Tag Archives: Nanny State

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

Adh here.

How your Xmas Guinness ad may look under ad blocking measures to ‘curb’ alcohol consumption in Ireland.

Eamon Delaney, of free market think tank Hibernia Forum, writes:

This (above) is what an iconic Irish beer ad, from the legendary Guinness brand, would look like under proposed new measures in the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill…

…a sledgehammer approach to the alcohol and hospitality sector which hurts consumers, producers and those of us who believe in individual freedoms and not being treated like children.

Politicians love this Nanny State stuff, as it distracts from the real pressing issues and gives them easy publicity and the approval of media experts.

Hopefully, others in our political culture will see through this easy populism and how such blanket unproven measures hurt industry, retailers, the tourist trade and ordinary consumers.

Hopefully, they will call a halt to this censorship and business-damaging measure. Enough is enough.

Hic

Nanny State : How an iconic beer ad would look under the Government’s new sledgehammer Public Health (Alcohol) BiHibernia Forum

nanny

Waaaaa!

Ireland’ ranks 4th in the league table of the worst places in the European Union to ‘eat, drink, smoke and vape’.

The EU Nanny State index, compiled by the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, in partnership with EPICENTRE (the European Policy Information Centre), is published in Ireland by the Hibernia Forum today.

Eamon Delaney of the Hibernia Forum, writes:

This is without even factoring in new measures, like proposed calorie counts on restaurant menus, a controversial sugar tax and ridiculous notions like reducing the playing of jingles on ice-cream vans to prevent children over-eating ice cream and getting obese….

Enough is never enough for the authorities, with smokers forced into virtual seclusion to partake of their (still legal) habit – and so far unable to avail of the ‘reduced risk’ smoking products which the Government appears unwilling to give them the alternative of.

This is a strange approach, and a hypocritical one, given that the government gets so much tax in actual cigarettes.

It is the same with alcohol, where the State takes over 50pc of the retail price in tax, despite preaching about its ills.

And the same prohibitive approach as was used on cigarettes is now focused on alcohol, with a mooted ban on the low-cost selling of alcohol in supermarkets, as well as a proposal by the Oireachtas health committee to raise the price of wine so that no bottle can be bought for less than €10, for ‘public health reasons’.

This is an utterly unfair sledgehammer approach which punishes the many for the sins of the few.

Plus, there is also absolutely no evidence that such punitive pricing will improve public health. Wine drinkers are hardly the problem end of the drinking culture. The experts must surely know this, but they press ahead regardless with what seems like yet another Nanny State edict, seized upon by attention-seeking politicians and quangos.

….The growing Nanny State issue is very important, as it goes to the heart of those who believe that the State, and government, should be tackling almost all of our problems, and those who believe that too much personal and parental responsibility is already being taken away.

Nanny State status a result of politicians who want to be seen ‘doing something’ (Eamon Delaney, Independent.ie)

The Nanny State Index