At this stage, why not make the whole damn enterprise illegal? I could understand some of the advertising restrictions years ago when you were worried about companies marketing towards children, but any country taxing cigarette use into non-existence reeks of opportunism; let's drive a distasteful and harmful habit to extinction, but in the process let's get our last thirty pieces.

If they're going to make them Foster's-flavored, all that other stuff is just overkill.

Pocket Ninja: If they're going to make them Foster's-flavored, all that other stuff is just overkill.

That's what I came in here to say.

/It's Australian for rat piss.

Let us know if you see a slight rise in smuggling..

UNC_Samurai: At this stage, why not make the whole damn enterprise illegal? I could understand some of the advertising restrictions years ago when you were worried about companies marketing towards children, but any country taxing cigarette use into non-existence reeks of opportunism; let's drive a distasteful and harmful habit to extinction, but in the process let's get our last thirty pieces.

Because they figured out that doesn't work. They are using the method for boiling a live frog, and proving that the slippery slope is not always a fallacy. By slowly ratcheting up the penalties for smoking, they can make more and more people quit. If they banned smoking overnight, people would grow tobacco in their back yards.

UNC_Samurai: At this stage, why not make the whole damn enterprise illegal? I could understand some of the advertising restrictions years ago when you were worried about companies marketing towards children, but any country taxing cigarette use into non-existence reeks of opportunism; let's drive a distasteful and harmful habit to extinction, but in the process let's get our last thirty pieces.

I agree, prohibition works perfectly on illegal drugs!

I predict that australia will see a 10000% increase in black market cigarettes and cigarette smugglers.

Exactly why is tobacco over-legislation any different to the "War on Drugs" or prohibition?

I suppose if the first two attempts failed horribly, then it must be guaranteed that the third will be a rousing success.

UNC_Samurai: At this stage, why not make the whole damn enterprise illegal? I could understand some of the advertising restrictions years ago when you were worried about companies marketing towards children, but any country taxing cigarette use into non-existence reeks of opportunism; let's drive a distasteful and harmful habit to extinction, but in the process let's get our last thirty pieces.

I agree. I smoke, and it's embarrassing and stinky and all that, but when they are farking EVERYWHERE you go, it's hard to quit. I've tried... I know, I have no willpower, I'm a weak stinky loser, but it's illegal to do it pretty much anywhere, including on a goddam PATIO in Calgary, but it's still legal to sell them. Get 'em out of my face. I am far too lazy (and afraid of criminals) to find black market cigs, so that would be that.

People are still going to buy them. For most smokers its the last thing to drop from the budget. What this will probably hurt more than the smokers are the immediate family of smokers.

Jesus. When did Aussies start electing people like this. You guys used to be tough.

I'm not a smoker.

Once you hamstring the users of a product this much you're admitting that you only keep the product within the realm of the law for revenue. Stop demonizing people and throwing them in the back of the bus for following the law, Dicks.

The tobacco falls out of the Outer Party Victory Cigarettes

Cue the Chinese fake cigarettes coming in by the pallet.

Fast food and softdrink companies are going going to suffer the worst.

picturescrazy: Fast food and softdrink companies are going going to suffer the worst.

We're talking about cigarettes, not pot. Sillyhead.

20 AUD is like, what, 3.00 USD? What's the big deal?

/I kid, I kid
//We have to get our money jokes in while we still can

Beer-flavored cigs? Niiiiiiiiiice. I'll have to start smoking.

Philip (sP?) Morris wins on this, they have something like 80% of the market share and now no one can advertise to compete against them.

The federal government in Canada once tried to discourage smoking by putting high taxes on tobacco products. All it did was create a black market in cigarettes. There are times when it's best just to let people do stupid things.

EggFool: I agree. I smoke, and it's embarrassing and stinky and all that, but when they are farking EVERYWHERE you go, it's hard to quit. I've tried... I know, I have no willpower, I'm a weak stinky loser, but it's illegal to do it pretty much anywhere, including on a goddam PATIO in Calgary, but it's still legal to sell them. Get 'em out of my face. I am far too lazy (and afraid of criminals) to find black market cigs, so that would be that.

THIS

Milos Hattrick: The federal government in Canada once tried to discourage smoking by putting high taxes on tobacco products. All it did was create a black market in cigarettes. There are times when it's best just to let people do stupid things.

THIS

The more artificially expensive you make a good, the higher the profit margins for smuggling and black markets. If you taxed dairy creamer at 400 percent people would be hiding it in their asses too.

Milos Hattrick: The federal government in Canada once tried to discourage smoking by putting high taxes on tobacco products. All it did was create a black market in cigarettes. There are times when it's best just to let people do stupid things.

Wait, so your saying that capitalism works and prohibition does not?

Interesting.

Pocket Ninja: If they're going to make them Foster's-flavored, all that other stuff is just overkill.
What's interesting is that Fosters outside Australia tastes quite different to Fosters inside Australia.

At least here in Switzerland, Fosters is quite drinkable. Nothing to rave about, but it's quite easy to knock back a few pints. Certainly better than most of the local favourites. :)

/Might even give it another go when I move back home

picturescrazy: Fast food and softdrink companies are going going to suffer the worst.

He's right, you can use the same rationale on fatty, salty, and sugary foods that you use for cigarrettes. So fast food may well be next.

That comes out to a little over $150 USD for a carton. Damn.

To The Escape Zeppelin!: dairy creamer at 400 percent people would be hiding it in their asses too.

wasn't that in a Japanese porno?

/I contribute nothing

TheDokta: Pocket Ninja: If they're going to make them Foster's-flavored, all that other stuff is just overkill.
What's interesting is that Fosters outside Australia tastes quite different to Fosters inside Australia.

At least here in Switzerland, Fosters is quite drinkable. Nothing to rave about, but it's quite easy to knock back a few pints. Certainly better than most of the local favourites. :)

/Might even give it another go when I move back home

Now wait just a minute here. Your next to the country (Germany) with the best beer anywhere (sorry limeys) and you drink fosters? Sacrilege. Turn in your man card.

The reason none of this works is because people are addicted to cigarettes. The desperate behavior exhibited by smokers can easily be paralleled in that of other junkies. It just happens that cigarettes are legal and many other drugs are not. People will do anything to get their fix.

/and yes, this does apply to many things that are not actual "addictions," to a milder degree

first they lock up and rape their daughters and now this ?

UNC_Samurai: At this stage, why not make the whole damn enterprise illegal? I could understand some of the advertising restrictions years ago when you were worried about companies marketing towards children, but any country taxing cigarette use into non-existence reeks of opportunism; let's drive a distasteful and harmful habit to extinction, but in the process let's get our last thirty pieces.

Making things illegal isn't always the answer. A lot of people are rightly keen to see marijuana legalised, but both weed and alcohol lead to more deaths in other people through the impaired use of vehicles. At least smoking is a vice that can't immediately lead to the deaths of others.

A better idea might be to ban smoking everywhere except outside your own home. As someone who's allergic to cigarette smoke (as in it stops me from breathing) there's nothing worse than some coontmouth lighting up at the pedestrian crossing in a crowd of people. But it needn't be illegal. It might seem perverse, but some members of society need a self-damaging outlet, lest they damage others.

This is just going to make children want it more.



/not that I'm complaining

Ah, the wonderful smell of a black market and a bit of proof that the government gets a better kickback from illegal sales than from taxes.

EggFool: UNC_Samurai: At this stage, why not make the whole damn enterprise illegal? I could understand some of the advertising restrictions years ago when you were worried about companies marketing towards children, but any country taxing cigarette use into non-existence reeks of opportunism; let's drive a distasteful and harmful habit to extinction, but in the process let's get our last thirty pieces.

I agree. I smoke, and it's embarrassing and stinky and all that, but when they are farking EVERYWHERE you go, it's hard to quit. I've tried... I know, I have no willpower, I'm a weak stinky loser, but it's illegal to do it pretty much anywhere, including on a goddam PATIO in Calgary, but it's still legal to sell them. Get 'em out of my face. I am far too lazy (and afraid of criminals) to find black market cigs, so that would be that.

A method that worked for me is to go where you CAN'T buy cigarettes. In my case, a week on a sailboat. In yours, being in Calgary, perhaps a camping trip.

turtleking: first they lock up and rape their daughters and now this ?

I'll take Austria for $100, Alex.

Australia to smokers: fark you, fark your life, fark everything you believe in, I farked your wife, I fu -- hey, you got a couple dollars I can borrow til next Thursday?

If you want people to stop smoking, then gird your loins and just make it illegal. You'd end up hoisting yourself on your own petard, but that's your problem. This thing where we've decided that smokers are the devil incarnate, but at the same time refuse to just make the habit illegal although constantly claiming there's absolutely nothing redeeming about it and no reason for it to exist... it's just sad.

I'm disappointed, but ultimately unsurprised. The world at large seems to be catching on to the fact that you can just attack smokers indefinitely and nobody will care. Then again, if people are going to keep paying, I guess you just have to shrug your shoulders and say that these noted street economists were right.

/non-smoker
//they'll come for unhealthy food eventually
///trying to make sure there's someone left when they come for my Five Guys

gave up: Let us know if you see a slight rise in smuggling..

Are you kidding? I'm already trying to figure a racket involving robotic crocodiles to smuggle cigs inland.

Only feasible now that Steve Irwin isn't going to try to find the cloaca on the robot.

Forget that nonsense and get right down to it.

Hire a few universities here and there around the world to start selective breeding to produce a near zero nicotine content variety of tobacco. Then hire a few others to find a way to remove nicotine from tobacco- If one can decaffeinate coffee, one can denicotinate tobacco. Once the two options are available, then start with phase 2...

Start mandating nicotine content maximums, to be reduced gradually to zero in say 5 to 7 years, and offer the nicotine reduced plants and de-nicotination process to the tobacco companies for free, so they can't biatch about the costs or the impossibility of the plan.

Have the FDA or the appropriate regulatory agency perform random testing of batches, seize and destroy any that test over the maximum for the given year.

From the cut off date onward, no industrially manufactured tobacco for human use can have anything but a trace of nicotine in it.

Smoke all you want after that, but I guarantee that aside from folks who choose to grow their own in the back yard, nobody will be smoking much of store bought stuff.


I feel if you go to the trouble to grow your own, you can smoke it. Tobacco, marijuana, coca, salvia, psilocybin, etc. I don't know if one should be allowed to sell it, but certainly if you bother to grow it for your own use, you can do what you like with it.

Why doesn't someone with balls in Australia just shout, "Who the Fark died and made you god you nanny do gooder wankers!"

I don't even smoke, in fact I hate it, but this sort of thing smacks so much of big brother.

/You OWN yourself, that means no one can tell you what to eat, drink, smoke, or who to fark as long as your over the age limit.

//shouldn't have given up your guns.

Oh and as an incentive, eliminate the taxes on zero nicotinoid cigarettes.

The maximum allowed would have 100% tax, reduce the amount of biologically active nicotinoids by a percentage, the taxes should be reduced accordingly (excepting sales tax).

Retort:
Making things illegal isn't always the answer. A lot of people are rightly keen to see marijuana legalised, but both weed and alcohol lead to more deaths in other people through the impaired use of vehicles. At least smoking is a vice that can't immediately lead to the deaths of others.



I'd like to see a source on that, specifically on deaths caused by impairment via marijuana.

Ikahoshi:

If you're going to do that you might as well just make it illegal. It would be a lot quicker, cheaper, and would accomplish the same thing.

What is the point of smoking without that sweet, sweet alkaloid?

My dairy creamer smells funny...

This is my proposal.
Sell them in thermally welded shut clamshell packaging.
They'll be more expensive than cell phones soon, anyways.

Wait till you see a guy jonesing through a nicotine fix trying to open one of these. HIL-AR-IOUS!!

ScottHimself: Retort:
Making things illegal isn't always the answer. A lot of people are rightly keen to see marijuana legalised, but both weed and alcohol lead to more deaths in other people through the impaired use of vehicles. At least smoking is a vice that can't immediately lead to the deaths of others.



I'd like to see a source on that, specifically on deaths caused by impairment via marijuana.

I don't need to cite a source, it's common farking knowledge. Don't get me wrong, I think weed should be legal. It does impair your reaction time though.

Thanks to my governments latest hard on for taxing things, I no longer smoke tobacco.
That has saved me thus far 7usd per day for the last six weeks.
I'm going to save all the money up and someday move to a land that I really do have the pursuit of happiness.

My .02

I'm just going to sit here and laugh at all the cigarette smokers paying top dollar while I pack a bowl of some really fantastic Sour Diesel I'm smoking for 'free' thanks to Uncle Sam not allowing the legal sale of this gorgeous plant. Thanks, Sammy. Toking to you and your ridiculous regulations that allow me to do this.

Of course, if you just give up smoking then the nannies win.

Retort:
I don't need to cite a source, it's common farking knowledge. Don't get me wrong, I think weed should be legal. It does impair your reaction time though.

Of course. I misread your post as claiming that driving under the influence of marijuana somehow claimed more lives than cigarettes. Was just calling you out to make a spectacle of you. My fault.