Does Thailand need to follow Iceland?

[TotallyOz]

 

What a drag - Iceland moves to make cigarettes prescription-only

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/what-a-drag--iceland-moves-to-make-cigarettes-prescriptiononly-20110705-1h0k4.html#ixzz1RHllPzFb

 

[Guest ronnie4you]

Yes.

[Guest Thor69]

Wouldn't it be wonderful if that law went into effect in Thailand!

 

No more smelly farang and Thais with cigarette smoke on their breath and on their person.

Sounds like a dream come true!

[Guest thaiworthy]

The proposal also says that nicotine should be classed as an addictive substance. ''It's as hard to give up nicotine as heroin, not in terms of the side effects, but in terms of the cravings and how quickly one becomes addicted,'' Dr Gudnason said.

 

Great. Has nothing been learned from past mistakes? We're already losing the war on drugs. So let's start another one against cigarettes. Another niche in the black market and more crime. If people want to smoke that badly they are going to find some way to get cigarettes. This will create more problems that it appears to solve.

 

I don't smoke, and also would appreciate clean air as much as anyone else, but this is not the answer, in my opinion.

[KhorTose]

Great. Has nothing been learned from past mistakes? We're already losing the war on drugs. So let's start another one against cigarettes. Another niche in the black market and more crime. If people want to smoke that badly they are going to find some way to get cigarettes. This will create more problems that it appears to solve.

 

I don't smoke, and also would appreciate clean air as much as anyone else, but this is not the answer, in my opinion.

 

Damn Thaiworthy you took the words right out of my mouth. I completely agree with you, and I don't smoke either.

[Guest fountainhall]

I'm with thaiworthy and KhorTose. I can't abide cigarettes. Given that my father smoked 60 a day at a time when all cigarettes had a very high tar content, I'm surprised that my siblings and I remain alive even after all that second hand smoke when we were kids. My poor father did not enjoy a healthy retirement, though. He succumbed to cancer after just one year.

 

Yet, knowing most of the health arguments against smoking, I somehow wonder how it is that really heavy smokers like the late Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping lived to the ripe old age of 92 and that great comedian George Burns to 100?

 

In an interview in his 90s, George Burns was asked some questions.

 

"Mr. Burns, I hear you smoke 10 or more cigars a day."

"And have done so all my life. I love a good cigar."

 

"And Mr, Burns, I hear a pretty girl always catches your eye."

"Sex is great, and I love the sight of a beautiful woman."

 

"And Mr. Burns, I've heard it tell that you like alcohol."

"Yes, I really love a drink. The only problem is I can't remember if it's my 13th or 14th."

 

"Well, Mr. Burns, can you tell me what's your doctor's advice about all this"

"That I cannot do, son. If I'd taken his advice, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral."

 

He repeats the essence of the story in this hilarious clip with Johnny Carson

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdUZfbNFajg

[Guest]

I don't approve of smoking, but people should be free to make their own choices, providing smoking is only permitted outdoors, in well ventilated areas.

 

Ban smoking and next we will have prohibition of alcohol. Countries which value the liberty of the individual should never follow such policies.

[ChristianPFC]

I salute the these plans as a first step to a drug-free world.

 

people should be free to make their own choice

Not if they harm their and other's health and cause discomfort to others!

 

We're already losing the war on drugs.

I'm pretty sure those involved in the war on drugs are just not really interested in ending drug abuse and stricter enforcement and more severe sentences are necessary. But maybe I'm wrong, as even in countries with death sentence, drugs are availabe.

 

I like to compare the fight against smoking with the eradication of smallpox or the abolition of slavery or the end of witch hunt. I takes one great worldwide effort and once it's over, it's over. The smallpox virus is eradicated and won't come back. No sane person would suggest to put someone else into slavery or that someone else is a witch. In a few hundred years, when smoking will be abolished (I hope so, unfortunately I think I won't live long enough to witness it), people will wonder why at our time people inhaled fumes of glowing dried plants, as we now look back to times where people were superstitious and wonder why they believed e.g. in witches.

[Guest fountainhall]

I like to compare the fight against smoking with the eradication of smallpox or the abolition of slavery

Regrettably I fear it will not be so simple. You fail to mention that smallpox is a disease. People did not choose to contract it. And those who laboured to find a vaccine were working on behalf of the whole of humanity with the world health authorities behind them.

 

Slavery, ghastly though it was, was a way of life to which certain classes of people felt they had an entitlement. As long as others from that class were in power, it was difficult to contemplate ending it. But the belief in the rights of each individual human being eventually won through, even though that took centuries to achieve.

 

Smoking is something completely different, in my view. Let’s leave aside how smoking infiltrated human behaviour. Nicotine is a powerful drug, and as such the vast majority of those who are ‘hooked’ have about as much success at kicking their habit as Thailand has of getting rid of corruption – come to think of it, a lot less so!

 

As with all habit-forming drugs, the world is not going to get rid of the smoking of tobacco products until the reasons behind their consumption are tackled. With heroin and that group of narcotics, this means doing much more to get rid of poverty and the conditions in which many of the planet live. It’s also about taking more care of and giving more attention to young people, and providing them with hope where little exists at present.

 

Ridding the planet of tobacco should be easier, and I agree a lot has been achieved in a relatively short time. But peer pressure amongst youngsters will always encourage some to take up smoking, no matter how many health warnings and photos of diseased lungs are plastered over packets. Far more problematic, though, are the tobacco companies themselves and the governments which regulate them. It’s surely one of the great public health ironies of our times that one government department works its ass off to discourage smoking, whilst others work equally hard to generate the massive revenues from the taxes levied on the product. Unless and until such universal government hypocrisy is halted and alternative sources of revenues found, I fear smoking will be with the world for a long, long time.

[Guest]

As long as you enforce a ban on smoking in any shared building, they are only damaging their own health.

So that wider society doesn't have to pay the bill for this, we merely have to tax tobacco sufficiently to pay for the increased healthcare costs.

Now we have created the perfect framework to allow people freedom of choice, which is exactly how it should be.

 

Ban tobacco, then some fascist will want alcohol banned. After that, what about all these nasty gay saunas which spread HIV?

Prohibition is not an acceptable route in a free society.

[KhorTose]

I salute the these plans as a first step to a drug-free world.

I'm pretty sure those involved in the war on drugs are just not really interested in ending drug abuse and stricter enforcement and more severe sentences are necessary. But maybe I'm wrong, as even in countries with death sentence, drugs are availabe.

 

I think you just answered your own question here.

 

If you really want to stop drug abuse you need to start with families. It would be much cheaper in the long run to support families and help them raise healthy children then to imprison their adult children when they turn to drugs to deal with their problems. Baring that, you might want to look into a program of harm reduction successfully practiced by many enlightened countries like The Netherlands that actually is far cheaper and more productive then prisons. Main principals of Harm reduction.

 

• Accepts, for better and for worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them.
• Understands drug use as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon that encompasses a continuum of behaviors from severe abuse to total abstinence, and acknowledges that some ways of using drugs are clearly safer than others.
• Establishes quality of individual and community life and well-being--not necessarily cessation of all drug use--as the criteria for successful interventions and policies.
• Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm.
• Ensures that drug users and those with a history of drug use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them.
• Affirms drugs users themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use, and seeks to empower users to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their actual conditions of use.
• Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination and other social inequalities affect both people's vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm.
• Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real and tragic harm and danger associated with licit and illicit drug use.

[Guest fountainhall]

So that wider society doesn't have to pay the bill for this, we merely have to tax tobacco sufficiently to pay for the increased healthcare costs. Now we have created the perfect framework to allow people freedom of choice, which is exactly how it should be.

My sentiments exactly. But, unfortunately, the real world has very rich tobacco companies and well-paid lobbyists. And the 'real' cost of tobacco would have to include not merely the cost of healthcare for all cancer-related illnesses but the related costs of paramedics, ambulances and so on.

 

Sadly, it will not happen, if only because ultimately it will result in the supply of money that governments need from the tobacco industry all but drying up. It will even create problems for the healthcare industry. As the cost of smoking becomes too expensive for all but the very rich (and they will undoubtedly argue that they have their own expensive healthcare plans and so are no drain on public healthcare budgets!), the number of smokers will suddenly drop dramatically. So will revenues. Yet the savings in public healthcare costs will take decades to materialise because those who have been regular smokers and given up because of the price increase will still suffer the effects of their addiction for decades ahead. So there'll be a major multi-year uncovered 'deficit' in government revenues that will have to be found from somewhere else.

[Guest]

What we have in some countries right now works just fine.

People are free to smoke and many countries now enforce a ban on smoking in public buildings, so the wider public are protected.

Then the percentage of smokers is being slowly reduced via taxation, advertising bans & health campaigns.

 

All we need to do is continue on this trend. Hopefully more countries will implement and enforce bans on smoking in public buildings. Even otherwise advanced nations, such as Germany seem to be lagging behind on such matters.

[ChristianPFC]

So that wider society doesn't have to pay the bill for this, we merely have to tax tobacco sufficiently to pay for the increased healthcare costs.

Which would make smoking un-affordable for the broad public. The impact of smoking-related diseases and accidents caused under the influence of alcohol are huge.

 

In my opinion, there are two kinds of people who support smoking: those who are addicted and those who are involved in the tobacco industry. The addicted are not to blame, as they are addicted. The lobbyists are to blame. Unfortunately, the non-smokers have no lobby.

 

If one could stop children/teenagers from starting to smoke, smoking would slowly die out (as I can't imagine that any sane adult who did not smoke before starts smoking)

[Rogie]

Unfortunately, the non-smokers have no lobby.

I am sure that is true in many countries, but certainly not in the UK.

 

ASH, Action on Smoking and Health, was formed in 1971. It's a 'campaigning public health charity'.

 

http://www.ash.org.uk/home

 

They have recently issued a report - Tobacconomics

 

Tobacco companies have a long history of misleading politicians and the public. As understanding developed of the adverse effects smoking has on life expectancy and wellbeing, industry pro-tobacco arguments diversified.

 

Now the industry has been forced to concede that smoking kills, efforts are increasingly concentrated on building libertarian and economic arguments against policies to reduce smoking prevalence, as scare tactics to deter policymakers from supporting tobacco control policies.

 

The Tobacconomics report, produced by ASH, reveals how the tobacco industry uses pseudo economic arguments to divert attention away from the health consequences of smoking to block new health regulations and ultimately protect its revenues. As the report shows, this goes as far as repeatedly misleading its own shareholders.

 

In propagating their economic arguments the tobacco firms have established a disparate and loose coalition of lobbyists, smaller retailers and businesses.

 

http://www.ash.org.uk/information/tobacco-industry/conduct/tobacconomics

 

We talk about 'peer pressure' an expression that's more often used in conjunction with younger people. So to say, as Fountainhall already has, that peer pressure plays a significant role in a young person's mind in determining whether he starts smoking or not, is absolutely right. It can also work the other way. Whereas until fairly recently (the 1980's) in the UK smokers had the upper hand, the ball moved over to the other foot some time ago. Many reasons for that (ASH being just one example) of course but let us not forget the power of peer pressure. Unless he is in a group with other smokers, a smoker, surrounded by non-smokers, would I imagine, feel quite uncomfortable or at least feel conspicuous, smoking in public in a way he never used to. The average non-smoker is now much more likely than he once would have been to make his disapproval felt should a smoker intrude into his perceived 'air space'.