License to Smoke
-
A government advisor has suggested that the problem of Brits continuing to smoke themselves to death might be tackled by requiring nicotine addicts to obtain a £200 annual licence, the Telegraph reports[^] While I don't like people smoking around me, this is madness.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: SQL Server Managed Objects AND Reporting Services ... My website
-
There are the 2 options here for anything 'xyz' like tobacco, drink and weed etc; 1. Make it legal and controlled. This means the government can tax 'xyz', they can use the money to help police the industries and to help control the effects, they can also use it to help those prone to addiction who get hooked. It means 'xyz' comes from a legitimate source, it's clean and it helps the economy. On the bad side it can be seen as promoting 'xyz'. 2. Make it illegal. This means the government makes no money on 'xyz'. They have to spend large amounts policing the illegal trade with the money being sucked off other budgets. Those who are prone to addiciton and get hooked are more afraid to seek help and that help again draws money from other sources. 'xyz' comes from illegal sources, it can be dirty and often draws money out of the economy to help fund other unwanted activities. On the plus side if you enjoy a spliff you can end up in jail for a long time and branded a criminal ... oh wait no I mean it puts people off ... and doesn't attract them with the 'rebel' factor :P Please feel free to add more pro's and con's ... if I've missed anything from either side of the debate please chime in ... I know it's obvious what I belive but I'm open to discussion o nthe matter :)
Another huge con is the corrosive side effect of such a huge (5 billion) black market in itself. You have a situation where local economies of inner city areas are largely dependent on a combination of drug trade and welfare. 'Gangsta' culture is not an irrational choice in such an environment.
-
Fag. You need slapped. You have not experienced the experience so you cannot speak. You only have opinions.
█▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒██████▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██
Captain See Sharp wrote:
Fag.
Why are you calling me a cigarette? I know thats what this discussion is about but what does that have to do with me?
Captain See Sharp wrote:
You need slapped.
I need 'slapped'? Is that a new name for meth or something? Might I suggest you need to try PCP and Jabba :P
Captain See Sharp wrote:
You have not experienced the experience so you cannot speak.
Meta Experience? Hmmm well at what point do you say you have experience in experience? 10 years? 50? 1000? Who are you to judge ...
Captain See Sharp wrote:
You only have opinions.
We all only have opinions ... our senses, knowledge, memory and experiences are all unreliable and fallible.
-
What is "FB style ranting"?
Fat boy's attempt to turn the soapbox into a A-AGW blog.
-
Another huge con is the corrosive side effect of such a huge (5 billion) black market in itself. You have a situation where local economies of inner city areas are largely dependent on a combination of drug trade and welfare. 'Gangsta' culture is not an irrational choice in such an environment.
Indeed ... combine that with the fact that legalisation not only removes that element ... but also then provides the money for the good of the many ... you end up with a very large incentive that I'm suprised our money grabbing and money wasting government hasn't gone for.
-
Fag. You need slapped. You have not experienced the experience so you cannot speak. You only have opinions.
█▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒██████▒█▒██ █▒█████▒▒▒▒▒█ █▒▒▒▒▒██▒█▒██
Captain See Sharp wrote:
You have not experienced the experience
Oh Jebus. You really think hallucinogens provide anything other than illusory insight? Messing with subjective experience by modifying your chemistry can be fun (though not necessarily for others if they are a crazy arsehole like yourself) but they do not make your thoughts any more profound. It's naval gazing, not exploration.
-
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The impression that the 'war on drugs' is not winnable is false and has been engineered out of political expedience.
Trash, unless you ramp up the penalties to singapore levels. I would also argue that the 'war on drugs' is inherently immoral.
Ryan Roberts wrote:
I would also argue that the 'war on drugs' is inherently immoral.
And lost!
-
I'm waiting for an atmospheric oxygen tax whereby you're taxed for breathing.
Don't people with emphysema use less oxygen? Isn't a smoking ban contradictory in light of the plan to tax oxygen?
-
Don't people with emphysema use less oxygen? Isn't a smoking ban contradictory in light of the plan to tax oxygen?
-
Ryan Roberts wrote:
I would also argue that the 'war on drugs' is inherently immoral.
And lost!
-
A government advisor has suggested that the problem of Brits continuing to smoke themselves to death might be tackled by requiring nicotine addicts to obtain a £200 annual licence, the Telegraph reports[^] While I don't like people smoking around me, this is madness.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: SQL Server Managed Objects AND Reporting Services ... My website
I wonder how many different licenses they could come up with in relation to food (and hence obesity)...a fat license (how many different types of distinguishable fat are there?), a carb license, a sugar license, a salt license...yeesh.
-
A government advisor has suggested that the problem of Brits continuing to smoke themselves to death might be tackled by requiring nicotine addicts to obtain a £200 annual licence, the Telegraph reports[^] While I don't like people smoking around me, this is madness.
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Glasgow: SQL Server Managed Objects AND Reporting Services ... My website
Ignore it - it's just soundbytes from a loony-leftie designed to deflect our attention from really important matters. In any case the solution to smoking (as it is to most things) is edukation, edukation, edukation. You cannot legislate such draconian measures and expect them to work where, clearly, they will not. And yet we do put up with, for instance, speed cameras that are petently tax raising devices, a civil service for whom we invest ever growing pots of money for gold-plated pensions and a leader who is both a moral coward and a skulking bully. We are a complete bunch of wankers and deserve everything we get because we do nothing to change it.
-
Indeed it is madness and a symptom of a deeper problem. Our current political masters have lost, if they ever had it, the understanding of what a free society is and what government is for. Even the expensive but relatively benign concept of the nanny state is being reshaped into the bailiff state and the prison warder state. I used the smoking issue as an example in a paper on the principles of policy making a couple of years ago. My analysis went as follows. Smoking is a harmful activity with very little benefit to the smoker. It is therefore inconceivable that in the long term, 100 year view, their will be anyone left smoking. This gives us a target state, a goal of ending smoking. The obstacles to achieving this are: Some people want to smoke and the 'ban it' approach is contrary to a free society. There are large economic interests involved which although secondary to health concerns cannot simply be ignored. One proposed solution to this is that everyone who currently smokes legally be allowed to continue to smoke and everyone who is currently too young to smoke be prevented from ever doing so. This can be achieved by raising the age at which tobacco can be purchased by one year every year. In addition hypothecation of tobacco sales taxes directly to programmes to help those who want to stop smoking should be considered. This approach can achieve what the current approach of piecemeal bans and ever increasing regulation cannot, the actual end of smoking and it can do it without forcing anyone to quit and in a way that allows the tobacco industry to plan for a managed decline that can only be mitigated by making their own products less harmful.
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Whilst a fine theory, it is just that, when has prohibition ever worked? Look at alcohol in the 1920s and MJ today, some say MJ is the USA's No.1 agricultural crop. I think the tobacco ban was wrong, all those not affected may be affected by the next one. I don't think this can be blamed on the political left, after all the labour government can hardly be considered left wing any more.
-
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The impression that the 'war on drugs' is not winnable is false and has been engineered out of political expedience.
Trash, unless you ramp up the penalties to singapore levels. I would also argue that the 'war on drugs' is inherently immoral.
Not so. Ramping up penalties to Singapore levels is only useful when you've already got 90%+ control of the problem. The first step is to make the business uneconomic by shutting down the large scale importers. This is where real border controls, restoration of territorial waters, not being in the EU, all make a huge difference. The current practice of the 'war on drugs' of targetting only the low level users and addicts is arguably immoral but it doesn't have to be that way. Redirection of siezed funds into treatment programmes is also needed to create a tipping point where more siezures leads to less users, leads to easier user monitoring better intelligence and back to more seizures. The new SOC Agency could have been a part of the solution but unfortunately and unsurprisingly it was corrupt in its conception and is therefore utterly useless. It's a fact of life that bent politicians can't afford to empower straight coppers.:sigh:
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
-
Ignore it - it's just soundbytes from a loony-leftie designed to deflect our attention from really important matters. In any case the solution to smoking (as it is to most things) is edukation, edukation, edukation. You cannot legislate such draconian measures and expect them to work where, clearly, they will not. And yet we do put up with, for instance, speed cameras that are petently tax raising devices, a civil service for whom we invest ever growing pots of money for gold-plated pensions and a leader who is both a moral coward and a skulking bully. We are a complete bunch of wankers and deserve everything we get because we do nothing to change it.
digital man wrote:
We are a complete bunch of wankers and deserve everything we get because we do nothing to change it.
Us humans are creatures of habit. Generally, we just don't like change. And if you are a merchant for change, you become a target (of sorts) of "hatred" as many budding politicians find out very early in their political life, grand ideas soon become dropped.
-
Not so. Ramping up penalties to Singapore levels is only useful when you've already got 90%+ control of the problem. The first step is to make the business uneconomic by shutting down the large scale importers. This is where real border controls, restoration of territorial waters, not being in the EU, all make a huge difference. The current practice of the 'war on drugs' of targetting only the low level users and addicts is arguably immoral but it doesn't have to be that way. Redirection of siezed funds into treatment programmes is also needed to create a tipping point where more siezures leads to less users, leads to easier user monitoring better intelligence and back to more seizures. The new SOC Agency could have been a part of the solution but unfortunately and unsurprisingly it was corrupt in its conception and is therefore utterly useless. It's a fact of life that bent politicians can't afford to empower straight coppers.:sigh:
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Your head really is quite deep in the sand.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
This is where real border controls, restoration of territorial waters, not being in the EU, all make a huge difference.
So there was no "problem" before the UK was part of the EU then, hah, it's all the fault fault of the EU, it's as plain as the nose on your ass.
-
Whilst a fine theory, it is just that, when has prohibition ever worked? Look at alcohol in the 1920s and MJ today, some say MJ is the USA's No.1 agricultural crop. I think the tobacco ban was wrong, all those not affected may be affected by the next one. I don't think this can be blamed on the political left, after all the labour government can hardly be considered left wing any more.
AndyKEnZ wrote:
when has prohibition ever worked
It's not about prohibition, it's about managing social change. How many people chew tobacco anymore? < very few. How many people bait bears or attend dog fights, a handful. They're illegal but they didn't get to be almost non existant just by banning. That was the last step. The only things slowing smoking from from going the same way are the money and the addiction. Turn the one against the other and it is doomed.
AndyKEnZ wrote:
the labour government can hardly be considered left wing any more.
Absolutely, no more than the Conservatives are right wing anymore. Neither any longer have any principles, right or wrong, that's the point. Without principles you actually believe in you can't form coherent policy that can be understood by those implementing it. You can only fiddle while Rome burns or try to micromanage everything on the permanent cusp of a crisis. Neither is acceptable any longer.
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
-
Captain See Sharp wrote:
You have not experienced the experience
Oh Jebus. You really think hallucinogens provide anything other than illusory insight? Messing with subjective experience by modifying your chemistry can be fun (though not necessarily for others if they are a crazy arsehole like yourself) but they do not make your thoughts any more profound. It's naval gazing, not exploration.
-
digital man wrote:
We are a complete bunch of wankers and deserve everything we get because we do nothing to change it.
Us humans are creatures of habit. Generally, we just don't like change. And if you are a merchant for change, you become a target (of sorts) of "hatred" as many budding politicians find out very early in their political life, grand ideas soon become dropped.
Indeed. There is an old saying: a country always gets the government it deserves. How bad are we to get this bunch of incompetent, negligent, lying, cheating, corrupt politicos?
-
Not so. Ramping up penalties to Singapore levels is only useful when you've already got 90%+ control of the problem. The first step is to make the business uneconomic by shutting down the large scale importers. This is where real border controls, restoration of territorial waters, not being in the EU, all make a huge difference. The current practice of the 'war on drugs' of targetting only the low level users and addicts is arguably immoral but it doesn't have to be that way. Redirection of siezed funds into treatment programmes is also needed to create a tipping point where more siezures leads to less users, leads to easier user monitoring better intelligence and back to more seizures. The new SOC Agency could have been a part of the solution but unfortunately and unsurprisingly it was corrupt in its conception and is therefore utterly useless. It's a fact of life that bent politicians can't afford to empower straight coppers.:sigh:
Nothing is exactly what it seems but everything with seems can be unpicked.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Redirection of siezed funds into treatment programmes is also needed to create a tipping point where more siezures leads to less users, leads to easier user monitoring better intelligence and back to more seizures.
Thats assuming most users are addicts :P One of the major problems the government is currently running into is lumping lots of different substances together and treating them the same. They'd come up against a lot less resistance if they prioritised by damage ... of course that would mean them having to admit they're wrong in some cases ... it's also mean them having to come to terms with alcohol usage.