Tag Archives: cigarettes

Senator Michael McDowell

Who doesn’t love a crafty gasper?

The state for one.

Via Michael McDowell in the Irish Times:

…Cigarettes may even be restricted to sales in pharmacies, we are told. This is absurd. If a highly profitable State monopoly on tobacco sales is to be conferred on anyone, it should not be pharmacies. And it is even possible, according to the HSE, that filters will be banned on cigarettes – making them more harmful as a deterrent is a new idea.

Another idea under consideration is printing cancer warnings on each cigarette.

I don’t smoke and I totally supported Micheál Martin’s ban on smoking in indoor premises to which the public have access. But while I really pity nicotine addicts, I do not think that tobacco should be the subject of American-style 1920s Prohibition-era laws.

This is a case of the nanny state going a step too far. If people want to smoke, the State has no business preventing them from doing so. If people want to drink, you can’t bring in prohibition in the interests of cancer prevention, public health or the HSE’s budget.

It is noteworthy that we are considering legalising the smoking of cannabis while the HSE is planning the banning of smoking altogether – or nearly altogether.

Does the HSE want us all to live until we are 100? Who will pay the HSE for the consequences of that?

Public health policy does not warrant such coercion in a free society

Ratlicker!

*sparks up afternoon fattie*

Michael McDowell: Anti-alcohol law contains some utterly ridiculous legal provisions (irish Times)

RollingNews

A ‘rette for giants?

This afternoon.

Government Buildings, Merrion Stret, Dublin 2

Catherine Byrne TD. Minister of State at the Department of Health with responsibility for Health Promotion and the National Drugs Strategy with a giant cig pack prop promoting the new tax based price hike on snouts.

The 50 per cent increase in the duty on coffin nails brings the average price of twenty tabs to €12.

The news was greeted with hacking laughter from day traders dealing in baccy futures on the black market.

Leah Farrell/RollingNews