Good riddance tobacco!
- Thread starter noseall
- Start date
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No, I won't link the source as it's easy to find this information.
Still believe this is about protecting peoples health?
This is a dangerous precedent, that everyone should be against, because it will result in a slipper slope of increasing amounts of "lifestyle choices" making you discriminated against, or taxed more "for your own good".
Fatties, smokers, boozers and druggies can all do one and make the world a healthier and a better place to live for all those who bother to keep in shape.
Taxing people to death aint gonna work though and neither will banning stuff.
Mass brainwashing might....
Let Aron Surly will seek his own biased comforting stat's, and the rest of us believe the truth.
It's one thing trying to gloss over the fact that we would all be better off without tobacco but it's another trying to bolster EVERY unhealthy pursuit just so it makes yer own life easier.
Taxing people to death aint gonna work though and neither will banning stuff.
Mass brainwashing might....
Let Aron Surly will seek his own biased comforting stat's, and the rest of us believe the truth.
It's one thing trying to gloss over the fact that we would all be better off without tobacco but it's another trying to bolster EVERY unhealthy pursuit just so it makes yer own life easier.
I'm in two minds about this and I can see where there're coming from but the problem with their bad lifestyle choices it's rather self inflicted and the attitude of the Government, and NHS doctors, (forget about the money side of it for now) are basically quoting, "If you can't look after yourself why should we be bother treating you?"
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Self inflicted, bad lifestyle?
Car accident - you chose to drive irresponsibly, put it on your insurance.
Break your leg skiing - lucky you, I couldn't afford a holiday, pay up tory scum.
Deep vein thrombosis or knee/joint problems - you choose to sit about all day, get your employer to pay for it.
Aids - shouldn't be a sodomite.
Etc.
You either treat all equally or not.
But to charge some extra and give them less, where will it stop as people live longer and longer, and treatment gets more expensive.
The NHS wasnt supposed to be about healthcare for those that deserve it, though if you wasn't to change it to that, please do, as a non smoker, light drinker, healthy individual I'd be a winner
Car accident - you chose to drive irresponsibly, put it on your insurance.
Break your leg skiing - lucky you, I couldn't afford a holiday, pay up tory scum.
Deep vein thrombosis or knee/joint problems - you choose to sit about all day, get your employer to pay for it.
Aids - shouldn't be a sodomite.
Etc.
You either treat all equally or not.
But to charge some extra and give them less, where will it stop as people live longer and longer, and treatment gets more expensive.
The NHS wasnt supposed to be about healthcare for those that deserve it, though if you wasn't to change it to that, please do, as a non smoker, light drinker, healthy individual I'd be a winner
noseall said:
Ok, I respect your opinion, supposing every single one of us chose the bad healthy lifestyle etc, I'm guessing wouldn't that bankrupt the NHS alone? There's only so much money available? At the end of the day you can't win, any Government will waste the money elsewhere if saving is made.
Budgets don't exist separate from each other except in political arguments.
If we all started smoking and drinking, we would probably be looking at Russian levels of life expectancy (68 years).
That would mean absolutely MASSIVE savings in pensions and old age welfare, and the money saved from that could just be shunted to the NHS.
We are all going to cost the NHS and welfare system a bucket load of money one day, the only difference is that someone like me (doesn't smoke, moderate drink, cycles to work, eats fruit)probably isn't going to start being a burden to the nhs until my 80s or 90s, whereas a smoker may start dying at 65-70.
Currently smokers cost the system less, because old people hang around for years, taking up various treatments as well as drawing pension and often housing benifit (as well as council tax credits and winter fuel and bus passes etc), whereas smokers pay extra tax and often just die.
I expect as cancer treatments get better, it will even out.
It will be interesting to see what happens when they develop an anti-cancer pill, that will **** of the anti smoker brigade no end.
Good point and with better medication is making people living longer plus there's no civil war to keep the population down therefore creating money problem in the long run. Not sure if the Government have got the money but none of them are investing more into the health care which should be priory no 1, maybe a wealthy companies tax to pay for it unless they do but that might drive them oversea!
I only knew two people who were heavy smokers and drinkers, and both of them died about the age of 50.
J
joinerjohn
As Aaron has pointed out, we're on a slippery slope. Where does it all end though? Taken to it's extremes, there will be no NHS in the future, as governments/healthcare professionals, will stop treatment for all sorts of choices we've made during our lives. 60 yr old ex professional footballers will be refused hip and joint operations, simply because they chose a profession which caused their joints to become kna***ed. Boxers will be refused treatment for anything related to their brain. Anyone over the age of 80 will be refused all treatment simply because they have lived long enough.
Did you eat red meat when you were younger? Forget treatment for all sorts of conditions. Eat sweets? Forget dental treatment. Did you enjoy a few pints or glasses of wine? Forget any treatments for oesophageal cancer/ liver disease.
Yep, there's a million excuses out there in "futureworld" to deny treatment for all sorts of medical conditions.
Did you eat red meat when you were younger? Forget treatment for all sorts of conditions. Eat sweets? Forget dental treatment. Did you enjoy a few pints or glasses of wine? Forget any treatments for oesophageal cancer/ liver disease.
Yep, there's a million excuses out there in "futureworld" to deny treatment for all sorts of medical conditions.
to be fair, joinerjohn, everybody knows that smoking is dangerous to health, and there is no safe dose.
far better to concentrate on preventing the traders in death from constantly recruiting more children to be their future addicted customers.
We can write off the existing addicts.
far better to concentrate on preventing the traders in death from constantly recruiting more children to be their future addicted customers.
We can write off the existing addicts.
Self determination then.
I have no issue with that in principle, but I do not think a ban is the way to go, and that the trade-offs from a ban would be worse.
The problem with "stopping smoking" is the constant mission creep, like how during prohibition they deliberately poisoned alcahol, when it started it was about saving people, then the government ended up killing people. And before you say that wouldn't happen today, several ministers proposed poisoning shipments of cannabis with something that would make users sick, only a few years ago.
The other mission creep is the constant "we are trying to save people" to "we are trying to tax more".
Yea, it's not like they are people or anything.....
they are people who are exercising their freedom to drive themselves into an early grave. "Self determination then" you said.
Far better to concentrate on preventing the tobacco merchants constantly recruiting children to be new addicts to make up for the customers that they kill.
You can tell that a programme is likely to work if the tobacco trade squeals and complains about it, like cutting advertising, or sport sponsorship (unless by a friend of the PM), or plain packaging. It is vital to the tobacco trade to atttract new customers, so anything that reduces their market is painful to them. However it is to the advantage of the rest of us. Sadly they have a great deal of money to spend on influencing the debate in favour of tobacco addiction.
As said I am not against this.
My problem is the mission creep, and the refusal for people to see the downsides of prohibitionist policies. or allow people to make free decisions, the war on drugs is a very destructive policy that kills, creates crime, and does little to prevent drug use, I don't want more of the same thanks.
1. once you have hidden displays, what is the point of plain packaging.
2. if it is still legal, is it right to deny brands?
3. no brands - no advertising - no display - all that is left to compete on is cost, I am highly dubious plain packaging will have any positive effect.
How is more smuggling and crime and less tax an advantage to me?
Both sides have lots of money to chuck about in the debate.
don't be silly, I said reducing the market
You have no objection to it, then. Perhaps you think that tobacco merchants like glossy, embossed, stylish packaging for some reason other to improve their sales. You are wrong. Larger sales, for longer, to more customers, are what makes money, and is what drives the trade, and the things they do, are to achieve it. That's why they oppose controls on advertising and marketing. What do you think advertising is for? Why do you think a trade that produces wrinkled, coughing, wheezy old men likes to be associated in the public mind with pretty young girls and expensive fast cars?
But to those of outside the trade, more addicts are just what we don't want.
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