Thursday 3 October 2013

Ireland To Ban Small Boxes

Just when you thought the hare-brained idiots who back plain packaging couldn't get more absurd ...

In January down in Australia, we saw the hilarious response to Boxwraps, a company which created stickers that adult smokers could choose in order to hide sick government wet dream psycho gore porn.
The Australian Medical Association has urged the federal government to step in and ban the stickers, Steve Hambleton, president of the AMA commented: “I would be confident that the government would response very quickly to stop this defeating the intention of their legislation".
Yes, they actually wanted to ban stickers.

I don't know if they got anywhere with that, but fast forward to last week and Irish health minister James O'Reilly is proudly declaring to the world that he is equally loopy.
Dr Reilly stressed any plans by tobacco companies to sell plain permanent boxes so smokers can transfer cigarettes in to them would be tackled.
A ban on small plain boxes, eh? Well, best of luck in drafting that particular legal document, sunshine.

Now, if you'd just arrived at this debate and read back, you'd be forgiven for thinking that these people must have been lying the big one for quite a while. I mean, wasn't the entire point of plain packaging to stop those 'glitzy' packets that look like Lego or Ferraris luring kids, or eradicating colours which prey on how utterly weak and pathetic women are? If so, surely O'Reilly should be ecstatic about the thought of plain boxes replacing them, yes?

Well no, apparently. It's now about stopping adults - who have already made their choice at the shop counter - from exercising their own free will as to what they would like to put their tabs in. Once again, it's not about the chiiildren, and it's not about health, as O'Reilly kindly confirms.
The Health Minister has vowed to win the war against the tobacco industry as he moves to enforce the standardised packaging of cigarettes.
Yep. And that is all the tobacco control industry has ever been interested in, a shameful war against a legal industry. They are in hock to their own favoured nicotine suppliers and will ban anything - legal or not - which interferes with that.

If it means banning e-cigs, so be it. If it means banning stickers, so be it. And if it means banning small rectangular boxes, well, that's just another hoop they will jump through to achieve their goal.

They may be absurd loons who truly believe that banning boxes and stickers doesn't make them appear as wackos and extremists, but that hasn't yet registered with yer average idiot politician. It's like watching on as someone who thinks he is Napoleon engages in serious conversation with Tim Nice But Dim, isn't it?


9 comments:

vereybowring said...

Yet the other politicians and the public are still not demanding these people get locked up in secure psychiatric centres so we don't have to put up with them.

moonrakin said...

I think Irish Grandad puts it rather daintily:

http://headrambles.com/2012/09/03/faces-i-could-never-tire-of-kicking-8/

David Pimborough said...

Come back Father Ted; fecking ejits !!



Any how I transfer my cigarettes to a very nice sterling silver cigarette case. Now how will they get round that? :D

woodsy42 said...

Then they will have to ban cigarette cases and any small metal boxes and small leather cases and glass ornamental boxes and 3D printers and .....
They really are totally, completely and irrevocably insane aren't they!

BenPal said...

Once you have bought your cigarettes you can do what ever you like with them. You can hide them in your pocket or in a locked drawer, you can eat them, dump them, wrap them in a newspaper, frame them and hang the frame up in your living room, expose them on your desk. I don't know how the busy bodies could prevent you from doing that.

Michael J. McFadden said...

Dick, PERFECTLY summarized:

===
wasn't the entire point of plain packaging to stop those 'glitzy' packets that look like Lego or Ferraris luring kids, or eradicating colours which prey on how utterly weak and pathetic women are? If so, surely O'Reilly should be ecstatic about the thought of plain boxes replacing them, yes?

Well no, apparently.

===


As usual, it's their lies that trip them up.


- MJM

Bemused said...

Guess they only want to ban plain boxes if made by big tobacco. I bought a cigarette case years ago, plain silver. Lovely it is. If they ban cigarette cases, I guess any old box of even loose singles in my shirt pocket will do. Maybe they will ban shirt pockets. Freakin arseholes.

JonathanBagley said...

A few months ago banning small boxes was the subject of jokes. I'm currently joking to myself about banning yeast, elderberries, demi-johns and 25 litre plastic containers

DogmaelJones1 said...

I think I get the purpose of the ban, in Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere. The gory, mandated pictures on cigarette packs are supposed to red flag you when you take it out in a crowd of anti-smoking Borg, as a kind of "Scarlet Letter" branding you as a shameless sinner and hater of children and mankind in general. Hidden in a box, silver or not, however, these creatures wouldn't be able to immediately cry "Ewehhh! A smoker! Get him out of here!"