Australia's plain packaging punishment for lifelong smokers
I was a bit hasty the other day when I wrote the post further down criticising tobacco companies and Imperial Tobacco specifically for abandoning smokers.
Fellow leper ban fighter David Atherton emailed to say tobacco companies have been silenced by quango and self interest charities which have made the law preventing them from listening to smokers while ensuring they do as they are told by the anti-smoker industry.
This was confirmed, in softer language, by the representative from Imperial Tobacco who says he will submit a blog post here when he can.
He said :
"A lot of the work we do to support our consumers goes largely unnoticed because we don’t tend to talk about it. Of course, there are numerous rules and regulations that prevent us from communicating with our consumers effectively."
Perhaps I should be more patient but when you look at how fascism has gained such popular ground in Australia, where the smoker is the shit at the bottom of a "decent" society's shoe, it's no wonder that I'm getting frustrated at the lack of perceived action.
I still stand by my claim that all political parties - except UKIP - have abandoned the smoker and it terrifies me that mainstream politicians take such sadistic pleasure in punishing smokers and watching us squirm in the face of anti-smoker bigots who are lapping it all up.
Today I was outside an area of the local magistrates court that I hadn't been to before. Outside of the main entrance was a walkway with a wall along it. No Smoking swastikas littered it all the way along but it was completely in the open air. A patio area with trees was on one side and a wall was on the other. I got to the end and sat down well away from the door and not near enough to bother anyone walking past.
A security guard coming on duty approached me and told me it was against the law to smoke there and I had to go off the grounds completely. I told him it was not against the law because the Health Act 2006 relates to indoor areas and outdoor areas where cover is less than 50%.
He insisted it was The Law because a sign in the wide open air at the front of the building said so. I told him I was active in this field and it may be court imposed policy but it certainly was not The Law but I would not argue with him. I said for the sake of politeness I would move but I would be writing to the Clerk of the Court to ask under what section of that spiteful act allows for law abiding smokers in the open air to be bullied by officialdom.
I guess that's a natural progression if you legalise harassment against one minority group and use tax funded agencies to create new offensive words to describe them. The latest one that gets me is "hardcore". I think they have to equate us with the sex industry by using the sort of word usually associated with porn. Perhaps we are perverse now as well. They certainly think we are diseased. There can be no other explanation because since the Health Act 2006 gave licence to open abuse, smokers wanting to quit now have to go to combined anti-smoker and sexually transmitted infections walk-in centres to get their tax payer funded NRT.
Low life antis who have brains about as big as a cockroach also feel licensed to be abusive and throw words about like "pathetic addicts who can't control their addiction so we have to decide what's best for them". They generally know nothing about smoking and they certainly can't have any idea about real addictions, but David Atherton does. He spoke at a conference sponsored by Pfizer and its lackeys in the anti-smoker industry who, surprise, surprise, wanted smoking to be declared not only an "addiction" but a "disease". Dave won the debate and at least those with an open mind learned some truth about smoking although the lie will still be spread because it brings in profit and allows bigots a free hand.
As a lifelong moderate smoker of 43 years I know that for someone like me who has smoked from the age of 8 years old I am more likely to die if I quit now than continue to smoke moderately.
The amount of years I've smoked appears to qualify me for the abusive term of "hardcore" but using that term for lifelong smokers is like calling people in wheelchairs spastics.
The ratcheting up of state backed abuse over the last five years is all part of the now open hate campaign to punish smokers who will not quit because we are ruining the wet dream of these so-called "progressives" to eradicate smoking in future. The last quarter of my life is being made thoroughly miserable by these bigots and liars and my very real fear is that it will get worse yet.