Smoking. Millions of euros of taxpayer money spent every year on those lung cancer patients which could be well spent elsewhere. It’s also an activity that negatively affects not just the smoker but everyone around them.
Smoking is something I truly despise, we all know that it is bad, really bad for you, we teach kids about it, yet people still start smoking.
Do as New Zealand did, set a cut off year, if you are born after 2015, you will not be permitted to buy tobacco at all.
then have a right leaning government win the next election and roll it back https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/510439/smokefree-generation-law-scrapped-by-coalition-government
Damn it…
Blame tobacco lobbies and gullible fools.
Great. You’ve just made another illegal narcotic, a black market and a way of financing illegal activity.
I’d agree with you on that if tobacco was completely banned, but banning from a specific age, seems like a fairly low impact.
…and as time marches on?
The use would be drasticly cut down, we’ll never get every one…
What I meant was that “a ban from a certain age” is a total ban eventually. Black market will grow as the ban becomes more and more complete.
What I find amusing is that the cigarettes packages where I live have disgusting images with the potential sickness it comes from its usage, and yet people still buy them 'hey man, this will literally kill you someday" warning does not work.
I thought this was a well known measure but it seems that my USA cousin did not know about this kind of marketing.
They ought to increase it by 2 years every time. That way people have to get clean. Also, we ( US citizens) should take control of all tobacco companies, and wind them down, putting all profits and assets towards addiction recovery services, and cancer treatments.
They’ve been making billions off of slowly killing people for the last 100+ years, they don’t need one more fucking day.
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Thanks to taxes (81½% of the price is tax on average), smokers are currently making my government a profit, including all the cancer care. Old people need a lot of healthcare, so people dying of cancer saves a lot of healthcare cost in the long term.
You been hanging out with Sir Humphrey? ;-)
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Nice try, tobacco marketing executive…
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Exactly, and the rhetoric “it pays for themselves” also doesn’t hold up, since there is still second hand and third hand smoke.
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The tax on cigarettes is so high, it’s been claimed they pay more into the system than they claim out, as they die too soon. 🫣 (In Australia)
At least here in Germany this is apparently still not true as smokers in particular add a huge cost to the healthcare system due to the long-term and repeated damage. For example, once they get parts of their feet amputated from clogged arteries, most actually continue to smoke (“Ah well now it’s too late anyways”), and hence will get half a dozen such amputations over time.
Obesity is the issue these days not tobacco. Tobacco use is a fraction of what it once was. Now a huge portion of the EU and USA is obese, which causes way more strain on the healthcare system.
X
That sounds like marketing by tobacco companies.
Haha I had to go digging.
So it is mentioned in an Australian page about the costs of Tobacco in Australia:
https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17-2-the-costs-of-smoking#17.2.6
A report commissioned by the tobacco company Philip Morris, when the Czech government proposed raising cigarettes taxes in 1999, concluded that the effect of smoking on the public finance balance in the Czech Republic in 1999 was positive, an estimated net benefit of 5,815 million CZK (Czech koruny), or about US$298 million. 77 The analysis included taxes on tobacco, and health care and pension savings because of smokers’ premature death, as economic benefits of smoking, and these benefits exceeded the negative financial effects of smoking, such as increased health care costs. The report created a furore; public health advocates found the explicit assumption that premature death is beneficial morally repugnant. The controversy was described by the journalist Chana Joffe-Walt on the radio program This American Life,78 and was reported in the British Medical Journal.79 According to This American Life, Philip Morris distanced itself from the report in response to the controversy, banning its employees from citing the findings. In fact, the report’s claim that smoking was beneficial relies on its inclusion of taxes as a benefit, not any savings due to smokers’ premature deaths80 Costs associated with smoking while the smoker was still alive totalled 15,647 million CZK, 13 times more than the ‘benefits’ associated with early death. The net benefit reported in the analysis arose because the tobacco tax revenue of 20,269 million CZK was regarded as a benefit. As detailed in Section 17.1.1, taxes are not an economic cost (or benefit); they are a transfer payment. The recipient (the government) gets richer, while the taxpayer gets poorer.
So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.
So darkly amusingly it has actually been reported before, but in the Czech Republic.
…in a study funded by a tobacco company.
Thank youj for the link, I read the section you linked to and the cancer council seems like a good soruce, and it was about what I expected.
Australian here, in Finland. Holy shit it seems everyone smokes like chimneys here.
Never really thought about how much smoking has declined in Aus over the last 20-40 years, but yeah coming over here has been an eye opener.
Seems to be a Europe thing, or really a rest of the world thing. It’s very rare to smell cigarettes, particularly after vaping took off.
In my country there was like 10 wonderful years when almost nobody smoked.
In the last 5-10 years all that got reversed by vaping, it’s everywhere now. Not as bad as smoking though.
Yeah, and unlike what people commonly think, it doesn’t just directly affect the user (first hand smoke) and the people around it (second hand smoke), but also the furniture and nature around it (third hand smoke).
I despise those cigarettes laying around everywhere in nature. You can even smell them on remotes if someone was a hardcore smoker.
They need help in kicking off from it.
You just trade out legal distributors for illegal distributors while ruining the lives of smokers by cycling them in and out of prison, feeding their need to smoke even more. Bad idea.
Yeah, I’m surprised at how many people here would simply like to add tobacco to the list of controlled substances and add more fuel to the shit firestorm that is the Drug War.
Do I believe the tobacco industry should be far more heavily regulated than it currently is? Absolutely. I actually feel that way about most legal drugs.
But imprisoning people for doing what they want with their own bodies in their own homes has already proven to be ineffective at curtailing drug use and abuse.
Additionally, the inhumane treatment of prisoners and former prisoners is a whole separate topic, but related in that the Drug War is just a corrupt mechanism to feed the prison-industrial complex. Why add another drug (tobacco) to the list of drugs cops can plant on your person and send you off to jail for?
i hate tobacco but prohibition doesnt work.
we should have learned that lesson with alcohol and weed but it seems we did not.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I have less problems with the “luxury” items, such as cigars.
They’re usually hand-crafted expensive stuff that’s made to enjoy once and a while, compared to cigarettes which are mass produced with the sole purpose to get you addicted.
I think the same is true with alcohol. There’s the cheap, mass produced stuff vs the more expensive “hand”-crafted stuff.
I wish we could just enjoy these things without corporations trying to get us addicted to them at every opportunity, disregarding any of the dangers associated with consuming them.
Btw its written “once in a while”
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Supermarkets and businesses throwing food away and not allowing people to take it for free. (“If I can’t sell it nobody can have it”).
Would only work if you also made them immune from lawsuits due to people getting sick from eating expired food.
they already are under the good samaritan laws; they use lawsuits as an excuse for their shitty behavior.
Depends on your location. Good Samaritan laws vary widely.
The food would presumably “last moment before expiry” i.e. we can’t sell this tomorrow so we give it away tonight.
Expiration dates on packaged food are almost always about how enjoyable the food is to eat, not safety. Donating expired packaged food with legal protection from liability would be good for the world.
Requiring the purchase or use of proprietary software or formats to view or submit public records.
Or medical. Or educational.
Collection of personally identifiable information on every website ever.
Corporate murder.
Making a profit from healthcare and health insurance.
Or even just make private health insurance illegal.
Lobbying.
Lobbying is fine. Lobbying with money should be illegal.
ITT: people so used to lobbying that they got convinced it’s a necessary evil so that minorities and common folks can lobby as well.
It’s clearly absurd. Many places call lobbying with its real name: corruption. And there are laws in place to fight it. Are they perfect? No. Is it then more effective to legalyze corruption? OF COURSE NOT ARE YOU INSANE?!?
Lobbying isn’t the same as corruption.
Lobbying is informing politicians about an issue while pushing your agenda.
Corruption is giving a politician an incentive to vote as you want.
In what universe a politician does not have, nevermind intrinsecally in its raise to popularity, but explicitly active tools and relationships that keeps him up to date with the issues and needs of his community?
I guess in a monarchy.
Very few politicians have the time get down and understand the issues enough to make an informed decision, which they have aids and use lobbyists to learn about the subject.
A decision about deciding about subsidiaries for specific crops for instance, lets say that a farmer used to farm wheat, but then realized that he could get more money by farming tobacco, ok, so he switches to tobacco, but the nation still needs a stable supply of wheat, so wheat needs to be subsidized by the government to make it worth it for farmer to farm wheat, most politicians won’t know if there is a need for this or how large it needs to be.
This is where lobbyists come in, they inform politicians about what they believe is needed, show reports and other data, to influence the politician about how to vote and what to argue for. Wheat farmers and baker advocacy groups will argue for high subsidies, tobacco farmers and cigarette companies will argue against it.
Is that a government for ants?!?
No dude there’s experts, specialists, entire departments within any (?) human government that knows shit, talks with experts, calculate and runs stuff.
They don’t just wait for farmers to walk up and explain what vegetables are.
And why would you think it’s normal that cigarette companies are at this whymsical table? Why put cancer inducing products in a debate with food with baby politicians that knows nothing and wait for the “debate” to play out?
Is that a government for ants?!?
No this is normal.
No dude there’s experts, specialists, entire departments within any (?) human government that knows shit, talks with experts, calculate and runs stuff.
Yes there are departments for healthcare, having reports full of stats, that no politician will ever read, lobbying can bring attention to demetia and bring some context to the data.
They don’t just wait for farmers to walk up and explain what vegetables are.
Correct, but they want farmers to come up and talk to them about problems that they see that might be missed, for example, how young people can be encouraged to go into farming, or if there is something killing the crops that they can see faster than the governments experts can write a report about.
And why would you think it’s normal that cigarette companies are at this whymsical table?
Because they are a huge industry.
Why put cancer inducing products in a debate with food with baby politicians that knows nothing and wait for the “debate” to play out
Because farmers need money, and if tobacco pays more than wheat, then the farmer will farm tobacco.
You are blind to so many options…
They ignore the reports? So why would they not ignore the “people”? Because money? Then it’s just corruption and the policy won’t reflect any genuine need.
Why being a “huge industry” has any political weight? Drugs cartel move tons of money, do they get a say in the matter too?
I get what you mean, but that would backfire increadibly quickly.
Civil rights organizations would no longer be able to talk with politicians directly, possibly never, as demonstrations and manifestations could be classified as lobbying depending on how strict it would be enforced.
Environmental groups could no longer invite politicians to important conferences.
Lobbying isn’t just something that monolithic companies do, take it away, and it will only be something the bad guys does.
Yup, a late friend of mine was a lobbyist at the state level for a mental health lobbying group. His daughter has schizophrenia and that was his way to give back in his retirement. Without lobbying, it’s hard for politicians to know when there is a problem they need to fix. They have a small staff and they don’t just magically know when there is a problem. The problem is when a politician either can’t sniff out unethical lobbyists or just doesn’t care.
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I’d accept such an outcome.
Keep in mind that the person you reply to isn’t wrong: Big corpos would still be lobbying, as they got the resources to hide it effectively and keep everyone trying to sue them over suspicions of lobbying stuck in litigation hell.
Anybody less affluent would however find it impossible to do any lobby work. Environmental agencies etc.
This is one of those situations where just outlawing something does the least affect the very party you would want to hit most.
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That’s a better approach I think, yes. It’ll be difficult to prevent collusion but effectivey capping the size of most companies and maybe their across-border reach would be a good way to keep a tighter leash on them.
You’d accept possibly loosing the right to demonstrate or to hold a manifestation or protest?
That is not the world I want to live in.
Wut? It is supremely American to think you can only talk to politicians if you have money… and only because so many other people are willing to purchase a slice of their time.
I can just walk to Peter Julian’s office and, assuming I’m not rude, talk to him about something that matters to me. I’ve had conversations with Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders - I used to board game with a state senator. It it might be hard to get a lunch date with Joe Biden but politicians spend the majority of their time just talking to folks… it’s only when the rich can use their money to monopolize time that shit breaks down.
Those meetings you have had with politicians could absolutely be classified as lobbying, and would be made illegal if lobbying was outlawed.
A company have the resources to make a smokescreen around meetings like that, making it harder to prove lobbyism, the lobbyist just happened to stay at the same hotel as the politician did, they even arrived a week before, and left two days after the politician arrived, it’s not like a meeting was set up on the one overlapping day, that would be crazy…
Those meetings you have had with politicians could absolutely be classified as lobbying, and would be made illegal if lobbying was outlawed.
It’s not just classified as lobbying, it’s litterally what Lobbying is about. Meeting politician to tell them that the environmental law reforms means that the factory will close or that the consumer need better protection regarding toxic chemical in their food is what Lobbyist do. It’s sometimes get even funnier when they change employer and therefore political side
Members of Congress trading individual stocks, bonds, and other investments.
For-profit healthcare.
Lies and exaggerated advertising.
No, it’s not “best in the world” or “lightning fast”, it’s an entry level $200 GPU!
No, it doesn’t have “crystal clear high-res screen”, it’s just a budget phone!
No, that tampon will not change my lifestyle!
No, that perfume will not make guys drooling over me!
I’m ok with “it’s decent quality with an affordable price”.
I’m ok with “it’s the best budget-friendly option”.
I’m ok with “it’s not the best in the world, but it’s definitely worth a try”.
I personally think the “how good is it” part of “advertising” should literally just be a percentage value of “how many existing customers say it was worth it”.
But even that would get gamed the way 5/5 amazon reviews can be bought today already.
So maybe it should really just be “it’s a insert thing made out of insert material produced in insert country by insert labour conditions and it costs insert price”.
Making more than 10x the money of your least paid employee.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think you’d just see companies divide into tiers where one tier would subcontract to the tier below. Think “cleaning services companies” all the way down.
Well I don’t expect the exact phrasing of the code of law to be 11 words.
Simple : let’s make that illegal too
This.
Nutrition information based on unrealistic serving sizes.
I’ve seen an individually wrapped muffin “servings per pack: 2”.
Then there’s that Tom Scott video on how “zero calory” sweetener can be 4 calories.
There’s a great video by Vihart about how even when accounting for servings per unit it can still be manipulated to fit their marketing goals.
Canada passed ‘rational servings’ laws a few years ago to this exact end. No more cases where a single-portion package would contain 1.6 servings, or whatnot.
Boneless chicken with bones
Unlimited political spending, particularly by corporations - see Citizen’s United.
Campaign financing in general. If you get enough signatures you’ll get a fixed amount of money from tax payers for your campaign. If you accept money from anyone else you’re barred from public office for life. End of corruption right there.
Locked bootloaders
Qualified immunity for police officers. Prosecutors and judges basically get qualified immunity, too-- in that they can be caught engaging in all sorts of inappropriate and illegal activity without facing punishment because like police, it usually doesn’t even get to the extent of being charged.
I don’t even understand how qualified immunity could even be implemented without massive social unrest
Maybe fix the social issues as well so there’s no need to riot
I’d love to but even our most citizen aligned presidential terms only side with the people 20% of the time…
