is it illegal to grow your own tobacco?
I can’t imagine how it could be
How big are their packs?
The commies are trying to wean everyone off of tobacco and push them over to the much cheaper marijuana. When everyone is high, nobody complains about what is going on within the government.
How can there be a black market on an isolated island?
Someone will make millions bootlegging......
Funny how they lack the guts to just make it illegal.
Brilliant idea. It will make the profit margin (and violence) from bootleg cigarettes approach that of illegal drugs. Then the government can tax these new criminals at 100% through “seizures”.
The other question is, who would spend $100 on a pack of cigarettes when the price of an equivalent amount of pot is less, even though it is illegal.
I guess these idiots never heard of prohibition and how it turned out such lovely people like Al Capone, Joe Kennedy and other mobsters like that.
” Prime Minister John Key is concerned that higher prices may simply encourage a black market “
Gee - ya think???
Guess it’s a good thing 1) I quit smoking over 23 years ago, and 2) I don’t live in New Zealand.
People talk about the war on drugs being a failure...
well Tobacco is a drug that can be had for cheap around the world legally...
So that will create a hell of an illegals black market in New Zealand...
Cheap easy to be made money will suck illegals cigs in to New Zealand by the boatload....
I mean really its an f---ing bunch of islands...
lots of unguarded coast line...
lot of pleasure craft...
stock up on a buttload of cig is Australia...
quick night run to New Zealand ...
turn a quick 20/30k profit...
yea this will turn out well
When they came for the smokers I didn't care, I didn't smoke.
“Prime Minister John Key is concerned that higher prices may simply encourage a black market.”
Captain Odvious = John Key?
Well, it’s official.
Government has now become sillier than the Monty Python comedy skits which used to parody how silly government can be.
Neither government (US or New Zealand) actually want to stop people from smoking for health reasons.
If they did they would just declare tobacco illegal.
They just want to screw tobacco smokers out of as much tax money as possible while making false claims that it is all done for health reasons.
While the states and the anti-tobacco groups will not admit it, privately owned bars and restaurants are indeed suffering the effects of the growing smoking bans on privately owned businesses.
The promises of the anti-smoking groups that non-smokers would return to the smoke free establishments have not come to fruition. It's now apparent that those alleged smoking bar boycotters never existed in the first place, just like the leftist's attacks on Rush's host radio stations by leftists who never listen to Rush.
To further prove my point, there are several bars in my area here in S.E. Michigan that have spent considerable amounts of monies to erect an outside enclosure to shelter the smokers from the elements since they can no longer smoke inside the bar.
But bags of pot will go for a mere $2.00
Not all at once because here in the U.S. they have learned that "incrementalism" is the only way the populace will ultimately be controlled.
As an example, what was the first action taken against smokers to assuage the complaints of the non-smokers?
Answer: The airlines moved all the smokers to a designated section in the back of their planes....and the rest is history.
So once the government has exhausted its income source from the tobacco industry and created an underground blackmarket that they can't control, what's the next logical target to first demonize before they attack it as they did with tobacco?
Answer: Alcohol consumption
Now welcome in MADD as the new replacement for the anti-tobacco lobbyists......
Gee, ya think?!