National’s unaffordable tax cuts to be funded by… (checks notes) …giving more people lung cancer.
This government’s plan seems to be:
- Scrap everything they can that Labour did.
- ???
- PROFIT!
This is the only thing Oceania conservatives are good at: opposition.
Sounds like ‘Merica conservatives too.
All conservatives are the same.
I’m quite shocked at how willing Nicola Willis has been to say the quiet part out loud, i.e. “we’re only doing this because it will pay for our tax cuts”. In other words, they want to collect more tobacco tax from vulnerable people to pay for tax cuts for wealthier people. There were other ways to frame this, e.g. we don’t think this is the right way to cut back on smoking, there are better ways to do it, etc. etc.
I think this is already quite a bit miscalculation by National. This will not be a popular policy… it’s something nearly everyone can relate to and understand, and other than a few extremist libertarian nutters, no one thinks it’s a good idea to loosen up smoking laws. It’ll be one of the few things people still remember coming out of the coalition agreements in a couple of weeks time. They needed to think more carefully about how they sold it.
Argh that’s such short-term thinking. Smoking costs a ton in hospital care etc.
While personally against the loss of the ban, this reminds me of when I once heard that, from a purely economic point of view with no regards for human life, tobacco and other unhealthy products are a net positive for the economy.
The reasoning is that people who smoke will die younger, usually after their “productive lifetime” has concluded (where they consume more than they produce), thus being a burden to the state less time.
This is the same way of thinking as people who throw trash into the streets, saying they’re benefiting the local economy because it has to employ more sanitisation personnel. Which is stupid.
But do they actually employ more sanitation workers?..
No idea, but my bet is either they don’t, or they do but could fill more important positions.
The reasoning is that people who smoke will die younger, usually after their “productive lifetime” has concluded (where they consume more than they produce), thus being a burden to the state less time.
My grandfather would have seriously skewed those statistics. He lived to a ripe old age of 90 drinking whiskey and smoking a pack of Lucky Strikes (unfiltered) every single day for decades. On more than one occasion doctors warned him the next cigarette could kill him. He proved them wrong for a very long time.
It is very unlikely that he would have skewed the statistics, the immense weight of the people killed early by smoking would overwhelm the very small number of outliers.
The number of years lost by individuals is determined by a huge number of factors, but smoking has been shown to really drag down the number of years that you are likely to achieve.
Are they going to fully legalise cannabis as well?
Based on the general deregulation stance, they definitely should have that policy.
But because the right wing parties have hard core Christians in their donors and MPs (including the new PM), it won’t happen.
Hahahaha ha ha ha!
Oh wait, you’re serious, let me laugh even harder.
Hahahaha hahaha hahahahaha!
But why?
$$$ from big tobacco.
Nope, it’s the tax dollars. The tax is about $1.18 per cigarette. That’s $8614 per year in tex for a 20 a day smoker. In Australia it’s even higher. They will never end smoking.
This is interesting from a few points of view.
From a health point of view, it is bad.
From a choice point of view, it is good.
From a leadership point of view, it is bad.
From an economic point of view, it is good.I’m quite cynical about this; it seems that a policy has been chosen to specifically rile up the opposition.
The old, poor, and vulnerable will continue to be sacrificed for tax cuts for the wealthy.
Aw, I had high hopes for this.
This law always felt weird to me, the idea that one adult would be legally allowed to smoke cigarettes, but another adult a day younger would be unable to.
They would be unable to buy cigarettes, there would be no law against smoking them. That’s an important difference.
So how would you propose we end the sale of tobacco?
Tax it more, and make it available for sale only in specialist retailers, would be a great way to dramatically decrease the amount sold.
I don’t think ending the sale altogether is worthwhile actually, this will merely create a black market for the product.
Really? It was a law I thought of myself as a kid because it just seemed logical and makes way more sense than sudden prohibition.
So when it became law I was pleased, because I don’t see smoking as a genuine choice for addicts. I used to live next to someone who was literally dying of emphysemia and she couldn’t give up smoking, and her self-hate and despair made a big impression on me.
another adult a day younger
It’s less stark but health changes always have an arbitrary cut off, there is always a last person to get/first person to not get. E.g last person to get old style knee replacement, first person to get new style.
Good. Different laws based on year of birth are an absurd prejudice, as much as laws based on which town you’re from.
How old you are is as valid as which town you’re in. That is equal treatment. But the metric cannot be how old you were, when the law passed. That is creating second-class citizens. That is not a tolerable way for any government to accomplish its goals.
Even if the goal is broadly positive.
I get what you’re saying but to me the “second class citizens” are really the ones who are exposed to the higher lung cancer rates.
Weird take tbh… we currently restrict sale of these products to people over 18 - I don’t see this as much of a change from that conceptually. It’s a clever method as it allows current addicts to continue without a sudden cold-turkey stop, but makes it much harder for future generations to gain access to tobacco.
We need to end the tobacco industry somehow, and this is a reasonable way to taper it out of existence. Other scrapped plans include removing nicotine and other addictive substances from tobacco, and removing tobacco from being sold in dairies and service stations.
we currently restrict sale of these products to people over 18
Did I not just address this? Was I circumspect?
Any law that forever excludes you from an activity that is otherwise legal - is not the same thing as limiting things to certain ages. No kidding a child born now can’t drive. But if they still can’t drive, sixteen years from now, while people who can drive now are still allowed to drive, that’s obviously not the same thing as saying ‘you have to be sixteen to drive.’
It is a fundamentally different restriction.
That form of restriction cannot be tolerated, no matter how grand the goal. It is incompatible with equality under the law. It is treating certain people differently, for life, for circumstances unrelated to ability, capacity, or safety.
If the industry is awful then it’s awful for everyone and should be banned for everyone. “Clever” in this case means “unethical, with extra steps.”
To me it was the best way of phasing the law in for everyone because it’s unfair on addicts to suddenly criminalize their addiction.
we currently restrict sale of these products to people over 18 - I don’t see this as much of a change from that conceptually.
Genuinely unintelligent take, to be honest. There is a huge difference between not letting a child do something, and never letting a person do something, even when an adult only a few days older can legally do so.
It’s a weird law, and it’s probably a good thing it’s been repealed.
I feel the same way actually, it’s a weird law to say the least.
Fuck that shit. Oppressive overstep. It should be scrapped.
