Posted on 04/23/2012 11:47:13 AM PDT by BO Stinkss
While the US has been trying to disgust smokers into giving up tobacco, New Zealand has been considering a more direct idea: raising the price of cigarettes to $100 a pack. The Ministry of Health wants a smoke-free NZ by 2025, and the $100 price tagwhich would be implemented by 2020is one of the ideas being discussed
although officials admit it is "probably unrealistic." The plan seen as the most likely would make a pack of cigarettes a still-sizable $60 by 2025, Sky News reports. But, 3 News adds, Prime Minister John Key is concerned that higher prices may simply encourage a black market.
(Excerpt) Read more at newser.com ...
is it illegal to grow your own tobacco?
I can’t imagine how it could be
How big are their packs?
The commies are trying to wean everyone off of tobacco and push them over to the much cheaper marijuana. When everyone is high, nobody complains about what is going on within the government.
How can there be a black market on an isolated island?
Someone will make millions bootlegging......
Funny how they lack the guts to just make it illegal.
Brilliant idea. It will make the profit margin (and violence) from bootleg cigarettes approach that of illegal drugs. Then the government can tax these new criminals at 100% through “seizures”.
The other question is, who would spend $100 on a pack of cigarettes when the price of an equivalent amount of pot is less, even though it is illegal.
There’s a thriving illegal drug trade in Singapore, so why not?
I guess these idiots never heard of prohibition and how it turned out such lovely people like Al Capone, Joe Kennedy and other mobsters like that.
” Prime Minister John Key is concerned that higher prices may simply encourage a black market “
Gee - ya think???
Guess it’s a good thing 1) I quit smoking over 23 years ago, and 2) I don’t live in New Zealand.
I was in Toronto maybe 35 years ago. Canadians didn’t like the price of cigarettes, so they just rolled their own. Called them “twisters.” They looked like joints. It was no big deal.
With a sufficient profit potential, someone will find some way to do it.
/johnny
I wonder if they mistranslated “carton”....
This is vegetarian health guru Gillian McKeith. Age: 51 years old.

This is Nigella Lawson. English food writer, TV chef and meat eater. Age: 51 years old.
People talk about the war on drugs being a failure...
well Tobacco is a drug that can be had for cheap around the world legally...
So that will create a hell of an illegals black market in New Zealand...
Cheap easy to be made money will suck illegals cigs in to New Zealand by the boatload....
I mean really its an f---ing bunch of islands...
lots of unguarded coast line...
lot of pleasure craft...
stock up on a buttload of cig is Australia...
quick night run to New Zealand ...
turn a quick 20/30k profit...
yea this will turn out well
When they came for the smokers I didn't care, I didn't smoke.
“Prime Minister John Key is concerned that higher prices may simply encourage a black market.”
Captain Odvious = John Key?
Isn’t Bloomberg simply an out of control ego maniacal jerk?
When people tell me he’s done a good job i tell them they must mean besides the fact term 3 is illegal and the way he tries to run peoples lives.
It’s freakin hell living under that idiot. NYC is living under pure Despotism pure and simple. He does whatever the hell he wants.
Now his latest project for the past year has been to make traffic as bad as humanly possible because he hates cars and is a global warming fanatic. So he is literally dividing streets in half with cement barricades. One half is for bikes (which nobody uses) and one half is for cars. So where their use to be 2 or 3 lane streets, now they are reduced to one lane. Every-single-day I see firetrucks, ambulances, cop cars stuck in traffic for 30 minutes, 40 minutes with their sirens blaring, and that means nothing to that little doosh. To hell with emergencies, the Despot must have his way.
I have yet to meet a vegatarian that looked healthy.
How about grolling your own?
Roll your own was quite popular during the depression. There were even hand operated machines for this purpose.
I’ll take the English Muffin!
No. At least not in the USA - yet.
It's not difficult to grow in the right climate either.
But the process to dry it and cure it to produce an end product similar to the kind of tobacco consumers are used to can be long and involved.
Well, it’s official.
Government has now become sillier than the Monty Python comedy skits which used to parody how silly government can be.
Neither government (US or New Zealand) actually want to stop people from smoking for health reasons.
If they did they would just declare tobacco illegal.
They just want to screw tobacco smokers out of as much tax money as possible while making false claims that it is all done for health reasons.
” Government has now become sillier than the Monty Python comedy skits which used to parody how silly government can be . “
Have you noticed the dearth of posts from “The Onion” here of late??
Even professional satirists can’t compete with the headlines....
” If they did they would just declare tobacco illegal. “
Yeah - that worked so well with beverage alcohol in the 1920s, and with recreational drugs 1960s to present...
I live in a small sailboat and did some quick math...based on the price I’ve seen for cheaper SA cigarettes and the space available...a helluva long trip but a $5k investment would score $850,000.
Wow...I LOVE controlled substances!!
I'm not saying it would work.
I'm just saying if their intent was to stop tobacco related health issues they would do more than squeeze the maximum amount of taxes out of smokers.
Besides - when did the US government ever let past failures stop them from implementing a policy?
ie: Socialism has a long history of disasterous and utter failure but that hasn't stopped republicans and democrats in the government from forcing more and more socialism on us.
While the states and the anti-tobacco groups will not admit it, privately owned bars and restaurants are indeed suffering the effects of the growing smoking bans on privately owned businesses.
The promises of the anti-smoking groups that non-smokers would return to the smoke free establishments have not come to fruition. It's now apparent that those alleged smoking bar boycotters never existed in the first place, just like the leftist's attacks on Rush's host radio stations by leftists who never listen to Rush.
To further prove my point, there are several bars in my area here in S.E. Michigan that have spent considerable amounts of monies to erect an outside enclosure to shelter the smokers from the elements since they can no longer smoke inside the bar.
But bags of pot will go for a mere $2.00
Not all at once because here in the U.S. they have learned that "incrementalism" is the only way the populace will ultimately be controlled.
As an example, what was the first action taken against smokers to assuage the complaints of the non-smokers?
Answer: The airlines moved all the smokers to a designated section in the back of their planes....and the rest is history.
So once the government has exhausted its income source from the tobacco industry and created an underground blackmarket that they can't control, what's the next logical target to first demonize before they attack it as they did with tobacco?
Answer: Alcohol consumption
Now welcome in MADD as the new replacement for the anti-tobacco lobbyists......
Gee, ya think?!
Guess I should have scrolled down. GMTA.
/johnny
OMG, I have seen Gillian on TV. What do they have to do to her to make her acceptable on screen???? I can tell that is her, but that is not how she looks on her show.
But she still does look like someone who is overly-interested in other peoples’ poo.
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