(December 9, 2021 at 6:31 pm)onlinebiker Wrote:

(December 9, 2021 at 6:24 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: It appears how much benefit and idea can bring to humanity is almost always directly proportional to how Stridently people like OLB will trout out spurious right arguments to oppose it and Cast aspersions upon it

Whatever Carrie Nation...
.

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Just remember - alcohol is next!

It costs New Zealanders far more than the taxes it brings in.... Perhaps if they 10 fold increase taxes on it...

https://www.actionpoint.org.nz/cost-of-a...s%2C%20etc.

You say that like it’s a point or something. I’m not sure I’d object to an alcohol ban, either.

Boru

(December 9, 2021 at 7:48 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(December 9, 2021 at 7:06 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: At work.

 Most times I regard Onlinebiker as not a bad bloke.

 But the times when they just throw their American ideas around about foriegn behaviours and expect those folks from other countries to give a rat's petunias about what Onlinebiker's opinion is stated as in regards to said events?

 Ah well.

 

As one of the dozens of people in the world who don’t live in the US, I see your point.

Boru

 He's Ok.

As long as he doesn't try that "America is the greatest country on earth" shit.

Check out [American] comic Lewis Black:

Lewis Black- America is'nt 1 - YouTube

(December 9, 2021 at 9:56 pm)Oldandeasilyconfused Wrote: Check out [American] comic Lewis Black:

Lewis Black- America is'nt 1 - YouTube

You ever see the show The Newsroom?

https://youtu.be/bIpKfw17-yY

Not seeing the issue here for starters when was buying tobacco products a right? And Governments already restrict access to tobacco.

(December 9, 2021 at 4:20 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I tend to think that restricted substance laws are dumb ideas..but it's not really clear how adding tobacco to an already existing list of things that people in nz can't legally consume amounts to subjugation or tyranny. Is this one of those conditioning things, where we contend that taking away the smokes is just a prelude to the big show....?

I assume it's illegal to smoke crack, too, is this also part of turning people into subjects?

I’m personally in the “legalize everything” mindset when it comes to drugs.

Why? For starters, I live in a nation where all it’s doing is creating a massive black market and filling our prisons (giving us a higher percentage of our population in jail than any other nation in recorded history with the possible exception of Nazi Germany). And I became convinced of the “legalize everything” route when I looked into what it looks like when the powers that be are actually effective at restricting the drug flow: in Russia, they managed to put a huge stop to the heroin trade. And what happened? Well, with Russia being Russia, I can’t expect a “happily ever after” ending. What actually happened was they came up with a new drug called Krokodil.

It’s a more concentrated form of heroin, with a high that’s eight times as intense that only lasts 15 minutes. And, because of the impurities in the drug manufacturing, it has a terrifying side effect. The name Krokodil comes from what it does to your skin, which makes it a combo of the most terrifying parts of Jared Leto’s arm going septic in Requiem for a Dream and the Nazis’ close encounter with the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the first stages, the skin around the puncture sites gets scaly and green. In the later stages of addiction, it just rots off, all the way down to the bone. There are images online that can show you exactly what it does to you. Life expectancy of a junkie is about 2 years from first hit to last breath. And, yes, they replaced another public health crisis with another one. This is exactly what the best case scenario looks like for drug criminalization: a Russian junkie, the skin of whose arms have rotted so much you can clearly see his bones.

Granted, I think the massive black market scenario is going to be more likely in New Zealand’s case, at least, as much as anything can qualify as “massive” there, but I can’t see this working out well in the long run. At least the cutoff date is sometime in the 2000s, and, unless cigar boxes count as “tobacco products”, I wouldn’t be affected by it in any case.

(December 9, 2021 at 10:33 pm)Foxaire Wrote:

(December 9, 2021 at 9:56 pm)Oldandeasilyconfused Wrote: Check out [American] comic Lewis Black:

Lewis Black- America is'nt 1 - YouTube

You ever see the show The Newsroom?

https://youtu.be/bIpKfw17-yY

Don't know. Can't remember.

Just looked it up. It's a mini series and I haven't seen it. Will see if I can get hold of it

(December 9, 2021 at 11:07 am)onlinebiker Wrote: Seem pretty fucked up to me.

They got a new law - that if you are born after a certain date - you can NEVER buy tobacco products....

That's when you get your older neighbor to stock you up.

Nah. Tobacco is super easy to grow. They'll float it on 1034 trays for six weeks then transfer to autobuckets for the remainder of the 90 under full spectrum artificials. If the penalty for being found with contraband smokes is lower than the penalty for being found with any other contraband agricultural commodity grown the same way.........then enough producers to supply the market will shift to tobacco. It won't be asking the olds for a red - it'll be picking up from whomever you buy your weed from. They already have all the shit, and the plants themselves are more productive than cannabis on a unit per time basis.

(one of the things that threw me for a loop was the price of a pack of marlboros, earlier..if you could get that much per ounce for tobacco, here, you'd be a fool to grow weed - even though it's only $3 per ounce....the production of the plants in the same space and infrastructure relative to weed and the legal market make it a no brainer - and the price will go up. I see that price...and the future ban, and just start salivating as a grower. Tobacco is worth a little over two grand per metric ton, at current prices...you see.....35,274 ounces.....and it amounts to somewhere around an (imperial) ton of -dried- product per acre. That's the wet number for marijuana, in contrast, with a hell of alot more qualifications and restrictions on land, first..-and then-..legality)

We live in an odd world. On the one hand we have a cohort attempting to ban tobacco. On the other hand, we have a cohort attempting to legalise a slew of other drugs that are already banned.

(December 9, 2021 at 6:31 pm)onlinebiker Wrote:

(December 9, 2021 at 6:24 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: It appears how much benefit and idea can bring to humanity is almost always directly proportional to how Stridently people like OLB will trout out spurious right arguments to oppose it and Cast aspersions upon it

Whatever Carrie Nation...
.

---

Just remember - alcohol is next!

It costs New Zealanders far more than the taxes it brings in.... Perhaps if they 10 fold increase taxes on it...

https://www.actionpoint.org.nz/cost-of-a...s%2C%20etc.

I personally doubt very much that would be the case, because there is absolutely no positive case to be made for tobacco (only the rationalisations of an existing smoker, which is not the same thing as reasons to start), whereas something like alcohol at least is not harmful and/or has benefits in moderation... there is no 'in moderation' equivalent for smoking... speaking as an ex-smoker, who as it was smoked for twenty years too long. Should things like this, that are for whatever reason already legal, remain legal and protected forever after, long after they've been repeated shown by science to be incredibly dangerous? I'm glad to see this move happening... or the very least very curious to see how it pans out... to make something illegal that never should have been made legal in the first place, but when it did so was because no one knew any better... but now we do.

Granted if I still smoked, and if I lived in NZ I'd probably be very pissed off - I don't know how it's going to effect existing smokers, and how they will continue to get their supply, assuming they will try to do so, because one thing you can't do is force people to quit; that decision has to come from within - but in theory the thought of a whole generation of young people prevented from taking up the habit before they're old enough to make an informed/un-peer-pressured decision... which let's face it, should realistically always land on a solid 'No!' if it is indeed a mature and unpressured decision... is very appealing. Especially since IMO that's the main/target demographic of the tobacco industry (I started at 15 and for all the wrong reasons... which I think they bank on)... take away that constant influx of young blood and the business becomes a lot less sustainable beyond the current generations, because I really can't see that many people choosing to start as a reasoned decision in adulthood.

But failing this sort of idea, I'd at least like to see the smoking age raised significantly, anywhere that's willing, to deal with that issue of maturity. In the UK I started smoking at 15 as I said, when the age to buy tobacco was 16. Since then it has been raised to 18... which is a good thing... but could still be much better. Also all the packaging has changed to bland, warning-ridden containers, so it's no longer advertised or branded so to speak, as well as constant increases in tax on them, which is also good for making it less attractive... so overall I'm pretty happy with the UK's approach to smoking, but I still think they could go further. I'd personally like to see a smoking age of maybe 25 or so... allowing for people to fully mature before making that decision (because let's face it, an 18 year old may be able to vote, but they're still pretty susceptible to things like peer-pressure), as well as making it a lot harder for young people to get away with buying tobacco without ID because they look older.