Register Here to Get Your Gear.
Allow us to provide you with options to access your favorite products if Politicians continue to walk all over your civil rights and introduce further bans.
You may be a smoker. You may be a non-smoker. Either way, you'll be aware of the associated health risks. The current packaging makes that abundantly clear. The Government now wants to remove all branding and ~increase the graphic health warning to cover 75% of the front of the pack.
It seems the government doesn't believe you can make your own decisions. More and more, the government is telling us what we should and shouldn't do. And while many rules are necessary in a modern society, there needs to be a limit. The proposed Plain Packaging Legislation is quite simply regulation gone too far.
Criminalising synthetic cannabis will have only bad results
BY ROBBIE SWAN
13 Jul, 2011 04:00 AM http://www.canberratimes.com.auRegulating the sale of drugs has been shown to be more effective than banning them.
The Federal Government has announced legislation to ban the sale and possession of synthetic cannabinoid substances found in a number of popular herbal smoking mixes. While not being real cannabis, these analogue or derivative compounds are sprayed on to herbal smoking mixes and mimic some of the effects of real cannabis although most reports suggest they are much milder in effect.
In conjunction with relaxing herbs like valerian, vervain and passion flower, these mixes have been popular and on sale in tobacconists and adult shops around the nation for nearly two years now. One of the reasons for the Government taking aim at the products has been because of their increasing use. Anecdotal evidence suggests that around a million people have been using them. Retail sources suggest that the day before the bans were announced, there was at least $4 million worth of stock on legal sale in Australia. The Government has relied heavily on the opinion of the Australian Medical Association to back its move. The AMA has done no research of its own and simply claims that the products can cause heart palpitations and panic attacks. So can strong coffee.
The New Zealand Government recently regulated the sale of these smoking compounds after its Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs reported that they were less harmful than alcohol and should not be banned. The conservative Health Minister did put a number of restrictions and conditions on their sale, including limiting sale from age-restricted premises and strong packaging controls but he emphatically refused to follow the Australian action of banning them.
Anecdotal evidence in Australia suggests that the legal sale of these substances has led to a reduction in heroin overdoses, a fall in the price of black market drugs and a reduction in the total amount of illegal drugs. Adult shop owners around the country are reporting older and infirm people buying the compounds for pain relief, relief from the shaking of Parkinsons disease, lessening the effects of fibromyalgia and relief from insomnia.
Source: http://www.canberratimes.com.au
Australian Sex Party to take on 'Nanny State'
We have more censorship of sexual material than we did 10 years ago
Have you noticed over the past decade that people seem to be more relaxed about sex and morality than ever before? And then have you noticed that most of the pronouncements about sex and morality from Australian politicians seem to say the opposite? When was the last time you heard a politician say they wanted to relax censorship laws rather than ‘crack down’ on them? When was the last time you heard a politician say something positive about the expression of human sexuality?.