Nanny Bloomberg Unmasked

The Witch Who Eats Children

Nanny Bloomberg, when he was mayor of  New York, was always hectoring folk to make them healthy, wealthy and wise.  Nanny passed lots of laws banning things like sugar–all in the effort to prevent people from living in ways that Nanny did not approve.  “It was for their own good,” he said, as he departed for fresh pastures and campaigns.

Most New Yorkers, who love the Nanny State, thought that Bloomie was an all-round good guy.  He cared, that’s why he passed all these laws telling us when to eat and drink and what profile our noses should assume as we breath the no-longer-free air.  He loves us. 

Except that now Nanny Bloomberg’s mask has been stripped off.  He is exposed as an evil witch who kills and eats children.  Eric Garner was choked to death by the New York police whilst being arrested.  For what was he arrested, you ask?  For breaking one of Nanny Bloomberg’s laws.  He was selling cigarettes on the street, free of Bloomberg’s onerous, prohibitive taxes.  He was a criminal, said the police.  He had a record.  He had been arrested previously 31 times.  For what?  Murder?  Rape? Theft?  No.  He had been arrested 31 times for selling “illegal” cigarettes.  For that he deserved to die. 

you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes.

May we suggest that instead of a criminal, Mr Garner was–in some senses–a patriot.  Here is Douglas Wilson’s take on the matter:

When Eric Garner was stopped by cops, he was being stopped by representatives of an officious and busy-pants nanny state, doing exactly what cops ought not to be doing. This is the same kind of thing that could have happened to someone being arrested for selling illegal Big Gulps.

I know why theft is against the law. Why is it against the law to sell cigarettes this way? When you multiply petty laws you are simply multiplying opportunities for contempt for the law to grow. And the more you multiply petty laws, the more the leeches in charge will feel like they have the right to “crack down on” those scofflaws who have managed to hang on to some of their own money.

And, here’s Ann Coulter‘s:

This is a tax case. It was Bloomberg that insists on, We’re going to deploy the police to collect taxes because they need to pay the pensions of their public sector union buddies. Bloomberg starts arresting all these people. . . . Everyone who has seen that tape of Eric Garner says, Oh, my gosh, they have five cops for untaxed cigarettes? . . . . (T)he Garner case is almost everything the left falsely said about Mike Brown (who was shot in Ferguson for attacking a police officer).  He really does seem to be a gentle giant. Oh, he had 31 arrests. Yes, they’re all for selling untaxed cigarettes! Notice that the left wing — you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes!

Prohibition Always Produces the Same Fruits

Behold the Works of the Health Do Gooders

By David Atherton  
16 Aug 2014
Breitbart News

The European anti-fraud agency OLAF has recently announced that between 2009 and 2013 the European Union (EU) lost €700 million in taxes as smugglers cross into Spain to sell cigarettes at half the prices. 

Two hundred Marlboro in Spain are €47, compared to €18.50 in Gibraltar. However, it is trivial compared to the estimated €10.9 billion lost throughout the EU, with 10 percent of all EU cigarettes being illegal. 

The irony is that many British visitors see Spain as a cheap place to buy cigarettes. By comparison the UK price is an eye watering €120. Between 2006 and 2011, the amount of tobacco imported into Gibraltar tripled and organised crime has exported it to the mainland. It is also one of the pretexts for Spain to hold time-consuming searches of Gibraltar cars in their attempt to pressure the British government into relinquishing control of the territory.

The authorities both sides of the border have been hand-wringing under the mantra that something must be done, however much of it may well be in vain.

The World Health Organization and its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a treaty that the UK and the EU are signatories to, oblige governments to raise taxation on tobacco. In November 2012, it wrote: “Increasing tobacco taxes generally further increases government revenues, as the increase in tax normally outweighs the decline in consumption of tobacco products.”  Spain is no doubt encouraged to raise taxation to help prop up its deficit and Euro-addled economy. The unintended consequences of tobacco taxation are mimicked elsewhere worldwide. As taxes are increased, it becomes lucrative to avoid or evade taxes as described by economist Professor Arthur Laffer and his eponymous curve.

The highest rate of tax on cigarettes is in Ireland. Unsurprisingly the country has an epidemic of legal and illegal tobacco importation. It is, for now, entirely legitimate to go to another country in the EU and bring back as much tobacco as you like as long as it is for personal consumption and not for resale.

It is estimated however that 27 percent of all tobacco and cigarettes in Ireland are consumed free of duty.  €556 million is lost to the Irish treasury, with some quite unwholesome terrorists involved, The Irish Retailers Against Smuggling hold the Provisional IRA, the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA and the INLA responsible, stating that “criminal gangs are making €3 million per week from illegal tobacco trade.” 

Worldwide, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Scotland accuse the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)… the Columbian FARC… and the Chinese Triads.” I am sure it will not be long before ISIS is involved.  In New York, as reported previously, it was discovered that high prices meant that only 19.4 percent of cigarette packs were legally purchased with local taxes paid.

Canada in 1995 nearly saw the trade disappear as this paper from the Fraser Institute outlines. Unwisely the anti-smokers in 2000 pushed for higher taxes and like Ireland has a 27 percent saturation of illegal tobacco.

Smuggling is not a victimless crime. Retailers suffer as do legitimate tobacco manufacturers. In fact, in Australia and other places tobacco companies employ their own agents to find stores who are selling illegally.

The implication for plain packaging is more than implied. Illegal contraband sales are up from 13.3 percent to 13.9 percent of the market in Australia in the first year.

The whole racket seems to have an American prohibition feel about it, with large sections of society willing to be criminal as smugglers save them taxes. The anti-smokers are the most guilty in pushing increases in taxation to reduce consumption. 

Smoking is, economically speaking, inelastic. There is little reduction in consumption in response to higher taxes. Governments and anti-smoking advocates have largely created the problem themselves, eager to tax and spend, and they have passed the Laffer Curve and will see only diminishing returns.

The law of unintended consequences are wholly observable.

Foolish Politicians, Nannies and Wowsers

Prohibition Redux

The old adage from George Santayana runs, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  A corollary is the proverb, a hundred blows on the back of a fool make no impression (Proverbs 17:10), but a word to the wise is sufficient. 

History has illustrated and taught repeatedly that when the state overreaches to ban or criminalise something as contraband (all for our own good, of course), criminals get richer and stronger.  It happens every time.  When governments overreach to ban tobacco and cigarettes, or tax them out of existence, it becomes, in the words of Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again. 

This, from Breitbart London:

Bootleg Tobacco

By David Atherton  
3 Apr 2014, 4:55 AM

New York City is set to challenge an epidemic of bootleg tobacco as a result of high taxes on cigarettes. The situation is similar to other areas of the world, where criminal gangs are finding themselves by selling cheaper tobacco to people who cannot afford the higher prices of legitimate cigarettes.

New York State has a $4.35 tax on a pack of cigarettes and Michael Bloomberg, when city Mayor, added another $1.50. Missouri by comparison is a paltry 17c. A pack in Kentucky costs $4.96, while nearly another $10.00 at $14.50 is what awaits the smoker in New York.  Bloomberg reports: “. . . someone on a pack-a-day habit over a year will be over $3,500 worse off [in New York state].”  . . . . Consequently New York state has seen an epidemic of bootleg tobacco. It is estimated $7 to $10 billion is lost in state revenue annually.

The situation in New York City is even worse. In a paper published in 2012 by Dr Klaus von Lampe of the Department of Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, found that in the South Bronx only 19.4 percent of packs were legally purchased with NYC tax paid.  The New York Post reports that: “In an effort to crack down on the sale of illegal smokes in New York, Cuomo is set to announce Monday a 13-agency task force dedicated to keeping illegal cigarettes out of the state.  “This new law-enforcement strategy will help to crack down on these illegal cigarette sales and capture those smugglers who seek to evade the law and rob the state of the revenue it is rightly owed,” Cuomo said. . . .

The people behind the smuggling operations are diverse and sinister. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Scotland says the culprits are “Chinese Triads…The Taliban, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Kurdistan Workers Party.” In Europe, the miscreants are allegedly the Russian Mafia, Real IRA and Provisional IRA Certainly, the high profile convictions in New York City of Basel Ramadan and Youssef Odeh in October last year, are alleged to have extremist Islamist ties. They funded themselves by importing cigarettes from Virginia and are also accused of soliciting the murder of witnesses.

In Europe, matters follow a similar pattern. Cigarettes are even more expensive than America where in the UK a pack costs £9.00 ($15.00), Norway £10 ($16.60) and Ireland £7.80 ($9.50).  The Irish Tobacco Manufacturers Association has released new data claiming that 28.3 percent of all tobacco is paid without duty. In Norway the figure is 49.2 percent.  Britain’s relatively low smuggling rate of 15.6 percent can be put partly down to smokers crossing the Channel to legally buy Belgium tobacco in Adinkerke. As long as they are for personal consumption you can bring back as much as you like.

There are two ways this situation can be dealt with, either enforcement or lower taxation. As you imagine, Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland prefers enforcement. She said to me today “The key way to tackle the illicit trade it through enforcement.  Improved enforcement, and restrictions on the smuggling links of tobacco companies themselves, has seen illicit tobacco in the UK consistently decline over the last decade, while tobacco regulation has increased.”

While Simon Clark from the smokers group Forest said to me, “Instead of launching a cigarette smuggling task force, paid for with public money, they should reduce tobacco taxation. It’s not rocket science!”

Whether either option gets adopted or in part, tobacco smuggling threatens to not only undermine legitimate businesses but, worryingly, the rule of law too.

American Prohibition saw nearly a whole society turned into deliberate or unwitting criminals.

Drugs as a Health Issue, Not a Crime

Assume the Position

We reproduce below a piece on a serious problem–the over representation of blacks and hispanics in US jails.  This has led to an unfortunate consequence of police profiling of blacks and hispanics in poor neighbourhoods, which in turn has many deleterious additional unintended consequences.   A major contributor to this vortex of bad consequences is the policy of drug prohibition and criminalisation.

H. David Schuringa is  the president of Crossroad Bible Institute, an international discipleship and advocacy agency for prisoners and their families, with headquarters in the United States.  Crossroad Bible Institute is active in New Zealand prisons providing educational material, Bible studies, tutoring, and other support to prisoners. 

Dr Schuringa wrote the following piece in a US blog:

America’s Great Divide

by Dr. H. David Schuringa
07-05-2013

When I was invited by the Drug Policy Alliance to  participate in a pastors’ conference at the American Baptist College in Nashville on drug decriminalization, I didn’t know quite what to expect. In a room filled with African-American pastors, I felt like a fly on the wall of someone else’s family reunion. I began to see our criminal justice system, and our country, through different eyes.

I’ve reported on the conference elsewhere, but there I learned that while 13 percent of drug users are African-American, they account for 38 percent of drug arrests and 59 percent of drug convictions. Feeling disproportionately targeted, the pastors want drug usage to be treated as a health issue rather than a crime. 

As the conference unfolded, it dawned on me that I, as part of the majority culture, perceive law enforcement in ways strikingly different from the way many African-Americans see it. I have always experienced American authorities as my protector. If the police pull me over for speeding, it is nothing more than an annoyance, and the ticket won’t break me. Though I’m no fan of traffic cameras and drones, for the most part the police are there to watch out for me, and they do. It has always been that way for my family, as we can trace our roots of privilege back to Northern Europe in the early 1500s. Those in charge are the good guys who protect us and our stuff.

But for these African-American pastor-friends of mine, it’s a different story. They experience law enforcement as the oppressor. They too trace this back for generations, but they trace it to slavery where the slave owner was the law, to the Jim Crow laws undeniably designed to hold blacks down, to the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, and the new Jim Crow. They perceive that the police are out to get them, not protect them. And they can point to prisons across their America filled with family and friends to prove it.

What I was hearing at the conference about life in African-American communities sounded eerily like my mother-in-law’s description of occupied Europe when she was a teenager in the Netherlands. No wonder some of the pastors tell their parishioners it’s OK to use pot in moderation, as a matter of Christian freedom, just don’t get caught.

One early evening when the meetings at the conference had concluded for the day, I asked one of the pastors if I could hitch a ride with him back to the hub hotel. So there I was in the car with four African-American pastors when a squad car began to tail us and I got a taste of the other side of the great divide.  

The police officer followed us around one corner, then another, then another. One of the brothers asked me to stop turning to look at the squad car. “We got this covered, Dave. We’ve been here before.” They could see I was concerned. And I was, for the first time in my life. I wasn’t sure I knew how to “assume the position.”

The next day, they had a good time telling the rest of the brothers about me turning whiter than white. I joked with the group that I did have a Plan B in case the cop stopped us. When he got up to our car, I would say, “Officer, I’m so happy to see you. This Jesus gang has taken me hostage!” We howled, but all knew it was no joke.

I had learned something about America’s great divide at that conference. And it deeply troubles my soul. I can’t think of anything else to bridge that chasm than Calvary — where retribution ends and justice flows like a river.

The Annals of Soft-Despotism

A Fillip to Ivory Poaching and Trafficking

The drive to be as god always lurks the heart of every human being.  That, after all, was the original temptation in the Garden of Eden when our first parents fell into sin.  The serpent hissed that if Adam and Eve were to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would not die at all, but would become like God, knowing good and evil for themselves.  (Genesis 3: 4)  Adam and Eve bought the lie.  We, in our turn, were born into the lie, believing it and yearning to live it.

One of the downstream effects is to believe that power and wisdom are conterminous.  This is why the idolatry of statism has such a powerful hold over our hearts and minds.  We are born believing that, as gods, we should have power and dominion and that when we secure power, we will be wise and effective.  We will make things happen–for good, of course, albeit good-as-it-seems-to-us, according to our lights, since we now think that we know good and evil for ourselves, on our own recognisance. 

Usually, what happens, is that we succeed only in magnifying evil and doing more harm.  Take something as prosaic as the protection of elephants and rhinos against extinction.
  Governments end up wreaking far more destruction upon the species than any good.  Why?  Because their power blinds them to arrogance and overreach.  Their sinfulness, combined with power, leads them to see issues in false religious nostrums, not in truth.

The US Government, in all its semi-divine wisdom, has announced that it is going to destroy all the ivory in its possession in an attempt to obstruct the ivory trade which threatens the very existence of elephants and rhinos.  This is manifest crassness.   But the demi-godlike thinking runs as follows: the ivory trade is evil.  Even to possess ivory is wicked. Therefore, we must have nothing to do with the unclean thing.  We must cast it out of our presence.  By setting this great example, by making this religious sacrifice upon the altar of our divine wisdom, we will discourage ivory poachers and the ivory trade.

The actual outcome?  The ivory poaching trade will become even more entrenched, more powerful, and more successful.  Elephants and rhinos will come under greater threat than ever.  The serpent sniggers into his sleeve.

It turns out the US Government has a huge stockpile of ivory, seized from poachers and smugglers.  Meanwhile, the demand for ivory, particularly from China, far outstrips supply, resulting in higher prices, making the illicit trade even more economically worthwhile.  The actions of the US Government will exacerbate the shortage, leading to higher prices still, making it more likely that elephants and rhinos will become extinct in the wild.

In principle, the best thing imaginable to kill off the ivory trade would be a surplus of ivory in the world, so that its price was twenty-five cents a ton. Since the Chinese love ivory ornaments, it would have been a far  better thing to remove the quasi-religious overtones in the US government that make ivory sacred, and have the government sell off its seized ivory, increasing supply in the market, dropping the price, and using the funds raised to make ivory poaching more risky by increasing surveillance and interdiction of the ivory traffickers.  Instead, it is grinding its ivory into dust to, well, set a good example.  To whom?  To the poachers and traffickers?  You have to be kidding.

This from The Guardian:

US ivory crush sends the wrong message to elephant poachers

Don’t give an incentive to criminals to kill more elephants. They see this as ivory getting scarcer, prices and demand going up

[Dr Daniel Stiles is a member of the IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group and has worked for the UN, IUCN, Traffic and many NGOs.]

On Thursday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to crush 5.4 tonnes of elephant ivory, seized since 1989 when US and international laws banned international trade of most types of African elephant ivory.

The stated purpose for doing this is “we [USFWS] want to send a clear message that the United States will not tolerate ivory trafficking and the toll it is taking on elephant populations …”, and that the action will tell criminals that the US will aggressively go after them for killing elephants for profit.

Admirable, but will destroying ivory get that message through to poachers, ivory traffickers and the workshops in east Asia and elsewhere that buy smuggled raw ivory?  I doubt it. I have been carrying out ivory trade investigations for almost 15 years, financed in large part by the organisations that have been promoting ivory stockpile destruction, which is linked to their fierce opposition to any kind of legal ivory trade. [Emphasis, ours]  Their lobbying resulted in ivory stockpile destruction in Kenya (2011), Gabon (2012) and the Philippines (2013), and they are vigorously working on several other countries to do it. The three governments all stated that the purpose “was to send a message” to those killing elephants for ivory.  Elephant poaching and ivory trafficking have increased since 2011 according to the UN’s Elephants in the Dust report (which I co-authored).

Apparently, a different message must have been sent to the criminals, as ivory bonfires and steamroller crushings have not deterred them. Having studied at close quarters elephant hunters since the 1970s as an anthropologist, and having investigated elephant poachers, ivory middlemen, workshops and retail outlets since the 1990s in Africa, Asia, Europe and the US, I believe I know what message they are receiving.

The message is: Ivory is scarce and with stockpile destruction is getting scarcer. The three since 2011 have taken almost 30 tonnes of ivory out of circulation, enough to feed China’s 37 legal ivory factories for five years. Now the US government plans to reduce potential global supply by another 5.4 tonnes. That means, with demand remaining stable, ivory prices will increase. Raw ivory prices in China have doubled since 2011, according to my sources. Poachers and those paying them now have increased incentive to go out and kill more elephants.

Yet another manifestation of prohibition, the lust to rule the world and human beings with “wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”, to command with power to effect change.  The works thus wrought are far more destructive than the evil they seek to combat.  In fact, they make the evil far, far more likely to come to pass.

The US media and the biggest non-governmental conservation and animal welfare organisations in America have mounted a massive campaign to create awareness among the public about elephant (and rhino) poaching. The Obama administration (Presidential task force on combating wildlife trafficking) and the Clinton Global Initiative to prevent elephant poaching have taken concrete steps to save elephants. The public is demanding action.

In response, USFWS will crush seized ivory, almost certainly sending a message to criminals that they had better step up their killing of elephants before all the ivory is gone.

The serpent, ever the hater of all men and of the creation, hisses with mocking, spiteful pleasure. 

Unintended Consequences

Prohibition Works Out Well for Criminal Gangs

It is universally acknowledged that Prohibition was a failure in the United States in the 1920’s.  Not only did it fail in preventing access to alcohol, it proved a boon for criminal gangs which were able to prosper significantly manufacturing and selling contraband alcohol.  But, as we are well aware, those who do not learn history’s lessons are condemned to repeat them.  Consequently, we find many voices clamouring for prohibitions of various kinds in our day.  Dumb and dumber.

As with the Prohibition movement early last century, there are always plenty of social evils to garnish the argument for prohibiting whatever the evil substance du jour  might be.  Tobacco is the biggie at the moment.  New Zealand has a diverse bunch of wowsers who have publicly committed to making New Zealand “smoke free” by 2025.
  There are lots of incremental steps which are being proposed along the way to get us closer to prohibition heaven: steeply rising excise taxes upon tobacco; banning all smoking in all public places, in cars, on beaches, in places of work; ghastly photographs on cigarette packages accompanying the health warnings; growing restrictions upon advertising; and plain packaging.

In these matters we are following along after Australia. As we lemming along in its wake it is starting to become clear that the unintended perverse effects of Prohibition in the United States are very much alive in Australia more than a century later.  Funny that.  Criminal gangs are flourishing off the (now) illicit cigarette trade, which means that they are able to fund and facilitate expansion into other “business lines” (exactly as occurred in the United States).  Smoking is starting to rise, since contraband has a coolness and an allure which is more attractive than legal products.  And the punitive excise rates upon tobacco which are designed to price it off the market have simply opened up enormous profitable arbitrage opportunities for smugglers.

KPMG has produced an analysis of the unintended (but inevitable) effects of Australia’s “war” on tobacco.  No doubt the wowsers feel more self-righteous, but their folly and ignorance is going to end up doing great harm.  Some people will never learn.  This from the Herald Sun:

ILLEGAL tobacco is booming across Australia, funding international criminal gangs, and costing taxpayers more than $1 billion each year.  And the introduction of plain packaging for legal cigarettes has failed, according to a report released this morning.  That report states that ­tobacco consumption in Australia will rise this year for the first time since 2003.  Demand for cheap counterfeit and contraband cigarettes is accelerating, driven by excise increases on legitimate tobacco.  And shops dispensing ­illegal tobacco do so with ­apparent impunity, despite a fine of up to $340,000 for selling a single packet.

The Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, passed in 2011, made Australia the first country to remove all logos, colour and design from cigarette packets.  But a report compiled by the international auditing firm, KPMG, and released exclusively to the Herald Sun, shows that while sales of legal cigarettes and tobacco have slipped slightly in the past 12 months, surging demand for counterfeit and contraband cigarettes and chop chop tobacco has more than made up that shortfall.

The KPMG report was commissioned by big players in the legal tobacco industry. . . .

Despite the bust last month of one illegal tobacco importation ring and the discovery of a huge haul of illegal tobacco in 16 shipping containers at Melbourne’s docks, that is the tip of the iceberg, according to KPMG.   In that raid, Victorian police arrested 10 people and seized 71 tonnes of tobacco along with 81 million cigarettes.The haul would have avoided $67 million in excises. Tellingly, guns and other weapons were also found.

But KPMG estimates that 1433 tonnes of illegal tobacco has entered Australia in the last 12 months, an increase of 154 per cent.  It calculates that illicit tobacco is 13.3 per cent of total Australian sales and getting towards a market share enjoyed here by the world’s biggest manufacturer, Imperial Tobacco.  Contributing to the problem is that Australians are paying not much short of $20 for a packet of cigarettes, while the same or equivalent brands in our region might be as low as $1.08 in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia or South Korea, a common source of our illicit tobacco.

The upshot is that NZ wowsers are as stupid as Australian wowsers.  No surprises there.  Australians are dumb.  Yet we New Zealanders are dumber still.  We get to pursue our wowsering even whilst the bad consequences of Australia’s folly are emerging as we speak.  Now what does that tell us about ourselves?  

Sideswipe

Ineffectual Wowsers

. . . The next step, if the Government follows Australia’s lead, is to allow cigarettes to be sold only in identical packets – probably a dirty brown, featuring pictorial health warnings even more gruesome that those they already carry. The manufacturer’s brand would be permitted only in small type somewhere.

When this rule came into force across the Tasman, a French manufacturer put a line on sale in Europe featuring a kangaroo on the packet and the legend: “Popular in Australia.” So much for fun.

John Roughan
NZ Herald

The Fiscal Benefits of Tobacco

Asinine Zealotry

The zealots amongst us are trying to make New Zealand smoke free by 2025.  Why?  Well, it’s good for us.  The state knows best.  The gummint is on a moral crusade–being spearheaded by our current nanny-in-chief, Tariana Turia.  She and her Maori parliamentary cohort are all wound up because they believe smoking is a Maori health issue: tobacco addiction rates are much higher amongst Maori than non-Maori.

Rather than do the hard yards of actually reforming Maori society they have opted to take the “easy” road.  Ban tobacco for everyone in the country.  Hell hath no greater fury than a zealous politician trying to engineer redemption by legislating to make us good. 

We confidently predict that as a consequence tobacco growing will rapidly expand in the benign New Zealand climate.
  Whilst it is legal at the moment to grow one’s own tobacco for one’s own consumption, it is illegal to grow it for sale.  (The government does not like competition: it presently makes far too much money off tobacco excise. Therefore, tobacco and cigarettes are a state controlled monopoly.)  We predict that soon even growing it for one’s own consumption will be banned.  Then the home grown tobacco trade will explode in the hands of the criminal gangs. 

After all, marijuana is illegal in New Zealand.  It is, however, freely available everywhere at a black-market price–which, these days, given its ubiquity, is quite reasonable.  Marijuana, like tobacco, grows readily in our benign climate. 

To summarise: the intent of the banning-tobacco lobby is to enforce health upon everyone.  The unintended consequence will be the criminal gangs growing in wealth and power and a burgeoning criminal class.  It will also result in greater disrespect for the law itself–for the law will have become more asinine. 

One argument often put forward by the banning brigade is that tobacco consumption is a great fiscal burden upon the government exchequer because of the public health costs arising from tobacco induced ill-health.  Sadly for them, the argument is totally bogus–and that on two grounds.

Firstly, Treasury has now come out to confirm that tobacco related health costs are well covered by the current tobacco excise taxes.  Secondly, on a whole-life basis, smokers save the government money.  They tend toward less longevity and therefore less overall expense to the exchequer.  Smokers, therefore, ought to be awarded a fiscal merit badge of public honour.  This from the NZ Herald:

A Treasury report has admitted that smoking saves the Government money because smokers die earlier and pay more in tobacco tax than their health problems cost.  The regulatory impact statement on tobacco taxes prepared ahead of the Budget said smokers’ shorter life expectancies reduced the need for superannuation and aged care.

 Ironically, one of the reasons smoking has developed such bad public press is the propaganda noised about to the effect that smokers are costing us all money in funding their public health care.  The opposite is the case.  Smokers are saving the exchequer money.   Such realities, however, will be ignored by the zealots, the do-gooders, the wowsers, and the we-know-what’s-best-for-you campaigners. 

Some astute folk will be asking, How can be profit from the fanaticism of the zealots?  Here’s an idea.  In New Zealand, criminal gangs such as the Mongrel Mob and Black Power are not illegal organizations.  Since they are about to enjoy a sizeable economic and trading windfall through the ban on tobacco, some bright spark should incorporate the gangs and list them on the stock exchange.  Then everyone would have a fair chance at reaping the windfall benefits from tobacco prohibition. 

The senior management and directors of Mongrel Mob Inc and Black Power Limited might turn over fairly frequently as they rotate through the prison system, but that’s a small matter.  There would doubtless be plenty of experienced candidates to fill their involuntary leaves of absence. 

Prohibition, Then and Now

A Pertinent Question

Prohibition was an attempt to protect people from themselves.  It failed miserably.  It was, however, extremely successful in unwittingly aiding and abetting criminal gangs.  The US is still living with the consequences.

The arguments for Prohibition are precisely the same as those now advanced against drugs such as cannabis, heroin, and P.  They are an attempt to protect people from themselves.  They, too, are failing miserably–but, as prohibition demonstrated–they are extremely successful in developing and aiding and abetting criminal gangs.

Once Prohibition failed, the law changed to focus upon the actions of those who were intoxicated.  When intoxicated people did damage to people or property they were (and are) prosecuted.  This is a far more coherent and consistently biblical position.

In our opinion, the “war on drugs” needs to end; drugs need to be decriminalised; the actions of drug takers towards others and their property need to be policed aggressively.

Opponents of this position will quite correctly point out that people who take heroin or P or cocaine will end up destroying their lives, even killing themselves.  Yup.  The Bible grants everyone a right to go to Hell in their own way.  Let everyone be warned of the likely consequences and the dangers–but thereafter, it’s up to each to act and face the outcome.

Ron Paul puts the matter in perspective:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul decried the “war on drugs” Thursday night, telling supporters in Washington state that people should be able to make their own decisions on such matters.  Voters in Washington are likely to decide this year whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana

“If we are allowed to deal with our eternity and all that we believe in spiritually, and if we’re allowed to read any book that we want under freedom of speech, why is it we can’t put into our body whatever we want?” Paul told more than 1,000 people at a rally in Vancouver, a suburb of Portland, Ore.

Only Retired Politicians . . .

The Legalization of Drugs

In the West there is only one country which banned the production and sale of alcohol.  In the nineteen twenties, the United States initiated a policy known as Prohibition which outlawed grog.  It was a miserable failure.  Except for organized crime.  The Mafia went ahead in leaps and bounds.  It moved rapidly to control the illicit alcohol trade and became exceedingly wealthy as a result. 

Banning a substance risks it becoming very valuable, since a diminution in supply increases its market price.  When something becomes both relatively scarce and highly priced, organized criminal gangs get interested. 

One other lesson was on display.  Human beings cannot be controlled as to what they will eat and drink and consume.
  To control that is to control the human body; any state that overreaches in an attempt to control the body of every citizen has become authoritarian.  Those states that actually achieve it for a time have become totalitarian. 

Fast forward to the illicit drug trade.  It is a modern example of the failed policy of Prohibition.  As Gwynne Dyer wrote recently,

Twenty years ago Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner, the most influential economist of the 20th century, and an icon of the right, said: “If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel.” It is only because the government makes the drugs illegal that the criminal cartel has a highly profitable monopoly on meeting the demand.

On the issue of the rights and authority of government to control what we ingest, Dyer went on:

Milton Friedman also said: “Government never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do.” But there are a quarter of a million Americans in jail for possessing or selling drugs. Nobody is in jail for producing, marketing or eating junk food.

Dyer reckons that all senior politicians know this but to promote the de-criminalisation of drugs would mean  electoral suicide, so no-one (at least while in office) promotes it.  Anyone politician of any standing that even hints at it is immediately attacked from every quarter. 

Friedman was right, of course, but 40 years of the war on drugs have also shown that arguments based on logic, natural justice, or history (the obvious parallel with alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s and early 1930s) have very little effect on policy in the main drug-importing nations. Many politicians there know that the war on drugs is futile and stupid, but the political cost of leaving the herd and saying so out loud is too high.

The Christian approaches this question in two ways.  Firstly, there is the issue of the legitimate role and responsibility of the State, as the minister and servant of God.  We challenge anyone to develop a biblically coherent case from Holy Writ to show that the Lord Himself has delegated to the State, His servant the authority and power to legislate and control what people eat and drink. It is a vast overreach of state power and an act of rebellion against the Most High.

Secondly, Christians believe in freedom of conscience.  In part, freedom of conscience means that people have a freedom right (as far as the State is concerned) to go to Hell in the way of their choice.   Sinful men do sinful things which leads to their destruction.  Trying to prevent them sinning is futile. 

Now it may well be entirely appropriate for civil society to educate and warn people of the dangers and harm that results from particular behaviours and ingestion.  But prevention, using the power of the State, is in an entirely different league. 

Meanwhile, criminal gangs are more powerful now around the world than they have ever been–even to the point of actually threatening the sovereignty of states that incubate them.  And the illicit drug trade is at the very centre of it.  The evils these criminal monster wreak are far, far worse than the harm prohibition is designed to prevent.