DonGould: Doctor involve in national health policy once said to me that the real issue is social wellfare costs of people just living longer. Smoking saves money.
That is a truly disturbing line of thought.
There are studies that also suggest that tobacco taxes raise more revenue for the government than all of the associated heath costs of smoking related illness.
In this light, the government has a financial incentive to continue to allow tobacco products to be sold in NZ (albeit at odds with the social aspects). And the more tax they can get away with adding the better that equation looks. (For every 10% rise in tax, the number of smokers decreases by about 5%). Obviously this wont be linear as the tax goes up, but right now, more tax is mostly just more money in the govts pocket.
My actual only real complaint is about smoking in public. If someone wants to pollute their own body, fine - but don't make me suffer as a result.
I can't count the number of times when I have been walking down the street down wind of a smoker and had to cross the road to avoid the smoke cloud hitting. I've even called a couple of them up on it and basically got told they don't give a ****, it's my problem not theirs.
I even had a near argument with a bounder at Euro in Auckland, who was reluctant to do anything about someone standing on the porch near our table having a cigarette where we were getting smoked out. I don't want to have to sit through someone elses filthy smoke at somewhere where I am paying serious money for a nice meal.
It's worse here in Oz too - People smoke everywhere. I've left several cafes where we had been having a pleasant meal or coffee outside, and a bunch of people light up and you end up in a smoke cloud.
Agree/Disagree argue that they have spent millions in developing their branding and packaging designs and they feel that they should be able to continue to use their package designs to protect their investment. Under this logic if I spend millions on developing fancy packages for arsenic pills, I should be able to continue to use my package designs to sell my pills because of the investment money I have spent designing them. I think the government would not take into account the money I spent and tell me to immediately withdraw my product as tests had shown arsenic was harmful to people's health.
Note that the agree/disagree web site does not allow people to post comments. They have a contact us email only. If they really want to know what people think they should allow comments to be made on what they say.
Note that the agree/disagree web site does not allow people to post comments. They have a contact us email only. If they really want to know what people think they should allow comments to be made on what they say.
Exactly. One can't help but think it is a complete bogus campaign to get cigarette advertising airtime on TV.
If that is the case, they should come up with a cigarette box with the 'mastercard-like' logo and brand it agree/disagree sticks
geek4me: Agree/Disagree argue that they have spent millions in developing their branding and packaging designs and they feel that they should be able to continue to use their package designs to protect their investment. Under this logic if I spend millions on developing fancy packages for arsenic pills, I should be able to continue to use my package designs to sell my pills because of the investment money I have spent designing them. I think the government would not take into account the money I spent and tell me to immediately withdraw my product as tests had shown arsenic was harmful to people's health.
Presumably arsenic pills are illegal. Cigarettes are legal.
But otherwise you are right - if arsenic pills were legal and someone spent millions developing packaging for them and selling them... then the government found out they were extremely hazardous, the government would not come along and tell you to use plain packaging for your arsenic pills, they would ban the pills outright.
This is what they have done with party pills. Cigarettes and alcohol are anomalies that have become socially acceptable, while some other drugs that are less harmful are not socially acceptable.
But whatever the reason, cigarettes are legal.. so your arsenic argument doesn't really apply to plain packaging, just to banning cigarettes outright. Plain packaging lets the politicians have their cake ("Look at us we did this to prevent smoking!") and eat it too (all the tax revenue they get from cigarettes).
geek4me: Agree/Disagree argue that they have spent millions in developing their branding and packaging designs and they feel that they should be able to continue to use their package designs to protect their investment. Under this logic if I spend millions on developing fancy packages for arsenic pills, I should be able to continue to use my package designs to sell my pills because of the investment money I have spent designing them. I think the government would not take into account the money I spent and tell me to immediately withdraw my product as tests had shown arsenic was harmful to people's health.
I don't feel their argument has any weight at all.
Product and brand marketing changes all the time, and due to government regulation.
Companies rebrand all the time and the value invested in their previous branding is lost.
Who remembers what the Telecom brand looked like 20 years ago?
This is nothing more than an opportunist move to promote their product in the media because the government has given them a brief loop hole to do it while the regulations are changed again.
It's not like the industry can claim they didn't see this coming, it's been coming for decades.
It's nothing more than the incline of government pressure to continue the decline of smoking.
geek4me: Note that the agree/disagree web site does not allow people to post comments. They have a contact us email only. If they really want to know what people think they should allow comments to be made on what they say.
I think that's a silly suggestion. What they have done is the right way to gather individual views which aren't just influenced by comments made by the person before them. I confess some of the views of others here and influenced my thoughts as we continue the discussion.
However, I do agree that they're not really after feed back. They're just marketing.
Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!
ajobbins: My actual only real complaint is about smoking in public. If someone wants to pollute their own body, fine - but don't make me suffer as a result.
I can't count the number of times when I have been walking down the street down wind of a smoker and had to cross the road to avoid the smoke cloud hitting. I've even called a couple of them up on it and basically got told they don't give a ****, it's my problem not theirs.
I even had a near argument with a bounder at Euro in Auckland, who was reluctant to do anything about someone standing on the porch near our table having a cigarette where we were getting smoked out. I don't want to have to sit through someone elses filthy smoke at somewhere where I am paying serious money for a nice meal.
It's worse here in Oz too - People smoke everywhere. I've left several cafes where we had been having a pleasant meal or coffee outside, and a bunch of people light up and you end up in a smoke cloud.
I think that discarded butts are almost as big a problem. The filters are made of spun plastic so they last pretty much forever and, once the paper is gone, the filters are picked up by birds as nest lining. The bird lays eggs, the eggs nestle on the filters, the nicotine percolates through the shell and the baby birds die before hatching.
blair003: I might be wrong. Might be legal to grow and smoke for personal use, only taxable if sold or given away? Not actually sure.
Think this is correct. Used to be some guys in Motueka who grew commercial quantities but couldn't sell it (in a non commercial sense) unless they paid the tax.
Most people don't grow it because it's so easy to get otherwise. Also, you don't just grow a plant dry it out and roll it up. It tastes like horrible grass clippings if you do that. You have to cure the leaves in the right conditions for the right amount of time. Even then most smokers would think home grown tobacco tasted bad compared to the commercial stuff which often has subtle flavours added to it. It takes 6-8 weeks to air cure tobacco and you need to know what you're doing too. Then you got to strip it, cut it, store it properly, roll it, and so on and so on. It's not worth it unless you grow a significant amount and then you can't sell it without paying the excise so easier to just buy the stuff. Gangs tend to not bother here as there isn't enough money in it and the fines are big for avoiding the tax. Also, why would they grow tobacco if they could grow weed :)
stevenz: Why don't people grow their own tobacco? It's not illegal AFAIK.
I don't think you can grow tobacco without paying the excise tax.
Not directly related but I recall not long ago there was a new bill that would even make home gardens technically illegal.
I think the rules are the same as for alcohol - where you can home brew/distil freely, but have to register with customs (or IRD?) and pay excise tax if you intend to sell it.
I don't know how easy it is to transform the grown leaves into a palatable smokable product, but I understand that the plants themselves are easy to grow. Have also been told by an Aussie colleague that the blackmarket sale of home-produced tobacco is relatively widespread in rural Australia.
Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly
to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.
Retired Mod
Trusted
Biddle Corp
