Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives
Why benefit society when you can just fuck it over whilst profiting from short term gains.
God I hate how this planet functions. Tax the fucking rich already.
Taxxing won’t do anything because structurally the Rich have the most power in the system. The only way to fix this is to systematically remove the Rich through whatever means and remove the means which enables them to exist.
Planet? Don’t include the mice and dolphins in the way the homo sapiens do their shit.
Plus have you ever seen them go through a pack of ciggies? Fuckin chimney-faced bastards so they are. REEKING of fags. Horrid creatures.
Boomers are having a temper tantrum in their death throes by elections these Conservatives.
This headline SCREAMS ‘conservative’:
- bad for people
- bad for healthcare
- generate tax cuts … for the wealthy
@Amazinghorse that’s not really true. It won’t affect the bottom tax bracket. National have been pitching it as a tax cut for “middle income earners”.
I just went and played around with their tax calculator and low income earners get almost nothing compared to wealthier people.
From memory minimum wage earners get something like $25 per week, which I know isn’t much. Middle income earners ($120k+ combined) get $120 per fortnight back. People earning over $80k don’t get any additional cuts.
Their policy specifically states tax cuts for the bottom 3 brackets. I don’t know why the calculator isn’t showing any cuts for min wage.
So it’s conservative to refuse to ban tobacco? Do you agree with the general consensus that it’s also conservative to ban marijuana? How do you square those two attitudes, if so?
Tobacco causes mass amounts of death and warps entire societies and economies from killing so many older people. Also, massive tobacco companies break any law they want virtually and have for the entirety of their existence as massive corporations marketed cigarettes to kids.
So yes, I consider it conservative to refuse to ban tobacco and see no conflict with marijuana because marijuana doesn’t cause mass amounts of death and suffering (and before you say it does, give me proof).
What is concerning about spliff is the tendency to facilitate descent into abnormal mental states.
I enjoy good relations with a few healthcare professionals and the general consensus is, at this point, spliff has more potential benefits to explore than bad effects, so it makes sense to explore it, never overlooking the continuous use has been linked with some serious mental inbalances and even some physical syndromes.
Just a few days ago, here, on Lemmy, there was a lemming talking about a strange condition where continuous use over decades can trigger extremer pain and discomfort episodes, due to deposit of substances on fat tissue.
Tobacco is a proven killer, yes, but who knows what weird side effets we may be yet to discover connected with mary jane.
@quindraco in the New Zealand context yes it’s extremely conservative. This government is a lot more conservative than previous right-wing govts.
The “smokefree” policies were created by the Maori Party, whose constituency is disproportionately harmed by smoking.
If marijuana was killing thousands of Maori they would probably have wanted to but it isn’t.
It’s conservative to bend over and spread `em for the benefit of the owning class at the expense of everyone else - chiefly the workers those politicians claim to represent.
Others have pointed out the gaping differences in the health outcomes (including the burden that places on the healthcare system), addiction rates, etc.
Makes you wonder how much lobbying Big Tobacco did.
They just had an election and the government flipped from centre-left to centre-right. It could just be the classic conservative “our position is whatever is the opposite of the left!”
Winston Peters (NZ First leader) is a total alcohol, tobacco, and racing (horse, greyhound, whatever) industry shill. I doubt he exactly needed to be bought, but this is certainly part of his price for being part of the coalition government.
ACT (secular libertarian free market folk) probably mildly supported it, and National (general centre right; largest party) is probably much the same.
Big tobacco doesn’t really need cigarette sales anymore. They are all in on vape brands, where they can sell the liquid at ink-jet prices to customers for a huge markup at $6500 per liter. That’s why you see vape shops on each street corner. The distribution is all streamlined. The website talks to the DHL warehouse about what stock is available, customers can subscribe to weekly delivery plans and the warehouse is filled by some factory in china.
Hard to say because they are very sneaky. We do know that Big tobacco ran a fake grassroots campaign with an imaginary dairy owner front man. (“Dairy” is the New Zealand name for corner shops/ drugstores)
Tagging you @AnAngryAlpaca - they may not need it but their greed didn’t get the memo.
Lol sounds like this increases tax revenues by increasing the number of addicted smokers buying cigarettes and then taxing the sales.
Really sound government policy there.
They have actually admitted this is going to be revenue gathering. NZ has some of the highest tobacco tax in the world.
Basically their election promise was tax cuts, which they intended to do by allowing more foriegn ownership of real estate and taxing it.
After the election they found out they could only govern with the help of a populist party and a libertarian party.
The populists won’t allow more foriegn ownership of real estate. Meanwhile the libertarians’ wet dream is stuff like more lung cancer tobacco.
So we get shitty last minute law changes we didn’t see coming, like this one.
Wait, they want more foreign ownership of real estate?? Are they high lol. That’s going to price out every last young person there from homes that’s not already priced out.
Yeah it was straight up one of their biggest election promises.
What can I say, their core base is landlords, boomers, and people who want leopards to eat faces.
The populists won’t allow more foriegn ownership of real estate.
I don’t see a single problem here. Fuck, I wish Australia would get behind this.
Also good, fuck prohibition laws. Leave them in the fucking past where they belong. If I want to slowly kill myself by inhaling burning plant matter, then that’s my decision. The taxes I pay more than cover my eventual cost to the state’s healthcare system. The government does not get to dictate what I do with my own body.
Actually, a LOT of studies do show that no, in most countries, taxes are far from enough to cover the cost of tobacco induced diseases.
It’s worse than that as it’s short term tax gains now but increased public health spending later from those same taxes when they start getting cancer in a decade or two.
But lower pension costs, and overall it saves money to allow people to smoke themselves to an early death. Even if you count the cost of their treatment, it’s cheaper than 20 extra years of pension payments. It’s a terrifying but sound economic policy.
Using the UK numbers, around 80k people die of smoking per year, costing the NHS alone £2.6bn, their full state pension cost is around £900m, so there is a sizeable gap between just the NHS cost and the amount on their pension as the pension saving has to be significantly more than the remaining years on their state pension as there is another set of costs next year, and the year after and so on… Total cost per year is estimates at about £12bn, but direct government cost is a bit over £4bn. This doesn’t include the fact that it ties up beds for other people who do not smoke, which means worse outcomes fro them, and this has knock on costs.
They just aren’t killing them fast enough.
When you elect the clowns of conservative/neoliberal politics, you get what you deserve — a circus.
Tax revenue that you’ll have to plow right back into the health care system to treat expensive lung cancers. But hey, that’s only 20 years down the line, so you look good now.
I’m not sure about how accurate it is, but I read something a while back about it being the opposite in canada. You don’t spend more on smokers because they don’t live long enough to get to the really expensive part.
This is just a foggy memory so I’m definitely open to being corrected.
Yup. It’s really effective. I’ve paid my share of lung ruining tax in my lifetime. And for most of that time I’d be happy to defend my right to soil my airways to something close to the death.
I’ve been clean for over a year. But that addiction is so fucking emotional that you let them squeeze you dry and you almost applaud it. The perfect capitalist drug.
Yes but actually most western governments do this. The Aus health minister made a comment to the same effect a couple of months back. The US even collateralises loans using payments from tobacco companies that have not yet been made, as compensation for harm to public health that has not yet been done.
New Zealand is scrapping a whole lot of things right now.
10 years worth of environmental protection laws is another thing being scrapped.
