Australia What Happened You Used To Be So Cool?

Tobacco company loses FoI appeal bid

The High Court has rejected a tobacco company's bid to appeal for the release of privileged parliamentary documents containing legal advice on plain cigarette packaging.
British American Tobacco argued it should be allowed to see a memo outlining legal and constitutional issues involved with the world-first plain packaging legislation, which is due to take effect in December after the company lost a long-running legal fight this week.

Tobacco manufacturer getting up residents' noses

Imperial Tobacco has been handed an infringement notice after local residents complained about the smell coming from its factory.

The tobacco giant's plant in Lower Hutt has recently been upgraded, but locals say the work hasn't stopped the "sickly odour" from spreading across the town.

The Petone factory has increased its tobacco production and says the smell is a result of steam from blending tobacco leaf and water.

Plain packaging: nanny state meets the anti-brands brigade

The report tells us that "colours and fonts tend to produce particular responses in customers" and that "imagery and symbols exert very powerful effects" - on us ordinary mortals, you understand, not on state employees or health experts, who are of course immune  to the brain-invading charms of Big Tobacco branding. Apparently, state-designed plain packets will help save loads of lives, since they will "reduce the temptation of tobacco".

And thus it falls to the state to save us from the "temptation" by shielding our eyes from "seductive" logos, in a similar way that priests used to claim to be able to "deliver us from temptation" by limiting what we could know and inculcating us with The Truth.

An FOI request is turned down just because?

The odor of tobacco blended with water offends delicate noses now?

The idea of olive green making a behavior change is pointless and silly.

*sigh*

Where there’s smoke, there’s zealotry

Where there’s smoke, there’s zealotry

The issue is freedom of choice, and the right of adults to determine and take responsibility for their own decisions and their own actions.

“But smoking is unhealthy.” Irrelevant. You get an F.

“But cigarettes are dirty and stinky.” Moot point. You get an F.

“But second-hand smoke will kill me.” Zealotry. You get an F and academic probation.

Let’s update the old 20th-century cliché about putting men on the moon; in the 21st century, they can put a robot on Mars, but they apparently can’t construct a smoking room that won’t poison innocent passersby.

It's always such an enjoyable surprise when a non-smoker writes something like this.

This was written about a university in Germany.

A huge part of me is still shocked when I read about smoking bans there.

Knowing that country's history ............. well I don't need to say anything more now do I?

I'm Happy I Don't Live In New York

NYC Mayor shuts down ‘Pleasure Carts’ that distributed free vibrators

Mayor Bloomberg’s office later cited permit issues for shutting down the event and said crowds “impeded pedestrian and street traffic.”

“Bloomberg doesn’t want anyone to have fun. You can’t have a giant soda. You can’t have a vibrator,” Park Slope bar owner Melody Henry told the Post.

Mayor Bloomberg Loves Breastfeeding More Than You Do

There is only one good thing about Bloomberg’s announcement: it seems to have pissed women off, by turning the breastfeeding debate into a question of self determination. For a few years I have been relatively alone in complaining about the  enormous pressure to breastfeed but now there are more angry voices joining the chorus.

New Yorkers turn out to argue against, and for, sugary soda limit

 City Councilman Robert Jackson didn’t and continued speaking, begging for a bit more time, as he railed against the proposal as a violation of basic human rights.

“We do not live in a dictatorship!” said Jackson, who concluded by helping himself to a plum and a nectarine from the fruit plate that a previous speaker had left beside the microphone.

I'm sure I could find a million other reasons but so far these are the ones I am hearing the most about recently.

Funny how the name Bloomberg makes me want to salute and march in step now,I didn't always feel this way but I do now.

I almost feel bad for the people of New York,the smokers tried to warn them things like this would happen.

It seems like these public health missives are just barreling down one on top of the other and now that outdoor smoking has been banned and they want to ban soda and formula what's next?

Oh right of course  this is the next logical step.