No smoking, but the Government trusts us with cheese? – Stuff.co.nz

OPINION: I will not live forever. I feel both disappointed and liberated by this. Immortality sounds great, but a life with infinite duration would lack the urgency that death provides.

Some of us will live longer than others. Our gender, race, height and amount of processed cheese we consume are all factors that, statistically, contribute to the duration of our allotted years.

And I do love processed cheese. It is a key ingredient of many of my favourite foods, as well as an excellent source of coronary heart disease. It is also, wait for it, addictive.

Cheese contains a protein called casein, released by lactating mammals to reward infants for suckling. It sails past the blood-brain barrier and gives us a lovely little hit.

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Cheese is a comfort food, and now you know why. Which is probably not information you desired but does explain why cheddar disappears from a platter faster than the celery sticks.

This also helps explain why a third of all deaths in this country are caused by cardiovascular disease.

By comparison, smoking is benign, carting off a mere 5000 of us each year, directly or indirectly.

I dont mean to lay the blame entirely at the mouldy feet of cheese. We are surrounded by a surfeit of dietary fats. Temptation is everywhere, from the golden arches to overcooked petrol station sausage rolls.

Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash

It's not just cheese we are surrounded by a surfeit of dietary fats. Temptation is everywhere.

We understand that the cost of every hamburger is more than the few dollars we surrender to acquire one.

And as adults, we expect to be able to decide for ourselves what level of risks we are willing to assume for the reward indulgence brings. This applies to almost all human endeavour, from a casual hookup to riding a motorcycle.

However, we live in an increasing infantile age. The assumption that we possess the competence to decide for ourselves what level of risk is appropriate has long been abandoned, not just by those who govern us, but by many subjects.

Restrictions on our ability to enjoy cigarettes are an excellent example.

Robert Charles/Stuff

From 2022 it will be illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone born after a certain date.

Dr Ayesha Verrall, the associate minister of health, outlined last week the states new sledgehammer against smokers.

If this plan proceeds, from 2022 it will be illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone born after a certain date, assumed to be 2008. Forever.

So, if you were born in 2010, you will be denied the illicit rite of passage involved in coughing your way through that first packet of Benson & Hedges.

Curiously, the minister attempts to justify this draconian strategy by reference to the Treaty. According to the ministry, the right to be smokefree is entrenched in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

To bolster this assertion, the ministry points to the protection of taonga in the second article and makes the claim that wellbeing is a treasure as envisioned by those who signed the 1840 document.

Maybe. Seems we are asking the word taonga to cover a lot of ground here. An alternative interpretation could be that the guarantee of self-determination, tino rangatiratanga, applies to individuals as much as the collective.

Article 2 makes specific reference to the right of individuals to their exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties. If we define properties as liberally as the state does taonga, you can reverse the analysis.

This administration is trivialising the significance of the Treaty in our constitutional arrangements by invoking it to secure legitimacy for a contentious objective.

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Smoking, like cheese consumption, is a personal choice. It comes with costs but also rewards.

At the centre of the policy document, however, is ideology: This action plan acknowledges that smoking is not an individual issue. Smoking is a community issue and a social issue.

Respectfully, I disagree. Smoking, like cheese consumption, is a personal choice. It comes with costs, but it also comes with rewards. The mistake the puritans driving this agenda make is their failure to comprehend that inhaling nicotine provides pleasure.

Yes, it is risky, but the existence of risk isnt a justification in itself to exercise the states power of coercion.

Smoking is prevalent amongst those who face the greatest challenges. For some, the solace that tobacco delivers may be a source of comfort in their lives. For myself, during periods of exceptional stress, smoking has been a means of self-medication.

The state has not undertaken the benefit side of the cost-benefit equation. There has also been no work done on the costs of forcing a popular and widely consumed drug underground.

Ricky Wilson/Stuff

For many, the solace that tobacco delivers may be one of the few sources of comfort in their lives.

Making cigarettes illegal will not stop their distribution nor their accessibility, only the means by which they are distributed and who will profit from this activity. The new laws will need to be enforced with fines, sanctions and, for the unrepentant, prison.

You dont need a working group to comprehend that those who will be induced to respond to this market opportunity will be those already on the margins of society and, inevitably, some of them will find themselves locked inside a cage. Prohibition always harms the poor.

After the narrow defeat of the cannabis referendum, the prime minister said: I share the view of many that the idea of individuals being criminalised for possession is not something I think most New Zealanders support.

Incredibly, this administration is aware that laws banning cannabis are harmful whilst moving to institute similar laws against tobacco.

We now have a messianic regime that appears to believe they have been anointed by destiny to save Aotearoa from Covid, guns and hate speech. Why should they not also save the unfortunate, ill-informed and ignorant from the perils of tobacco?

The right of agency, to choose, the taonga of self-determination, meanwhile, is to be restricted to those best able to exercise it: the joint smokers and gouda connoisseurs of Thorndon and Herne Bay.

Damien Grant is a business owner based in Auckland. He writes from a libertarian perspective and is a member of the Taxpayers Union but not of any political party.

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No smoking, but the Government trusts us with cheese? - Stuff.co.nz