nisakiman

Taxes are better used on spirits. Health cost of drinking are much higher than those of smoking !

That, it would appear, is yet another dubious statement that the puritan propaganda machine likes to broadcast. There is a great deal of evidence that drinking alcohol is good for you, even when you drink far more than the 'recommended limits' (which in fact have no basis in reality, and are just figures plucked out of the air by 'Public Health').

The U.S. public health establishment buries overwhelming evidence that abstinence is a cause of heart disease and early death. People deserve to know that alcohol gives most of us a higher life expectancy—even if consumed above recommended limits.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the war on smoking and drinking is not a war on ill-health, but a war on things that people enjoy doing that the puritans disapprove of.

To quote H L Mencken:

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

The self-righteous just hate the thought that people actually enjoy things that they themselves don't like, and will move heaven and earth to remove those pleasures from the people who enjoy them.

Those whiskyshops in the malls have a huge collection of Rizzla papers but they are all those big ones, Amsterdam style. I still wonder what the Thai do with those. I've never seen a Thai smoking them.

Heh! Yes, it's the same here in Greece. King-size Rizlas are available in just about every shop that sells cigarettes and tobacco (and not only Rizla red and blue, but also some other brands, too), yet in the years I've been here, I've never seen anyone use them for rolling a cigarette. Hmmm...

It worked in Australia..

The concept of ever increasing taxes ignores the Laffer Curve effect, which has now passed the apex in Australia. Since the last swingeing tax hikes on tobacco, the black marked has boomed, and I daresay it won't be very long before sales of illicit tobacco will outstrip sales of licit, taxed tobacco. The introduction of plain packs has added to the momentum of the black market.

Also:

"New Queensland Health data has found a sharp increase in the prevalence of smoking among Queenslanders aged between 25 and 34 years old over the past two years.

"This trend defies the declines we have seen in other age groups, with 28 per cent of men in the 25-34 age bracket now smoking every day, compared with 19.8 per cent in 2012.

"Among women in the 25-34 age bracket, the rate of smoking has increased from 12.8 per cent to 16.7 per cent.

http://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/call-ban-spoking-all-pubic-places/2381930/

It's called the law of unintended consequences. People get to a point where they become fed up with self-righteous busybodies telling them how they should live their lives, and start to react. We've reached that point, particularly as it's becoming increasingly obvious (even to those who don't normally question authority), that they are being fed a constant stream of lies and exaggerations by a coterie of fanatical single-issue zealots for whom the phrase 'freedom of choice' doesn't exist (unless applied to themselves, of course).

As they say, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

In fact it cost more in medical health care in any County, More than tax collected, Britain proves this. The cost of an operation and after care costs thousands, More than any Smoker would pay tax in a life time of Smoking,

Where are u getting those stats from.

Despite the fact that they do absolutely everything they can to push everybminor procedure they can into being attributed to smokjng, the tax take still exceeds attributed cost according to the govt.

At 9gbp a pack, the tax is about 70%, so £6 every pack. Let's say £4 average for a lifetime at a pack a day, for 40 years it is

£60k. Invest that at 5% and see what it's worth. So smokers more than pay for themselves, plus they take less pension out of the pot too. Governments love smokers.

Diabetics, they hate. They live ages.

True. According to the NHS (who will of course be maximising the numbers) the cost of 'smoking related' diseases (which covers just about everything bar getting run over by a bus, and they're working on that one) to the Health Service in UK is £2.7 billion a year.

The government collects a tad over £12 billion a year in duties and tax on tobacco products.

If you find the maths a bit difficult to calculate, Thongkorn, I'll elucidate a little. The tax take in UK from tobacco, at 12 billion pounds, is a bit more than four times (4x) the amount of money that the NHS claims that smokers cost in healthcare. It is a myth that smokers are getting ill and dying left, right and centre. Most smokers live long and healthy lives.

Why do you think the Greeks, who are among the heaviest smokers in the world, enjoy longer, healthier lives than most other Europeans?

How come most of the people who made the Guiness book of records for being the oldest in the world were smokers?

In the murky world of Tobacco Control, Thongkorn, not everything is as it appears to be.

Are you saying that despite having cables running underground between kiosk and pump anyway for the power supply, they use wireless technology to send information about quantity pumped between pump and kiosk? That sounds unlikely, given the simplicity and low cost of running another cable alongside the power cables to relay the information between pump and console.

It's in the US too....reason you see it here more is there are hardly any "latchkey" kids here because of the fear in the US - kids that go from school to an empty house and sit there waiting for their parents to get home....most of them are on computer - only behind doors.....

Social skills dimished while anti-social skills increase - you can only play so many shoot them dead games on the computer where the hero gets a new start next game.....I use to know an anti gang activist in the US and he said a good number of deaths occur because of these games programming where kids become anethestitised to the reality of risks and fear of bullets but still feel comfortable pulling a trigger......he remembered holding the hand of a dying teen that had been shot....as he was dying he looked up and said "nobody told me it would hurt".......

I think in LOS it's more social media - which means exactly the opposite as it singles away the individual & reduces activities such as scouts, after school sports, music programs/pursuits....healthy group activities where values as well as competition, winning, and losing are learned.....much easier to visit the world through a little electronic window - not even wanting to think or experience for themselves......

I believe there was a TV article awhile back about complaints at a well established eatery for time served, cold food, etc (USA)....turned out after reviewing CCTV tapes from 12 years before that the difference was from people playing on their phones, making waitiers come back many times to get the orders, having pictures taken, forgetting about the served food, then complaining about the service and food.....meanwhile, even though the place had hired more help to offer better service it didn't work because the diners were spending double the time "eating" & also depriving the establishment of generating more profit by not being able to turn the tables over quickly and having waiting diners leave rather than wait for a table......

Interestingly, along the same lines, a guy I knew who worked in the oil industry told me that the reason there are signs on petrol (gas for our American friends) pumps forbidding the use of mobile / cell phones has nothing to do with any danger of explosions; it's because people were spending too long at the pump if they were on the phone, and they were losing money as a result of reduced throughput. So they fabricated the danger of electronic ignition.

I don't know how much truth there is in that, but it sounds about right!

I do understand why Thailand is one of the most welcome countries for retirees.

They only ask me to have 800K Baht in my account that I can't touch and present myself every 90 days to the immigration office.

What else could I ask for?

I thought if you were married to a Thai it was 400K. Or has that changed?

Heh!

Looks like you'll have that sin sot saved in no time!

fingers in the cookie jar ....

good luck mister PM to get rid of it

as for now ... thailand is really a hub ... or corruption

too bad the list of assests is just a paper dragon for governement officials ... how many soldiers does it take to check all of those wealthy living officials with a meager governement salary, living the hi-so live

Don't for one moment think that Thailand is alone in being corrupt. The western countries are equally corrupt; they've just become a lot more subtle about it.

Did you know that the accounts for the EU haven't been signed off for at least 17 years because the auditors can't account for billions of Euros that seem to have been mislaid somewhere? And I mean BILLIONS. (Edit to add that it's every year that huge amounts of money get 'lost').

And do you really think that in the corridors of power in the west there isn't any "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" horse trading going on between politicians and industry?

And as for vote buying, politicians do it all the time in the west - they make promises which they never keep to buy people's votes. As tingtong points out above, the Thai politicians (all of them, not just the Shins) take a more direct approach, which is probably a lot cheaper in the long run.

Thailand may well be more openly corrupt in the lower levels (tea money for the cops etc) because the western powers have hit all the soft targets so they can say "look how honest and transparent we are", but in the higher echelons of politics and industry, it's business as usual. They just make the process so convoluted and opaque that nobody notices it happening.

My two sons (and their children) from my first marriage Live in Australia, where they were born. My two daughters from my second marriage (and the kids of the eldest - youngest is at uni) live in UK. I live in Greece, and have done for nearly 14 years. My sons I see very occasionally - Australia is a long way from everywhere! But through the wonders of Skype, we can chat as if we're in the same room. My daughters both visit me fairly regularly, I occasionally go to UK, or we meet somewhere (I'm meeting youngest in Istanbul for a few days in a couple of weeks, for instance) and again, we have Skype. I don't miss being closer. I can't abide UK and all its petty, stupid jobsworths prosecuting all their petty, stupid laws. I wouldn't live there if you paid me. And anyway, I hate the cold!

And when I move from here, it will be to LOS, which will place me a long way from everyone. But we have the internet, and my daughters love to visit. Most of my friends are spread around the world anyway, so nothing changes there.

So to sum up, no, I'm not really missing family and friends. And I most certainly don't miss the UK as it is now. As it was forty years ago? Yes, maybe. But that's been swept away by the 'progressives' and the neo-puritans. I won't ever see it as a free country again in my lifetime.

I took the time to read the details. And I have a bit of experience on this issue both here in LOS and in USA.

Its really a shame that this is so poorly designed and managed. With the cost of healthcare here it should be easy to underwrite a low cost policy for people visiting aged 18-55, for example. Of course, the big question mark is - how many people can they get enrolled? This will drive price, and to some extent the exclusions. They will have several problems that they will not be able to get around: they will have to exclude a lot of the activities that tourists do when here - including motorcycles, scuba diving, as well as alcohol issues.

But it really seems to me there should be a way to make this work and be profitable.

First they need to fix the trainwreck website and PR communications. That there are so many companies involved - leads me to wonder if getting someone to manage it was a problem; delegation of responsibility, etc.

Given the number of tourists that are retirees, by limiting the policies to those under 55 they would be excluding a large percentage of potential purchasers. And for it to work, they need as many as possible to sign up.

I think the idea is a good one, if it can be offered cheaply enough (and I think 1700 Baht for 60 days is very reasonable) and is promoted well. It could eliminate the problem of foreigners using the health service and being unable to pay. But it needs to be widely advertised to tourists, and should be made easily available, like having a well signed counter in immigration at the airport where you can buy it on the spot. And maybe leaflets explaining what it is and what it costs handed out with the arrival cards you get on the plane prior to landing. Not so difficult, and minimal cost with maximum exposure.

As it stands, most tourists travelling to Thailand will have no idea it exists. I certainly wouldn't know about it had I not read about it here on TVF. And if you have to buy it online before you travel, then you need to know of its existence in advance.

Aha! Thanks for that. Yes, I've got my onward to Hanoi already. I thought that they were only giving one exemption and then that's yer lot, matey! Ok, good, that gives me two viable options, both better than sending my passport to Athens. Thanks again.

My wife and I will be arriving in Thailand in December, and flying out two calender months (62 days) later, and I'm still not sure what my best option is with regards visa. We will be flying to Hanoi for a week or so (29 Dec to 6 Jan) a couple of weeks after we arrive, returning to Thailand for the rest of the period before we return to Europe. It seems I can get a 90 day double entry (non-O? I'm not sure about the designations) based on my marriage to a Thai from the Thai embassy in Athens for €110 (which seems a bit expensive, but obviously I'll pay if I have to), but more importantly it also means I have to courier my passport and all the papers, payment etc to the embassy from the island on which I live in the week before we travel (which then has to be couriered back to me), which I'm a tad nervous about doing. The Greek couriers are not renown for their efficiency.

So I'm wondering. Could I enter on a visa exemption, and then when I'm in Hanoi apply for a 60 day tourist visa from the Thai embassy there? Or are there other, better options? As I say above, I'm somewhat reluctant to submit my passport to the tender ministrations of a Greek courier service so close to my date of departure, so If there are other safe options, I'd prefer to use them. Would I perhaps be better going to immigration in Bangkok for an extension of stay? I'm not sure how that works. I've done it with a 60 day tourist visa in the past, but I'm not sure if it's possible with an exemption.

When we booked the tickets, I stupidly didn't think about the two months being slightly over the 60 days; and also the visa run crackdown hadn't started, so I didn't see any problems anyway - a quick hop to Lao during the latter part of our stay, I thought, and job done. The crackdown on visa runs has rather complicated the situation!

Why not simply raise taxes on the fags? Tripling the price should encourage people to smoke less.

1st) They're less than 30 baht a pack in Cambodia. How difficult do you think it would be for someone to cross the border with them illegally and sell them here in Thailand as another TV member posted.

2nd) There's the liberty question. Why should the government interfere in any individual person's business? If someone wants to smoke why shouldn't they be allowed to smoke? Why should someone be taxed out of the right and/or ability to smoke? What if they taxed alcohol so high nobody could afford it? what then? salt? soda? refined sugar? red meat? To give a government the ability to tax something so high that nobody can afford it is dangerous and slippery slope.

The reason you should be taxed is to cover the cost of medical care for smoking related diseases and illnesses. Why should non smokers pay for the health care of smokers when everyone knows that smoking is dangerous to your health.

Cigarette taxes more than cover treatment costs in most countries. If everyone stopped smoking , taxes would have to go up to make up the funding deficit.

Be happy people smoke. They don't take as much pension from the state either.

"Be happy people smoke. They don't take as much pension from the state either."

That rather looks as if it may be another myth created by the Tobacco Control Industry.

If you take a look at the couple of links I put up in my last comment, both written by people highly rated in their fields (and both non-smokers), it would seem that smokers live longer and are healthier than non-smokers.

I make no comment on their conclusions, apart from the fact that what they say concurs with my admittedly limited observations.

I read an article on TV here that said smokers tax revenue was 70 billion and the Hospital cost to treat diseases caused by smokers was 150 billion.

Seems simple solution to me iix that they at least double the tax and then its closer to even.

I am a smoker trying to quit...I expect to pay more.

Regards

You obviously missed my post on the previous page:

In the UK, according to the doubtless inflated figures from the NHS, the cost of treating 'smoking related' diseases is £2.7 billion per annum. The UK government collects in excess of £11 billion per annum in tobacco taxes.

So in fact smokers not only cover their own health expenses, they also massively subsidise the healthcare costs of non-smokers.

And that is in a country with a nationalised health service, and the NHS will have quoted the absolute maximum they can get away with in terms of 'smoking related' diseases. It's common knowledge that almost any complaint, from a dose of flu to a bout of gout, when it happens to a smoker it becomes (for the records) a 'smoking related disease'.

Just as when a smoker finally pops his clogs at 100 years old, he is included in the statistics as having 'died prematurely of a smoking related disease'. It's how they generate the ridiculously high figures for smoker mortality. Most of the 'deaths from smoking', and I do mean the vast majority, are people aged over 70 years. What they fail to mention of course is that the biggest killer of all is life itself, and everybody dies of that.

http://www.forces.org/evidence/sammec/newproof.htm

"...any such pronouncements regarding numbers killed by smoking are subject to many valid criticisms that may very well impugn the methodology used, the statistical techniques involved, and the results claimed(10). These estimates certainly contradict results of large-scale studies such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics National Health Survey(11), which showed that smokers were the healthiest group, followed by non-smokers, and a long way behind, ex-smokers."

Eysenck, circa 1997.

http://www.data-yard.net/science/active_smoking/eysenck_circa_1997.pdf

Edit to change broken link.

This is a case of totally misplaced advertising. The photos are so gross that no-one will believe them!

Heh! In fact all the medico-porn they plaster over cigarette packs around the world are photoshopped images, and the diseases they purport to represent are not only very rare, but occur as much in non-smokers as they do in smokers.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good propaganda campaign?

As far as Tobacco Control are concerned, their ethos is "the end justifies the means". That's why they have no compunction about disseminating lies and misinformation, because theirs 'is a righteous war', an ideological agenda they feel it is their duty to force on everybody.

It is not, and it never has been, about health. 'Health' was the fig-leaf they used to cover their dogma, but with the recent advent of e-cigarettes the emperor has been shown to have no clothes. Suddenly, they can't claim 'health' anymore. Now the realities of their pogrom are starting to show through. They just don't like smoking, or anything that even faintly resembles smoking. They are trying to ban e-cigs on the basis that "it looks like smoking", and risks undoing all their persecution of smokers by 're-normalising' the act. They hate e-cigs with a passion because people are circumventing their spiteful bans.

Oh the horror! Not only are people vaping in non-smoking areas, but worse, they are enjoying it!

It pains the anti-smoking lobby to see this, because the bans were a punishment intended to make smokers suffer, to cast them as untermensch exiled from polite society. E-cigs are undermining all that, so expect to see a whole raft of lies deployed to justify banning them. Only when e-cigs are made safely illegal will the anti-tobacco zealots be able to relax and get back to the core business of persecuting smokers.

And if you don't like the medico-porn on your pack, an enterprising guy in UK has the answer!

http://www.smoke-screenz.com/

Why not simply raise taxes on the fags? Tripling the price should encourage people to smoke less.

1st) They're less than 30 baht a pack in Cambodia. How difficult do you think it would be for someone to cross the border with them illegally and sell them here in Thailand as another TV member posted.

2nd) There's the liberty question. Why should the government interfere in any individual person's business? If someone wants to smoke why shouldn't they be allowed to smoke? Why should someone be taxed out of the right and/or ability to smoke? What if they taxed alcohol so high nobody could afford it? what then? salt? soda? refined sugar? red meat? To give a government the ability to tax something so high that nobody can afford it is dangerous and slippery slope.

The reason you should be taxed is to cover the cost of medical care for smoking related diseases and illnesses. Why should non smokers pay for the health care of smokers when everyone knows that smoking is dangerous to your health.

This is a fair argument, but I would really like to see a true correlation of tobacco tax revenue and public health expenditure. From any country.

In the UK, according to the doubtless inflated figures from the NHS, the cost of treating 'smoking related' diseases is £2.7 billion per annum. The UK government collects in excess of £11 billion per annum in tobacco taxes.

So in fact smokers not only cover their own health expenses, they also massively subsidise the healthcare costs of non-smokers.

My wife is from Ubon, but Mum is from Korat and Dad is from somewhere else (can't remember where offhand), so at home they always spoke Thai, and that is her first language, although she is comfortable with Isaan and also has no problems when we are in Lao. And she speaks English, of course.

I find language a fascinating subject, and I'm always interested in discussions about it. As already mentioned, the Americans and the British are the world's worst linguists, and understandably, as English has become the global lingua franca, so if English is your mother tongue there really is no need to learn another language - you can get by almost anywhere in the world.

Continental Europeans learn other languages from an early age, and most are bilingual at least these days. I believe that if you know two languages, learning a third is much easier. You don't have to jump the hoops of understanding a completely different approach because you already know that you can't apply the structures of your mother tongue to the language you are trying to learn. Another part of the brain is already active. Because language isn't just about vocabulary and grammar, it's as much about understanding the cultural background to the language and how the people use it, the delivery.

intercept the drugs, contaminate them, and put them back out on the supply chain.

Well you're a nice piece of work, aren't you? Judge, jury and executioner all in one. I don't suppose it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong, did it?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 million ya ba pills destined for the south? Just how many ya ba users are there down there? When you think about it, it seems like a huge amount. I, a single individual, know quite a lot of Thai people. I'm quite sure that none of them have ever taken ya ba. I have seen a few (not many, and I know the signs) youngsters in bars that may be on it. But really, the percentage of the population who use ya ba must in reality be very small. I would think 5% would be a gross overestimation, and most of those would be occasional users. So 5% of the population is about three million spread across the whole country. Of which a small percentage live in the south. And they were sending FIVE MILLION pills down there?

Something doesn't add up, unless the pills were destined for somewhere else.

Retarded ideas once again from Somkwai. The first ban that should start is banning this guy from being head of Excise. This is a cultural item. Hope the shops that WERE in business find another country to do business that lrespects them more, and where their investment isn't banned or swindled by the likes of Thai's Excise morons.

It has no culture here.

Nor does drinking beer. Perhaps they should ban that, too.

It really has gotten out of hand in Pattaya. Mini shisha operations are popping up everywhere, even worse than the fish massage fad when that peaked. Often they are directly attached to restaurants.

So what's the problem? Too many fish massage shops - they go out of business. Did they somehow offend you? Did they have a detrimental effect on your life?

Same with shisha bars. Do they adversely effect you? Were you a regular customer of shisha bars until they started smoking - shishas - in there, meaning you could no longer go there? Or is it that you just don't like smoking in any shape or form, so you'd like to stop everybody doing it, because, well, it offends you, so nobody should be allowed to do it.

There are many things that I don't like in other people (sanctimonious self-righteousness being at the top of the list), but it would never occur to me to try to ban those activities. I'm a live and let live kind of person. If I don't like something, I can walk away. We have that choice. We don't have to insist that we don't want to deviate from our path, so all others must clear the way.

It's called tolerance. Something I would have thought that you, Jingthing, would be particularly aware of.

You want to smoke?

Fine. Go ahead.

Just don't do it around those of us who find it a foul habit.

Indeed, the last thing I want to do is to inlfict my pleasures on someone who doesn't like them. However, the anti-smoking lobby finds it quite acceptable to inflict their displeasures on me by removing my choice to enjoy sitting in a bar with a beer and a cigarette. It would have been so easy to mandate separate, well signed bars where smoking is or isn't permitted. Or separate areas, with good ventilation. But of course, it never was anything to do with health. It was always about social engineering. And increased profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

I do not have a problem with people smoking, just as long as

1. I do not have to inhale the smoke, which gives me asthma.

Oddly enough, smoking is supposed to be protective against asthma, although I haven't done much research on it.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2596/want_to_cure_your_asthma_start_smoking

2. I do not have to inhale the stench that the hookahs emit.

Hookahs do not emit a stench, they give off an aroma. Whether you like the aroma or not is purely subjective.

3. I do not have to pay for their healthcare.

According the the (doubtless inflated) figures from the NHS in the UK, 'smoking related' diseases costs them £2.7 billion a year.

Smokers pay £11 billion in taxes every year. So we subsidise your healthcare to a large degree. Be grateful!

That is incorrect. Many shisha smokers think that though.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/hookah-health-risks.html

To repeat what I have mentioned, the health risks of smoking hookah are no less damaging than in the case of cigarette smoking. In fact, according to the Tobacco Control Collaboration Centre, hookah is 400 to 450 times worse than a cigarette. As cited already, most people easily ignore all such health warnings, and some do not even consider hookah as smoking. The decked out settings of hookah bars, the smooth smell, taste and less irritating nature of the hookah smoke creates an inviting and seemingly less-harmful atmosphere for people. But baring all such phony features of this culture of smoking, it is nothing but a bag full of sicknesses and painful rewards.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/tobacco_industry/hookahs/

Because of the way a hookah is used, smokers may absorb more of the toxic substances also found in cigarette smoke than cigarette smokers do.1,2

An hour-long hookah smoking session involves 200 puffs, while smoking an average cigarette involves 20 puffs.1,2

The amount of smoke inhaled during a typical hookah session is about 90,000 milliliters (ml), compared with 500–600 ml inhaled when smoking a cigarette.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/quit-smoking/expert-answers/hookah/faq-20057920

Given that all those quotes are from avowedly anti-smoking organisations with a fanatical hatred of all things smoking related, it's hardly surprising that those are their conclusions.

The big problem with the anti-smoking zealots is that as far as they are concerned, there are no benefits to smoking, only downsides. They work on the assumption (because that is what they have been indoctrinated with) that smokers are all hopeless addicts who all want to quit and who all regret ever having started.

They are, of course, completely wrong. I've smoked for more than fifty years (apart from a couple of year-long breaks), and I enjoy every cigarette I smoke. Smoking improves mental acuity and cognition, it is unique insofar as at acts a a relaxant when you want to wind down, and a stimulant when you to need to keep going. It stimulates thought and lively conversation and is a wonderful companion to contemplation. It stimulates literary and artistic endeavour. It's no coincidence that most of the great writers, artists, scientists and statesmen have been enthusiastic smokers.

I have neither the desire nor the inclination to quit.

And I'm not alone in my appreciation of the benefits of tobacco. All smokers who are resistant to the relentless propaganda constantly emanating from the bowels of 'Tobacco Control' (Orwellian, or what?) enjoy smoking for all the reasons I have given, and most, like me, have no intention of eschewing the pleasures of tobacco just because a small but vociferous minority of fanatics disapprove. The smokers who 'Tobacco Control' quote as regretting their habit (for in truth that's what it is: a habit, not an addiction) are the ones who have been successfully brainwashed into believing all the lies and exaggerations that the anti-tobacco organisations disseminate on a daily basis. As Goebbels said, "If you tell a big enough lie for long enough, people will come to believe it". And that has been the modus operandum of 'Tobacco Control' for the past few decades; to keep repeating the same lies and exaggerations over and over.

The idea that shisha is 400 times worse than cigarettes is risible. Who smokes shisha all day every day? Nobody. And that is the only way that shisha could possibly be considered worse than cigarettes. And that is assuming, of course, that you accept at face value what 'Tobacco Control' claims are the dangers of smoking, which I don't, having done a huge amount of research on the subject over the past few years.

"I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.

I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the question.

You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?

It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your ears buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income.

Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"?

Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices. And so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove."

Mark Twain

The Moral Statistician