We know our Parliament is full of inexperienced people and career politicians and most times it makes the wrong choice (sometimes for with good intentions). So when they come up with another crazy idea that they claim is "for the best" and will save "insert cherry picked stat" more lives its good to have a look.
I had my first cigarette when i was nine years old, i coughed a lot and was sick a little bit. I don`t know what brand it was because i never saw the box, now to most people when they experience something for first time and it makes them throw up they are very unlikely to try it again, But i did. Over the next few weeks and months i got the hang of it and wasn't sick after a fag.
We used to meet up after school and put all our money together and then ask someone to go in the shop and get fags on our behalf, sometimes we had to wait an hour before someone would go and get them. In those days you could buy a packet of ten fags for a pound (Red Band were cheaper, now its about three pound fifty), also in those days you could still smoke on top deck of the bus. Anyway, the point i am getting at is that i had a cigarette long before i had seen a non-plain packaged packet of fags.
If individual cigarette makers want to voluntary change the packets to plain (like most own brand supermarket vodka) then i am cool with that, but to force them to change because a group of six hundred and fifty odd dubious characters say so then they are treating voters and taxpayers like children.
Let me give you an example, Over at Guido Fawkes on a Saturday he does a post listing his stats for the week, You can see the latest post here, you will also notice that Guido Fawkes using a graphic/pic of a sign of a popular lemonade drink, i have been visiting Guidos site for a few years now, yet in that time i have NEVER had the urge to go and buy a can or bottle of seven up. I admit that this is not scientific evidence or conclusive proof that they are talking tosh, i hope i am talking common sense.
I want the State to treat adults like adults, I want people to take responsibility for their own actions.
But what next? Plain Coke cans? Plain Mars bar packets?
What a dull,plain life.
I'm wondering how plain they will be. At present packets have to carry hideous pictures of cancers and rotting teeth. Will these now be the only image on the packet? Will people now be asking tobacconists for '20 Carcinomas' or '20 Dead Babies'? There would be a certain macabre pleasure in doing this. 'Death' brand cigarettes, in black packets with a skull on the front, were very successful in the United States.
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