There is a point where legislation slips from being a useful, if sometimes cumbersome, tool for achieving an orderly, well-functioning society into a meddlesome mess of nanny statism and absurd zealotry. Most of us can sense it easily when it effects us and impedes our lives. It is a little harder to appreciate when the [...]

It has been interesting reading the various responses to the government’s plan to ban smoking in prisons. Most have been quite predictable. The libertarians have scoffed at the idea of a ban. The left-wing blogs have droned on about human rights. Most of the right-wing blogs take the tone that prisoners forfeit their rights upon [...]

Remember those candy cigarettes we could buy as kids (now long ago done to death by the nannies)? I see there has been some fuss in the Herald about the adult equivalent, the so-called e-cigarette. The e-cigarette is an electronic device made to look like a cigarette that nebulises a dose of nicotine from a [...]

I support strong measures to persuade people to stop smoking. It is a nasty habit with extremely serious health consequences. But I have to say that I find it impossible to approve of the current drive to ban smoking in most outdoor places. Make no mistake, I hate it when I’m sitting at the beach, [...]

Force Quit is what you do on a Mac when a program freezes to remove the offending program from memory. Force quit also appears to be what the DHBs have in mind to achieve their goal of 80 per cent of hospitalised smokers be given advice and help to quit. Most DHBs are way under [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. (MacDoctor definition) Whereas the article in the previous post would possible qualify for this slot, there is no doubt that this article below is eminently qualified.  Labour MP introduces tobacco ban bill A Labour MP will try to introduce legislation [...]

A study in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine questions the validity of the MoH statistics which suggest that smoking has decreased from 22.8% to 18.1%. The actual article can be found here (PDF). They reason (correctly) that  since current cigarette sales increased 7.5% from 3957 to 4253 million cigarettes, all remaining smokers would have to [...]