Hey New Zealand, how’s it goin’?
reads article
Oh. Right wing garbage huh. Sorry. It’s everywhere.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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I really do not get why this is the current political climate.
There's a lot of fear and uncertainty in the world. Fear is the basis behind conservatism, as is hate.
People are desperate for change from the status quo. The right offer simple answers for very complex questions. No critical thinking required.
There's a lot of money to be made telling people who are afraid of things new things for them to be afraid of. You could also use it to grab power.
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The answer is very simple: Propaganda works. Consistently and very predictably. All those arguments we should have had in the 70's about "television" were right, instead, cable and streaming won and here we are in the belly of the beast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Democracy_Union
There are a bunch of groups such as ^this one and they have a lot of money and influence.
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I'm so fucking angry with my fellow citizens. Voting for these assholes was either selfish, hateful or disturbingly stupid and unthinking.
right wing politicians are cunts. all of them.
Wtf, it's difficult to imagine a more directly harmful and scientifically evidenced habit.
absurd
I see people on this site say all the time that all drugs should be legalized and we should allocate the money used to enforce drug laws on addiction resources instead. I'm not sure why this harmful drug is different. I totally support anti cigarette campaigns but I'm not sure bans are a good tool in general.
I’m not sure why this harmful drug is different
work in the smoking section of a restaurant for a bit and the phlegm ball you cough up every morning will be your proof that smoking isn't just an individual's choice.
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Alcohol.
Alcohol is indeed bad for you, but not on the level of cigarettes. Cigarettes are intentionally filled with additive chemicals that both cause them to be hyper addictive and substantially raise the risk of cancer. They are designed to be deadly from the ground up in the name of making a few extra bucks.
Vast sums of money have also been spent on inveigling the public into believing that cigarettes are better for you than they actually are, up to and including the purchasing of scientists to draw false conclusions in public studies in order to present cigarettes as healthy.
The sheer maliciousness of the cigarette industry is shocking and terrible, I just don’t think there’s a real comparison here.
Also, tobacco is a lot harder to grow and process than alcohol. I've got everything I need in my house right now to mix up a batch of mead, and I don't even have any specialized equipment. A quick trip to the hardware store and I've got a still. It's also not like weed where you can have a plant in a closet and get a couple months worth of flower.
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A senior MP in the govt is a former tobacco industry goon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bishop
Came in here to criticize the concept of a smoking ban based on comparisons to prohibition and the "war on drugs" in America, but reading through the article it actually sounds somewhat reasonable. Using regulation to reduce nicotine content sounds fantastic - no one should be forced to smoke if they don't want to, and making tobacco less addicting might actually help to accomplish that.
Still not a fan of prohibition as a means of addressing health issues, but I suppose it's different when your country has universal healthcare.
no one should be forced to smoke if they don’t want to
In what universe is anyone being forced to smoke??
There are unnecessarily large amounts of nicotine in cigarettes, making them very addictive.
Forced is a strong word, but many smokers aren't smoking out of free will either
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2nd hand?
a) studies don't show it's harmful unless you live or work with someone who smokes indoors*
b) smoking in public areas, even outdoors, is mostly banned already
*note: you will find some proclamations from official and pseudo-official bodies saying things like "there is no safe level of secondhand smoke". These are shameful goddamn lies and when you try to find the science they're based on, you find nothing at all. When you look at the actual report collating every study ever done on secondhand smoke you'll find that every single study has only measured effects of prolonged exposure to indoor smoking. There has been no study, ever, that I'm aware of, that has shown a correlation between occasional outdoor secondhand smoke and increased cancer or other negative effects
But all that being said, again, smokers (in the West) are mostly relegated to certain designated outdoor areas which you are free to not go to.
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Smoking makes lots of money for the tobacco companies and for governments. Hence not wanting to ban it.
It’s a weird drug of choice; -Super addictive. -Doesn’t really do anything except briefly offset addiction withdrawl symptoms. -Very expensive. -Makes people smell really awful.
And it's potentially very harmful to the health of yourself and those around you.
When your product kills half your customers, that just makes it more important to keep finding new customers!
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Such a shame.
The decision has sparked a huge backlash from researchers and experts saying the actions lack logic and evidence, describing it as “shameful”.
Lacking evidence. Go suck your cancer sticks, you fools.
To be clear, they're saying that repealing the ban is lacking evidence to support the decision. It's just worded very poorly, but the article makes it clear:
“Repealing the legislation flies in the face of robust research evidence; it ignores measures strongly supported by Māori leaders and it will preserve health inequities,” co-director professor Janet Hoek of Otago University’s Aspire Aotearoa Research Centre said.
Tobacco smugglers in 3, 2, 1..
Prohibitions historically never worked anyway.
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Sooooooo, let’s guess who has lots of shares in the industry?
Theres a risk to indigenous people if smoking is banned?
I don’t understand
No the opposite
It's an easy game - just think of the worst thing and that's what the right wing conservative party is trying to do.
And it's a global issue now
It's been so disheartening to watch. There's apparently a large percentage of the world's population that is scared of every change for the better. Just absolutely driven by mind-numbing, counter-productive fear. And I don't get it.
I mean, come on, these are fucking cigarettes. There's no mystery, here, they kill people. They're a poison product, and the monsters who sell them are selling gruesome death. But somehow, stopping a business from profiting off of these horrible, unnecessary deaths is scarier than the cancer sticks themselves? Why? Fucking why? Is it because literally all change is scary, no matter what its nature?
I'm starting to think we're an evolutionary dead end. I don't know how we survive past this madness.
There is a nonzero population of people, all across the planet, across all cultures, that just don't like being told they cannot do something.
You could tell them that smoking is very, very bad for you, and they'll say "wow, no one should do that," and then you tell them that they cannot smoke, and they'll say "the fuck I can't!"
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Lemmy: ban cigarettes because they're bad for you, but not alcohol which is worse and, oh btw, legalize marijuana because it's totally not like cigarettes.
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