Quit Smoking Now

Disgusted with the insane taxes on cigarettes that have afflicted New York City in the last decade or so, innovative New Yorkers have begun rolling cigarettes out of pipe tobacco, which is much less taxed. In the original Reuters story (click here to read it), some douchebag ‘Occupy Wall Street’ dude is given as an example, having moved from $4.50 a pack in Florida all the way to $14 a pack in New York.

Cigarette Taxes in New York

Who’s paying for your smokes, you disgusting hippie? Your parent’s money? Welfare? Our money? Some sort of benefit or entitlement? Get lost and then get a job you maggot!

Sorry about that.

The point is that there is direct relation with tax rates and the amount of money it raises. If you raise it too high, you reach a point where it becomes real profitable to be a smuggler, and the overall revenue drops because of smuggling. This is true of all taxes, by the way, not just cigarette taxes. You also spend increasing amounts of money on policing and enforcing, making the high taxes just an excuse for enforcement.

Of course, in many instances there are another supposed goal to higher taxes, which is to reduce the number of people who smoke. This is insanely hypocritical. If cigarettes are bad, just ban them outright (and I believe that they’re REAL bad for you, by the way). Having high taxes is just another excuse to dip into our pockets, or in this case the pockets of smokers, so that governments have more of OUR money with which to buy votes.

I think that pipe tobacco is absolutely disgusting, but if I were addicted to nicotine, and smoking pipe tobacco was the only way to get my fix, you’d better be sure that I’d be rolling and smoking that stuff like it’s going out of style… and in New York, it probably is, because elected officials can’t stand people getting around their laws and endless regulations, and doing it legally at that. Go, New York! Keep rolling and keep smoking! And keep visiting my website!

Australia is in the lead once again, having decided that from now on, all cigarette packs should be identical in color, with only the name of the brand to identify them. They should also feature one disgusting picture, much like in Canada or elsewhere around the world, but bigger. Much like this image, here.

New Australia Cigarette Package

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. Australian tobacco companies claim that they should be given up to 14 months to make the change, because “that’s the time they need.”

Let’s set a couple of things straight. I’m quite conservative, trending strongly towards the libertarian, but not completely. My personal belief is that people are grown up and can do what they want, as long as it doesn’t infringe on their neighbors’ right to do exactly the same thing. I believe that smoking is terrible and a great killer, but that being said, if cigarettes are so bad, make them illegal outright, and let’s be done with it! I believe these half-measures are nothing but bullshit designed to appease those with a naturally guilty conscience, while avoiding dealing with more important issues.

All that being said, needing 14 months to change the packaging on cigarettes is even MORE bull excrement! All you need is a nice CMYK, high quality TIFF file, which I’m sure already exist, and send them to the printer. In a couple of weeks, a month at the most, the new labels are on. It might take a little longer for all the display cases in convenience stores, the letterhead and who knows what else, but the labels would be done.

Complying with this is not complicated. The reality is that if they drag it out 14 months longer, they’ve bought their industry that much more time to snare in new smokers, and seen from the other end, wrangled a 14 month extension on an industry that will soon, like many of its customers end up, be on life support.

According to recent studies first reported in the Swiss online news source thelocal.ch, E-Cigarettes can have just as much nicotine as real cigarettes, and twice as much as traditional quit smoking methods, like nicotine patches and gum. What’s really fascinating about this is that they are actually treating this like real news, much like CNN did when it reported that Saddam Hussein got 99% of the vote in pre-invasion Iraqi elections. Come on!

E-Cigarettes can contain as Much Nicotine as Real Cigarettes

Anyone that thinks that they should use E-Cigarettes to quit smoking is an idiot, and any company that pushes E-Cigarettes as a quit smoking method should be severely blamed. If you quit smoking cigarettes and switch over to E-Cigarettes, all you’ve done is change your nicotine delivery system. Instead of giving your money to a tobacco company, you’re giving it to somebody else.

Everyone is trying to get on the nicotine bandwagon, and who can blame them? It’s addictive, not terribly damaging to your health (the nicotine, not the tobacco!), its dirt cheap, and people like it, and oh yeah…. IT’S ADDICTIVE!

Don’t get me wrong. Whatever way you chose to quit smoking cigarettes, and that works, was the right way. But don’t think that you’re breaking an addiction when you switch to E-Cigarettes, because you’re not.

If you know anything, you’ll know that one of the hardest habits to break, as far as smoking goes, is the behavioral component. Holding something in your hands. Puffing on something. You know the drill. The fact is that E-Cigarettes take advantage of decades of conditioning on your part, and replace the smoking stick with another one that burns (or ‘vaporizes’) something of theirs, instead, so they get to take your money.

I would love to patent and market ‘Stop Smoking Sugar Free Candy Bars’. Just put plenty of nicotine in them, and people would flock to them, and more importantly, KEEP FLOCKING, because nicotine is ADDICTIVE! I’d be rich, and I could stop writing about quitting smoking! But I wouldn’t, because I like pointing out the insanity around me.

Oh yeah. Check out the original news story about the nicotine content of E-Cigarettes. Notice the breathless surprise!

http://www.thelocal.ch/national/20111102_1641.html#

Also known as Dr. Jessica Adams – she’s not a doctor, she just plays one on TV! – Odette Yustman is smoking hot. Now, the question as to whether she smokes cigarettes, there are no highly credible pictures of her smoking, but I did find one, and if you look carefully you’ll see that she’ s clearly holding a cigarette.

Odette Yustman Smoking a Cigarette

Odette Yustman is the second one from the left, and in her hand is a cigarette. Now I’m not saying that she’s smoking, merely that she’s holding an almost completely smoked cigarette. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Or it may be that this is not Odette Yustman at all, merely someone that looks like her. What do you think? Check out more Odette Yustman facts and trivia here.