Monday, April 8, 2013

Things That Haunt

RULE 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions." ~Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"~

Tobacco Act too harsh (Bhutan)

Everybody in the country knows it is however too harsh but he should have given second thought in 2010 while discussing in the parliament. Now after making so many people criminal without doing any real crime, this is biased. Had it been really worrying him about current tobacco act or worried about forthcoming election?

Warning: Smoking May Cost You A Job


Tobacco-users have steadily been pushed away from bars, restaurants, parks and even college campuses.
Now, some companies want to get rid of smokers in the workplace. But it's against the law in South Carolina, as well as in 28 other states that ban discrimination against tobacco-users.
"It is not government's role to tell a business owner how they operate their business and how they spend their money," said Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson.
That protection for smoker could soon be repealed if Bryant's measure is passed.
The lawmaker believes companies should be able to hire or fire workers that use tobacco products off-the-clock.
And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. "Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes," proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.
Officially, the special denaturing program ended only once the 18th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. But the chemist's war itself faded away before then. Slowly, government officials quit talking about it. And when Prohibition ended and good grain whiskey reappeared, it was almost as if the craziness of Prohibition—and the poisonous measures taken to enforce it—had never quite happened.


I have been searching high and low on the net tonight to find out what the actual law on growing your own tobacco plants in Australia is. I have finally found it – provided that the law has not since been repealed.
It really is incredible and my heart bleeds for our Australian cousins.
Producing tobacco plants, tobacco leaves and tobacco seeds is indeed forbidden under Australian law. The Act which forbad these things is date 1901. Can I say that again? 1901!!! 


A suggestion by a Palmerston North city councillor that Maori women be sterilised to stop them smoking in front of their children has outraged councillors and Maori health advocates.
Councillor Bruce Wilson was speaking at the community wellbeing committee this week about a proposed smokefree policy covering the central city around and including The Square.
He said if the aim was to stop adults role-modelling smoking behaviour, and given 41 per cent of Maori women smoked, perhaps they should be sterilised.
The comment drew a shocked response from other councillors, and he quickly said he was not advocating the idea.
He also said it was not something he would say to the media.
However, a Manawatu Standard reporter was in the public gallery.
Wilson yesterday made an unreserved apology for the "inept" way he had expressed his frustration about ineffective policies to reduce the harm tobacco caused.