Minister wants tobacco-free Ireland by 2025. That's a joke, right?
Thursday, July 25, 2013 at 17:33 James Reilly, that paragon of health, has just announced that Ireland will be tobacco-free by 2025.
That's right, in twelve years the smoking rate will be less than five per cent, officially.
Unofficially, if Reilly remains in charge of tobacco policy, there will be a flourishing black market as consumers circumvent punitive taxation not to mention bans on menthols, slims and any other product that doesn't fit Reilly's brave new world.
Anyway, here's our response:
The smokers' group Forest Éireann has hit back at Health Minister James Reilly who says he wants Ireland to be tobacco-free by 2025.
John Mallon, spokesman for the group that represents consumers of tobacco in Ireland, said:
"It is totally unrealistic to think that Ireland will be tobacco-free in twelve years.
"Recent anti-tobacco measures such as the smoking ban, increased taxation and the display ban have done nothing to reduce smoking rates in Ireland.
"Tobacco control policies are failing yet the health minister wants to introduce even more legislation.
"He plans to introduce plain packaging when there is no credible evidence that it will deter anyone from smoking.
"He supports a Europe-wide ban on menthol cigarettes and severe restrictions on the size of roll your own pouches of tobacco. This is regulation gone mad.
"James Reilly is on a personal crusade that could do enormous harm to Ireland's status as a free, consumer-led, society.
"He should remember that tobacco is a legal product enjoyed by many adults who have no intention of quitting. If anything, they are reaching for their fags in defiance.
"The Minister has no chance of achieving his goal because the type of policies he would have to introduce will simply drive consumers from the legal to the black market.
"The loss of revenue from legal sales will be enormous, while the cost of tackling illicit trade will be prohibitive.
"A tobacco-free Ireland is a figment of Mr Reilly's imagination. It will never happen."
See: Tobacco-free Ireland? It will never happen say campaigners (Forest Eireann press release)
Reilly working towards ‘smoke-free’ Ireland by 2025 (Journal.ie),
Reilly sets target of just 5pc still smoking by 2025 (Irish Independent)
Reader Comments (10)
If Reilly thinks that criminalising the next generation who may grow up to be smokers and making them unemployable criminal outcasts is better for them than the occasional cigarette, then he is nuts.
The man deserves to be sacked. he is a dangerous fascist.
If Mr Reilly truly wants a tobacco free Ireland. Then why not make it illegal? What a hypocrite. Every country needs the revenue from tobacco. Yet none of those in power - not just Ireland - will publicly admit it.
Be careful what you ask for Stui. Reilly just might make it illegal if not now then in 12 years' time. This is a warning. Quit or be criminalised. Complacency has always been our undoing.
I for one take this as a very real threat. They just need time to get wider public opinion on side - hence the 12 years. He knows he can't do it now.
It won't be difficult in Ireland where the general public already seems to have no problem with treating tobacco consumers as outcasts and lepers thanks the health and social inequalities created by the anti-smoker industry since 2006.
... and with smokers now in a minority, there is greater revenue to come from criminalisation which has already started. £6 on a packet of 20 or £80 for each of those 20 cigarettes smoked if a biodegradable cig end is dropped (several hundred if taken to court) - thousands of pounds for any landlord found to hold smoking lock-ins, £2000 for every work vehicle stopped with a driver smoking, etc... how much if caught in possession of tobacco? It won't be cheap. Look how much revenue is brought in from illegal drugs where no tax is paid at all. Tax won't save us.
It's easy to see that criminalisation is far more lucrative than mere tax.
Why does nearly every comment relating to the post in the Journal give the impression that the posters are either incredibly stupid or plants from ASH Ireland?
Given the level of outright inanity how come the smoking rate in Ireland has gone up?
I wonder if John Mallon would be kind enough to give us a perspective on this please?
"That's a joke, right?"
Joking? I remember almost literally pissing myself with laughter back in the mid 80's when some fASHisto (before cASH even existed?) told me that one day smoking in bars would be illegal. TBH I think my bladder actually held but I know that the pint of 'heavy' (twas in a real spit and sawdust pub off The Bridges in Drummond St Edinburgh) went right up my nose.
Aye how we laughed...
but as they say: he who laughs last..laughs all the way to a government grant...
Might have been "Carlsey Speshul wi a shot" though, mind.
Oh how we also laughed and thought they'd done themselves in when they first invented Third Hand Smoke - now the Govt funds ads promoting it's non existent dangers but even they had to change the name to "invisible" smoke to fool the useful idiots.
There is no end to their phobias nor the lunacy of those who buy into their hysteric nonsense.
Personally, I think there must be some lucrative funding available to investigate the modern phenomenon of smokerphobia - but as that doesn't fit the political agenda, only tobacco companies could fund it - and we all know Big Bad Eviiiiiiiiiil Tobacco just wants to gets babies addicted whooaaar hoooaarr haaaarrr *evil laughter*
It seems there is an effort underway to legislate for plain packaging and to ban smoking in cars. Possibly bypassing parliamentary voting in the process see:
http://f2cscotland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/plain-packaging-kicked-into-not-very.html
When I was first scared off by the idea of having a smoke-free society it was, I have to say, by a classmate who had suggested just that to me. No-one is entitled or eligible to dictate over the choices and rightfull actions of everyday people and citizens of a democratic and pluralist state according to my own opinion. It seems like it has become an absolute obsession for some people, politicians and loose doctor's lunies to criticise and intimidate smokers to the contrary of their existense. What else now?...
James Reilly plans to prevent me from smoking over the next twelve years? Good luck to him. I believe he's blowing smoke up my ass... and yours, by the way. That incompetent should spend his time doing the job he was hired to do, which is to deliver a working health service for the people of Ireland in exchange for the billions in taxes we pay – to say nothing of the small fortune we pay him in salary, expenses and pension. The service he's currently driving into the ground is so poor that I pay an exorbitant sum for private insurance just to stay the hell away from it – in genuine fear for my life. Sort that out, Minister, before you go sniffing around for ashtrays as a diversion from your inability to take care of your primary responsibilities. What a preposterous load of crap.