuries and illnesses which they cause. That they can suggest that smokers should be denied surgery is disgusting, and if that comes into force, then taxes on smoking should be lowered to take into account the lack of service smokers can expect. People should be encouraged not to smoke or drink excessively, through educating people of what the effects can be - but in the end it is their choice, not Nanny’s. We live in a free, liberal democratic state, not Stalin’s Russia. If someone wants to drink or smoke themselves to death, than that is their own choice, and it is not up to anyone, and especially not Nanny State, to force them to stop.

Sources: The Telegraph, The Times

Alcohol, Nanny State, Smoking
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