Aiding And Abetting Govt.

[HILLVIEW103]

How does this work, The Govt. does not supply free cigarettes or nicotine patches to those people who want to give up smoking, the only thing they do is up the price of smokes. And now Australia is the most expensive place in the world to buy cigarettes(nice cash cow). Now on the other hand the Govt. supplies drug addicts with needles, methadone, and a safe place to shoot up, so isnt that aiding and abetting because drugs are illegal ?? and smoking is still legal.

by the way im a non smoker !

[gordon_s1942]

Smoking Tobaccoo has long been an accepted activity by Society in general and earnt Zillions over the last 350 years of which the Governments of the Day have been able to collect Tax's on.
Dont bite my head off but in GENERAL, smoking is far less dangerous than drug taking and again, smoking doesnt debilitate the user in a very short time as Drugs do.

Drugs and Smoking basically affect 2 separate parts of the body, Drugs primarily affect the Brain and renders the user most times to be unable to function right from the first time but smoking while in the long run leads to all sorts of other health problems which can be terminal, doesnt impair the user in that way.
Dont stop spending on anti smoking campaigns but I would make Anti Drug use the number one priority.

[ol' boy]

I don't see it as Aiding and Abetting, i see it that the Gov is making the Smokers pay for their Hospital bill (or expense on the tax payers) in Advance
Some of that money probably goes to supporting other problems, like the shooting up rooms

[lsemmens]

I think that the point being made ws not so much the cost of tobacco, or the pros and cons of smoking, but the fact that the government, for all its posturing is aiding and "encouraging" illicit drug use by providing "safe" things for addicts but doing absolutely NOTHING to help tobacco addicts to kick the habit.

[ol' boy]

Now that you mention that lsemmens, Australia and Philippines have to very difference stances on the subject.
Or do they

[HILLVIEW103]

I don't see it as Aiding and Abetting, i see it that the Gov is making the Smokers pay for their Hospital bill (or expense on the tax payers) in Advance
Some of that money probably goes to supporting other problems, like the shooting up rooms

you should look up the definition of aiding and abetting.

[gordon_s1942]

I agree with Hillview 103's claim that Governments are aiding and abetting smoking they same way they are 'Soft shoe-ing' around Gambling and sales of alcohol.
The trouble is, so do we.........

All three are HUGE Tax earners as well as employing many thousands from the manufacture to sales of each product.
Walk into any Club or Pub to see signs about how much each contributes to various events both locally and nationwide and then you see rows of Poker machines and TV screens offering all sorts of means to bet on something.

[VroomVroom]

I had to laugh - our local hospital , for many years , had 3 parking spots very close to the entrance reserved for clients of the Methadone clinic only!!! I casually mentioned to management that if clients of the clinic are driving to the hospital then they SHOULDNT BE DRIVING THERE !! Those spots are now Parents with Prams spots

[george65]

I don't know enough to about what goes on in these Clinics to label it aiding and abetting. I would HOPE that while they get them in there, some sort of help and encouragement is leveraged on getting them off the shit. My experience with Druggos is thankfully very limited but the one thing I do know is once they are on it, it's like shoving shit uphill with a tooth pick to get them off.

I have a close mate that got hooked on some bad stuff bout the time we turned 20. His grandfather literally kidnapped him off the street one day with the help of a mate, threw him in a van and tied him up and drove him from Sydney 5 hours up the coast to a remote farm he had. ( which my mate now owns) He then put him in a shed and had him manacled with the old style convict leg irons. He kept him there for a month.
Mate can't remember a lot of it except wishing to hell he could die but it cured him and he never touched anything again and is fiercely anti Drugs.

When he tells people the story, the frequent reaction is he could have had his grandfather and the mate arrested for Kidnap and other things. Mate asks them are they for real? The man saved his life. He was heading down a 1 way dead end, literally and his grandfather saved him. He loved his grandfather very dearly and becoming succesful he did everything he could to make his grandfather as happy and comfortable as he could be when he could no longer look after himself. He was totally was shattered when he passed away.
Mate reckons all these treatments and programs are a waste of time. What the addicts need is a shed on a remote farm with a pair of leg irons and a padlock. As he says, Fixed me for good in a month, cost fk all and I didn't have a single relapse.

These clinics make me wary. there is one at the hospital I go to for the Diabetes Clinic. The druggo clinic is right outside in a prime area near the main entrance doors meaning the majority of people going in and out, Women with babies and about to have them, young kids, the elderly and general public have to go right past where these people hang around with most of them seemingly off their tits.
I got accosted by one couple of years back. Just walking along in a happy daze and the next thing this bloke that looked like he had been stuck on a dessert island is screaming and launching himself at me. I pretty much just tripped him and gave him a hand on his way past and I heard his head crack on the concrete as he went sprawling onto the driveway.
Shit myself, thought I had killed the POS. Before I could really fathom what happened, a couple of guys that must have been security in the clinic came racing out and a nurse behind them. One was asking me if I was OK and the other was on the guy on the ground. Then the nurse came over and the other guy grabbed the dropkick and took him inside. Didn't see any blood and he was walking more or less so guess he was OK..... or not as before anyhow.

Got in to see the doc who was a bit surprised at my blood pressure till I explained what happened. Apparently people getting approached and harassed is not at all uncommon there and there is a lot of opposition to the location of the place which really is ridiculous .
If they can help them all well and good but lets face it, they don't belong in a place where they pose any sort of threat to anyone, especially the amount of people whom are quite Vulnerable that have to walk past there. You sure as hell wouldn't want them inside the hospital proper so find or build a place at the back of the fking car park and put the clinic there.

I think having Cigarettes available at all is a joke. Clearly its only because of the money they still generate.
They keep banning and replacing headache tablets with weaker sugar pills because a few people abuse them but I wonder how many people a year still Die from smoking?
I don't have any problem with them making bungers $5 ea. I know it's very hard for some people to give them up but sometimes you just have to grow a pair and do what you have to do.

At very least they should bring in a license for them. Anyone over 18 can get a license to buy them. After 6 Months no more licenses. Ever.
That means no more kids coming along and getting hooked on them. Sure it's going to take a while to phase them out but got to start somewhere. May not take all that long as I'm sure the life expectancy of the average smoker requires them taking advantage of their Funeral plan sooner than non smokers.

[lsemmens]

What I find ludicrous about the "over 18" rule for tobacco is that any kid who works in a shop is allowed to sell them! If tobacco is that bad, why has it not been removed from supermarket shelves years ago. Personally, the ONLY place that should be permitted to sell the stuff (other than banning it all together) should be a licensed premises that sells alcohol at least, there, you have SOME regulation.

[admin]

I dont see the point of the thread , which appears to try and compare apples to oranges and then throws in bananas for good measure. I'll stick to smoking as the topic.

If your a smoker, your a dill. Apart from stinking, you clearly have way too much money if you want to set fire to it and if the health message about cancer hasn't sunk in since they started telling us in the 70's........well, hope you have funeral insurance at least to save your relatives the cost.

The cost of taxes on cigarettes in no way comes close to the cost cigarettes cause the health system. We have had that discussion on here before, the tax would need to be doubled or tripled to pay for smoking related disease.

BTW, no idea who "The Govt." is. We have a Federal one and quite a lot of State ones and in general the OP makes mention of 2 different things (cigarette taxes and safe injecting rooms) imposed by 2 different levels of government.