More dangerous than death?

For years, the drones have been fed lies about the alleged deadliness of a mere whiff of tobacco smoke and many of them believe it. They believe there are deadly doses of six hundred different chemicals crammed into a few milligrams of dried leaf. They believe that even talking to a smoker will kill them, make their children explode and turn their cat inside out.

So why would anyone think they’d bat an eyelid when they are told that fake cigarettes are dangerous? Hell, they believe Electrofag is dangerous! They think cigarettes are radioactive and powered by jet fuel. They think smoke causes bacterial infections and unfortunate trouser experiences. More dangerous? How?

The smokers have been told, over and over, that smoking causes everything. Entire medical dictionaries have been replaced with the mantra ‘Smoking did it’ and doctors don’t even bother looking for other causes any more. So tell the smokers the fakes are dangerous and what do they do? They shrug and say ‘How can they be more dangerous than death?’

I’m afraid the cry of ‘Wolf’ has gone out once too often. Nobody is listening now.

Fake cigarettes can certainly be dangerous. They are unregulated and could have all sorts of nasty impurities in them. However, cigarettes made out of dead flies and human crap are not going to fool any smoker. As soon as that flame touches the end, we’ll know it’s not tobacco. Pure hyperbole, folks, and laughably silly. The drones believe it all.

The most interesting part of the article is the conflation of fake tobacco with imported tobacco, and there’s no distinction made between legally or illegally imported tobacco either. It’s impossible to work out how much of the tobacco is actually fake and how much is real stuff sneaked in from the EU and sold by Man with a Van. There is also no attempt to distinguish Man with a Van’s tobacco from that brought in legitimately by people travelling abroad, for their own use.

When plain packaging arrives, of course, it will be utterly impossible to know what you’re buying so why pay shop prices? The stuff in the shop might be fake, you’ll never know until you hand over your money. It will be safer to inspect the EU packs, at least you have a chance of spotting the fakes and there will be far fewer of them anyway. Criminals won’t bother working to copy the packs on sale in other countries, not when they have an easy all-the-same pack to copy here.

There is much talk in the article about how much money the Treasury ‘loses’ in tax because we awkward buggers aren’t paying it. Yet at the same time, they want us all to stop smoking. Surely if we all buy our tobacco abroad, the effect on the Treasury is the same as if we all stop smoking? Isn’t that loss of revenue exactly what ASH and its satellite groups are trying to achieve?

We’re just helping out, that’s all.

October is now set to be the month in which we are to see a new wave of antismoking propaganda.

That’s okay. Tobacco harvesting has begun and although I haven’t managed to grow an awful lot this year, I should certainly have enough to ensure I’m in no danger of paying any tobacco tax in October. I don’t want to let the Government down, now do I? They want me to stop paying tobacco tax and I am happy to oblige.

Incidentally, I saw a sign in a shop window today, a sign I have not seen for many years. It said ‘Brewing equipment on sale’. Once, you could buy beer kits in supermarkets and there were homebrew shops all over the place. That all faded away, to the point where you’d get blank stares if you mentioned ‘demijohn’ or ‘airlock’. Now they are making a comeback.

The government don’t want alcohol duties either. They have said so. So, let’s all be good citizens and stop paying them.

Plain packaging eh? Try ‘no packaging’. We’re way ahead of you, antismokers.

And fear not, politicians. We’ll make sure you don’t get that revenue you don’t want. When ASH and the rest have brought the country to bankruptcy, just remember you asked for it. In fact you demanded it, insisted on it, legislated for it and funded it.

When the last light goes out in Westminster, we’ll still be smoking and drinking.

 

About these ads