By the way, a quick addendum to this astonishingly ill-tempered rant...
liberal
adjective
1 willing to respect and accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own.
2 (of a society, law, etc.) favourable to individual rights and freedoms.
My prediction: smoking will outlast the institution known as the "Scottish Parliament", indeed it will still be with us when the countries known as "Scotland" and "the UK" are the distant genetic memories of our post-human descendents. Smoking is an ancient and noble pastime which will easily prove itself immune to the demagoguery of ninth-rate regional politicians.
I guess cigs are expensive over there? I can get cartons of 200 cigs for $17.00 here and 14 ounces of tobacco for 15.00. So once in awhile I send a carton to a friend in Aberdeen and a couple of packages of tobacco to a friend in Thurso. Don't know why Governments make it so difficult for us smokers..But..where there is a will, there is a way.
Have a great day FR..
Crackdown on smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes
If this means a resurgence of novels about romantic smugglers and their exploits against the excisemen, then I am all in favour.
We've just reinstated cigarettes in our Student Union shop on the basis that we've found some fair-trade (or equivalent) ones. So now I could take up smoking with a clear conscience... If only everyone was so altruistic.
The trouble for the smokers is that diminished lung capacity makes it awfully hard to endure long protest marches and yell through megaphones. Easy marks for the rev'noo, y'see.
It all seems counter-productive, as most prohibition movements are. I gave up (not looking for a halo) on the occasion of the birth of my daughter last year but resisted packing in smoking for years due to the heavy handed governmental botty smacking they kept being offered up through advertisments (this applies on both sides of the Atlantic). Something about the sanctimonious ads trigged my defiance mode and made me light up as I flicked vs at the telly.
I don't give two hoots if people smoke or not (and the health cost argument doesn't wash from both the British and American governments who seem intent on banckrupting my as-yet unborn grandchildren through warfare and bank bailouts). Not really sure why the government should, either.
Exactly.
Speaking as a fairly doctrinaire left-liberal type, I'd far rather that the government spent less time hassling me for my vices and more time herding the upper classes into re-education camps at gunpoint.
Really, some times I feel like the lone voice of sanity in a land of lunatics.
My prediction: smoking will outlast the institution known as the "Scottish Parliament", indeed it will still be with us when the countries known as "Scotland" and "the UK" are the distant genetic memories of our post-human descendents. Smoking is an ancient and noble pastime which will easily prove itself immune to the demagoguery of ninth-rate regional politicians.
Well, perhaps rather their demagoguery than pleased-with-itself-silly-little-boydom. Smoking in the UK is actually little older than the UK itself and rather less ancient than Scotland.
a couple of packages of tobacco to a friend in Thurso
If Thurso is anything like Wick, I'd imagine that would last about an evening and a half. Though the evenings are of course fairly long there...
You should try being the lone voice of lunacy in a land of sanatics. I assure you that it is far more enjoyable.
Not just bad for you flying rodent - but bad for children as well (if you have any, of course).
The children of smokers are three more times likely than sproggs of non-smokers to develop a nicotine addiction - while advertising encourages children to start smoking at an early age (typically from age 11 onwards).
It is estimated 25% of all teens are regular smokers by the time they hit the ancient milestone of 15yrs of age.
But if you want to roll the dice with cancer, chronic respiritory disorders, or cardio-vascular disease, then that, as Bobby Brown says, is your 'perogative'.
You've mistaken me for someone who believes that any of the anti-smoking measures on the table will make a blind bit of difference to that situation.
Also, I find kids far less genial company than dogs or cats, and only slightly better than hamsters, so the Won't somebody think of the children! gambit isn't going to cut much ice with me.
Your sceptism is entirely understandable FR.
We have 13 million smokers in the UK (give or take) but cessation rates hardly ever get better than 3% - testament, surely, to the addictive powers of nicotine ?
http://aspsilverbackwebsites.co..../ref/
paper2.pdf
The main difference, of course, between domesticated pets and children is that one rarely encounters cats, dogs, or even hamsters attached to an oxygen cylinder.
Perhaps you could still spare a thought to tomorrows children, in time (as adults) many will suffer dreadfully as a result of their poor decision making during adolescence ?
Like you I have no idea if the proposed measures will influence existing addicts, or those new to the habit - but I do know that smoking is the single most important 'modifiable factor' in disease prevention.
BTW, please don't shoot the messenger, I remain a firm advocate of the Bobby Brown principle, cue "my prerogative".
Perhaps you could still spare a thought to tomorrows children, in time (as adults) many will suffer dreadfully as a result of their poor decision making during adolescence ?
I was fifteen when I started - I'm thirty now. I can identify with this, but as I've already said the what about the children argument doesn't work on me at all.
Like you I have no idea if the proposed measures will influence existing addicts, or those new to the habit - but I do know that smoking is the single most important 'modifiable factor' in disease prevention.
That's the point, Nursey. We all know smoking is bad for you, but what to do about it?
Surely there's no point in forcing smokers to hop on one leg and ask for 20 Benson in falsetto if it won't stop them smoking... Especially if the motivation is being seen to be doing something by playing on the public's arsehole opinions about smokers.
This is why I'm offering a positive policy proposal - if we want to drastically cut down smoking rates, then ban tobacco and criminalise possession. That's the only measure that's going to work, because increasing prices just means an ever more thriving black market.
Everything else is either moral grandstanding or a pointless annoyance.
> if politicians are serious about stopping us smoking, then just go ahead and ban tobacco entirely
Yeah, banning things works a treat. It worked for maruijana, guns, and ripping CDs, so why wouldn't it work for tobacco?
It'd work a hell of a lot better than hiding cigs under the counter, for a start, and it'd demonstrate a willingness on the part of the government to forego all that juicy tax.
You know, show a bit of intellectual honesty.
When it comes to designing policy, give me pragmatism over intellectual honesty any day. Banning handguns was intellectually honest, in that the politicians who voted for it really were against gun ownership, but it's still a crap idea and gun crime has got a lot worse since, just as some of us predicted it would.
And would it really work better than hiding tobacco under the counter? Depends what you mean by "better", I suppose. Smokers would go to visit drug dealers who'd have an active interest in getting them hooked on harder stuff and would therefore sell them cigarettes cut with crack. The minimum age for smoking would vanish. Yet another massive portion of the law-abiding population would be legislated into criminality. Not what I call "better", but to each their own.
...gun crime has got a lot worse since
Is that directly related to banning handguns? Not to be too much of a dick about it, but is it possible that gun crime might have got worse even if guns were still legal? It seems to be accepted wisdom that one has led to the other, but I doubt it, unless you think that the teenagers and petty criminals shooting each other made up a large proportion of the type of person who used to own guns legally.
On the cigs, you'll notice I'm quite in favour of smoking. I'm not calling for a ban, I'm saying that if politicians are so concerned about stopping smoking, then a ban is the only method that will drastically reduce smoking. That's "drastically reduce" and not "eradicate" - I've got some experience of how effective The War On The Drugs has been.
As I said in the post, I'd far rather they just shut their pieholes and left us alone, since this is just political wank designed to make themselves look good.
> I'm saying that if politicians are so concerned about stopping smoking, then a ban is the only method that will drastically reduce smoking.
Yes, that's the bit I was disagreeing with. Smoking has been drastically reduced over the last hundred years, without being banned. Meanwhile, a load of other substances have been banned and their use has either not decreased or has actually increased. Given that evidence, I'm wondering how anyone could seriously think that a ban on a popular addictive substance might work. Just like the under-the-counter plan, it does achieve all sorts of things that might be useful to politicians, but not the one thing that they claim it's for.
> is it possible that gun crime might have got worse even if guns were still legal?
Well, I'm a great believer in the scientific method when it comes to judging these things, to the extent that it can work with so many variables. It would be easy to say only in retrospect that one had caused the other, and it would be just as easily dismissed. But it's not just retrospective: a bunch of people had a theory before the ban, used that theory to make a prediction, and that prediction has come true. Yeah, it could be coincidence, but it lends a lot of weight to their theory and there are only two other theories in town: the one the ban was based on, which made a prediction which turned out to be utterly wrong, and "it's a coincidence", which isn't exactly rigorous. And then there's the fact that Britain isn't the only test case in the experiment. Every single US state that has introduced concealed-carry licenses has seen a reduction in violent crime. Not really the same sort of situation as in Britain, no, but still further evidence against the coincidence theory.
Look at it this way: in the coming US election, I will disbelieve the predictions of every pundit who said Kerry would win the last one, and give a lot of credence to those who said Bush would win.
> I doubt it, unless you think that the teenagers and petty criminals shooting each other made up a large proportion of the type of person who used to own guns legally.
But that's a misrepresentation of the theory. The problem is the same as with drugs: banning something makes the black market thrive.
Smoking has been drastically reduced over the last hundred years, without being banned.
I agree with that, which is why I'm not in favour of a ban. However, it makes no sense to compare cigarettes to drugs, for the simple fact that smoking doesn't get you high.
They're not acid or cocaine. People attempt to procure both of those because they make you feel brilliant - cigs don't. Sure, there'd be a thriving black market, but we already have that because of the ridiculous price. That would dwindle in time as there wouldn't be the same uptake, purely because of the cost/benefit of seeking out cigarettes. Kids would inevitably score illicit packs here and there, but you really have to work at it to get a proper addiction, and it's the addiction that keeps people smoking.
Point is, if we banned pogo sticks and criminalised possession, sure, there'd be a black market in pogo sticks. But it wouldn't be that big a market, and it would certainly be significantly smaller than that which presently exists. Hence, "drastically reduce" smoking.
I have sympathy with your argument here, because I've worked in the courts and I know exactly how useful our attempts to ban drugs have been. It just fails to recognise that the rewards of buying illicit cigs are significantly less than those of buying a bag of Es.
"it's a coincidence", which isn't exactly rigorous
You mean less rigorous than Some bloke said gun crime would go up, and it has, ergo the ban causes crime?
It's a basic logical error. It's about as scientifically rigorous as saying the cat jumped onto the sofa then the doorbell rang, ergo I conclude that either the cat or the sofa controls the doorbell.
But that's a misrepresentation of the theory
If it is, it suggests there's something wrong with the theory. Guns weren't freely available before they were banned - they were controlled. The black market preceded the ban, because there was a demand for off-the-record weapons. The ban may have made the trade more lucrative for the seller, but demand would've stayed the same - the teenagers and petty criminals, plus the same gangsters we've always had.
That makes me conclude that there must be other factors influencing the figures. After all, knife crime is up, but butterfly knives etc. are no more legal today than they were ten years ago - the only change is that now, you get a harsher sentence if you get caught.
> it makes no sense to compare cigarettes to drugs
So compare them to pogo sticks instead.
> It's about as scientifically rigorous as saying the cat jumped onto the sofa then the doorbell rang, ergo I conclude that either the cat or the sofa controls the doorbell.
No, it's more akin to someone predicting that your doorbell will ring and your doorbell then ringing. And someone else insisting that there's no way in a million years it could ever ring, no, can't happen, it's just scaremongering to suggest that it could ring, and then, when it rings, insisting that their predictive model is nevertheless still more accurate than the first guy's and that I would therefore have to be stupid not to take their next prediction seriously.
> there must be other factors
And I don't think I said there weren't. For the record, I reckon the biggest factor in the increase in violent crime is the authorities' mistaken belief that they can simply ban violence, which has led to their determination to punish anyone who uses physical means to defend themselves. The gun ban is a result of that attitude, but it's not the whole shebang, no.
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