The Irish state hasn’t been able to prevent the importation of hard drugs or firearms.
Noone is delusional if she believes that x-ray machines are going to stem the flood of untaxed cigarettes into the country. A complete waste of money.
Why does she not concern herself with how to get this nation out of it’s economic mess and drop the populist fantasies.

I think Danny, Senator Catherine Noone might take exception at being labeled a male. You are right to point out that her analysis and proposals are naive. I would add that her poor analysis does great harm to the case for having more women in politics.

Ha..! So stupid of me. My thumbs sometimes don’t quite connect with my brain.

Exactly..
My mates just went to Amsterdam for the weekend – to buy tobacco!
A dozen 50g pouches was under €70. (they’re on sale @ €6 each in shops)
A 25g pouch of the same brand here is €9.10 (note – we pay 50% more for 50% less)

With what they saved on getting their tobacco the flights were paid for. If they were to raise the price to €15 you could probably have accommodation and some spends covered in what you would save..

hip-hop-daddy-oh-cool-cat-momma

Nicotine addicts will find another way. If they raised the price of drink to 15 euro a pint (effective prohibition), but you knew plenty of people selling alcohol for 2 euro a pint, would you stop drinking?

Which would also be a massive reduction in immediate tax revenue to the state.

You seem to be reinforcing my point.

I actually don’t think the vast majority of smokers would take recourse to criminality as quickly as you cynically assume. I also think that if beer went to 15 euro then anyone with any sense wouldn’t buy a 2 euro inferior product. Anyone with any sense would home brew.

That said I have paid 15 euros for a beer, but it was very good beer.

On a personal opinion, I would suggest there are two objectives, one below the other:

1. Discourage as many as possible from smoking. Each pack bought increases our healthcare bill somewhere down the line. The tax is a red herring: we’re gaining money today that we’ll have to spend tomorrow. Tobacco lobby tries to divorce these points every time.

2. IF, and only if, people are going to continue to smoke come what may, then they should be taxed reasonably so as to recoup the cost.

I’d agree that if this were a normal commodity, like hats, then your economic model would hold up. But the idea of us charging 3eur and raising more tax, while economically correct, would also lead to serious bills and problems down the line.

” Each pack bought increases our healthcare bill somewhere down the line. ”

So does too much alcohol and over-eating, but people seem to accept that no problem. Now as regards the increases to the healthcare system, how much of an increase are you talking about?

I did a check a few days ago and i found a report published last year saying that in 2009, €1,132 million was collected from cigarettes, and a further €39 million from mostly cigars and cut tobacco.

That’s €1, 171 million brought in from tobacco products.

If tobacco is banned like some people want, how are we going to fill that massive gap in the economy?

Higher Taxes? Cut in services? Both?

And before you say that smokers cost the health services alot of money, show me the figures to back it up.

This is where i got mine, from the revenue services. I suggest you read it carefully.

http://www.revenue.ie/en/about/publications/tobacco-market.pdf

Actually, Damien, the Government is currently debating changes in the pricing structure of alcohol, and calorie counts/sugar tax have been talked about for a while.

Here’s a quick example of the cost of treating smokers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8086142.stm

I didn’t mention banning tobacco? I can’t defend all the proposals, only the ones I agree with.

Problem being, those figures are for the Britain, where there is a much larger populaton and different attitudes, which will obviously affect the cost.

Come back with figures for Ireland and i’ll take you more seriously.

LOL, yes, cigarettes being the same everywhere, you can divide the cost by their population and multiply it by ours. I’m sure that’s not beyond you.

Well i asked for the irish figures, not the british ones.

So if you are going to bring in the british figures, i suggest you make the adjustments to prove your point, and not expect others to do it for you.

Actually, no, the cost of healthcare was your point. And you were doing it terribly.

As for your other queries – http://www.lmgtfy.com might help.

“Each pack bought increases our healthcare bill somewhere down the line. ”

Those are YOUR words, not mine. And in what way am i doing it terribly? I asked a simple question. A question NO-ONE has been able to give an answer to so far in the other threads i asked.

I have given the figures, and shown where i got them. Is it too much to ask people to show me how much it costs the health system, seeing as how people are throwing it around and not backing up their claims?

Just show me. If it’s shown i’m wrong in any way, i will admit it 100%. But not until then.

You could have been a bigger hero by not smoking and being able to afford two holidays in Spain.

Einstein et al did not have the amount of information that is available today regarding the effects of smoking. This is why I wote ‘take up smoking’.

Actually what we have is made up science about smoking!

They never had any proof of anything simply created junk science!

JOINT STATEMENT ON THE RE-ASSESSMENT OF THE TOXICOLOGICAL TESTING OF TOBACCO PRODUCTS”
7 October, the COT meeting on 26 October and the COC meeting on 18
November 2004.

http://cot.food.gov.
uk/pdfs/cotstatement
tobacco0409

“5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke – induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease.”

In other words … our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can’t even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact … we don’t even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.

The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.

ROFL – the lobby truly are out on this one.

Don’t forget to mention that you work for Forest Eireann, John, and are funded by the tobacco industry.

Good man.

Clarification: John Mallon, not John Davidson of course.

Pas du tout. Words cost nothing, could easily have put it somewhere in the old reply – your FB profile doesn’t even mention it. Meanwhile, I notice John Davidson’s profile is a shill: 6 friends, most of whom aren’t real, and constantly commenting on anti-smoking articles. What a surprise.

No, you can click on my profile and see fairly quickly – you’d be right though, I don’t smoke. One of my parents does/did. She has lung cancer.

I’m a member of no society, except for the political party that I work for. I have never hidden this, nor made any attempt to.