Are Australia and New Zealand the Most Anti-Tobacco Countries in the World?

[Orion21]

With Australia's high tobacco taxes, plain packaging laws and now New Zealand pondering charging $100 for a pack of cigarettes I pose the question:

Are Australia and New Zealand the most Anti-Tobacco countries on the planet?

Thoughts?

[CaptainQuintero]

You clearly haven't been to the UK recently!

You can't even smoke in your own home if someone else is inside with you i.e a plumber or door to door salesman.

[Lotusguy]

You clearly haven't been to the UK recently!

You can't even smoke in your own home if someone else is inside with you i.e a plumber or door to door salesman.

Beat this: In Unincorporated Santa Clara County, California, you are not allowed to smoke in your own Condominium, even by yourself, even if you OWN it!!

[Vinnyc]

Captin you are pulled in by the people who think they know the uk laws you actually can smoke in your house but a lot of the people don't actually know the laws in the UK. I find with dealing with my smoking areas we have to have so much of it open area but we have neve had our area checked by anyone. Here is a section of where you can smoke

PLACES WHERE YOU CAN SMOKE

You can smoke in your own home (private dwelling), except for any part that is used solely as a place of work by more than one person.

You can smoke in your own car, as long as it is used primarily for private purposes.

You can smoke outdoors, in areas that are not 'substantially enclosed'. However, some places do have a smoke-free policy, like train platforms and sports stadiums.

The uk anti smoking laws are pretty lax compared to a lot of places that have brought them in. In Ireland we cannot even smoke ( sample) a cigar inside a shop.

[CaptainQuintero]

Beat this: In Unincorporated Santa Clara County, California, you are not allowed to smoke in your own Condominium, even by yourself, even if you OWN it!!

Can you spit tobacco using a spitoon?

[CaptainQuintero]

Prices in Canada and the UK seem to be the same ish. There are no cigar bars in the UK anymore though, only tasting rooms in certain cigar stores

[NJP]

In Australia we have "chop chop" our black market tobacco. They think it's around a quarter of our total consumption and increasing. That's around 400 million dollars excise lost to the government. Farmers get paid close to $10000 a bale, when they were legally growing it they would get $800. The people in charge use the reduced legal tabacco figures to show how much of a difference they are making. When really they are creating illegal empires and Aussies are still puffing their guts out.

[Lotusguy]

Can you spit tobacco using a spitoon?

Good question!

Enforcement is an issue, of course

[Rushman]

You clearly haven't been to the UK recently!

You can't even smoke in your own home if someone else is inside with you i.e a plumber or door to door salesman.

Clearly the answer is "don't answer your door when smoking!"

---

I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=20.631794,-87.070832

[PigFish]

Proves...

Stupidity!

Junk Science!

Oppressive Government!

... are all contagious!!! -the Pig

[mazolaman]

Prices in Canada and the UK seem to be the same ish. There are no cigar bars in the UK anymore though, only tasting rooms in certain cigar stores

There are some, but they tend to be attached to expensive hotels, even then it tends only to be in the London area.

They are bloody expensive.

Sadly, our hobby gets lumped in with cigarettes, which in my eyes are a much more harmful habit.

And cigarette companies are pretty horrible....

But, yes, while we all grow obese, eating crap with no restriction, tobaco takes a kicking worldwide I think, except for Spain and Greece, where it is part of the curriculum!

[CaptainQuintero]

There is a good smoking lounge at the Churchil Hotel in York. It's called the Churchil smoking bunker. It's actually a hole in the ground with a garden shed sunk into it

[Cohiba Stevie]

There is also a cracking cigar smoking cabin in the hotel du vin in edinburgh. Not pretentious and dosen't cost anything to smoke in it, even if your cigars are not purchased in the hotel.

Apart from that, smoking laws in what i call "the free state of the republic of ireland" are even more stringent.

[dvickery]

i believe bhutan has the worlds most onerous tobacco laws...i quote "tobacco possession in Bhutan could be punished with the same sentence as for rape of the elderly.".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Control_Act_of_Bhutan_2010

derrek

[Duane]

its not only tobacco a council here in melbourne is looking at increasing rates on fast food outlets by 400% trying to stop obesity.

i see tobacco as an starting point, in silent weapons for quiet wars.

[bassman]

Around here, fewer eyebrows raised if smoking ganja than if smoking a cigar.

[riazp]

Tobacco taxes are high in quebec yes, but everyone seems to be a cigarette smoker in this province. and we have cigar bars that have granfathered in laws for indoors smoking. so all in all its just about the only good thing about quebec LOL

[IcedCanuck]

Back when I used to smoke cigarettes, mid 90's, the government increased tobacco taxes to a ridiculous amount (above and beyond what it already was). Just about everyone I knew who smoked, in the town I lived in, started buying black market cigarettes off natives (or someone who was peddling cigarettes for them). Tax revenue from tobacco sales plummeted! The government eventually realized more money could be generated by lowering the taxes back to what they were prior to being jacked to the high heavens and lowered it back to those levels they did. Once that happened people stopped buying black market cigarettes because they tasted like crap and went back to the real deal.

All that being said the taxes have since gone back up, to what level I'm not sure ... and you'd have to take inflation and all that jazz into account as well. Taxes are still too high ... 'the man' has his hand in all our pockets!

[CaptainQuintero]

Looks like Bhutan gets the award!

Cigarettes are the same here re the black market. I've never smoked a cigarette but talking to retailers and people who do smoke them it seems that the black market is huge as it's only a sohrt hop across the channel to cheap tobacco land. You'd think that in these times the government would be bending over backwards for extra tax money plus killing off as many people as they can get away with before they hit pension age!

[ZinZan]

I thought Australia had the most restrictive smoking laws. All hotels prohibits smoking in the room. Didnt have that problem when I was in LA. I thought US smoking laws were much more relax than Australia's.