Party Vibe

These packs are now appearing in nearly every country other than USA, China and some Latin American nations.

I’m unsure as to whether they really have any deterrent value at all as people are increasingly desensetised and tobacco displays are banned in my country anyway; and those young people who do still smoke tend to smoke less and weaker cigarettes anyway.

This week whilst testing off site backups of a patients database at work I’ve had to deal with 4-10 gigabyte datasets containing equally harsh pictures of everything that can go wrong with folk as they get older – and to verify the backups I have to go through quite a few of these records and check with the nurses they have the same things on the live system.

This also means I have a test system with a mirror of this database and can view all the other info. Out of curiosity I checked if any patients were listed as smokers (this is kept on their records). None of them are. The only chap who did smoke quit when I was still a young teenager.

Of course it is possible that all the smokers are already dead before they got to age 70-80 but from what I see every day as part of work (these days I also help the seniors with working any gadgets such as smart TVs, tablets their relatives get for them) there is really not a great deal to look forward to after that age in my country.

If your body (or bits of it) doesn’t give up on you towards late middle age your mind does and IMO thats even worse.

As for the money element, the NHS claim that treating smokers cost about £2 billion per year. However, taxes on UK cigs when they were “only” £5-6 per pack a few years ago raise £8 billion in taxes. If the UK Govt ringfenced even a proportion of this money for health services (as Germany appears to do) then at least the costs are offset; but if they insist on exorbitant taxation they can’t complain if folk who are able to travel abroad tend to get an increasing proportion of their tobacco from overseas.

I found one positive out of these stupid pictures and varying health warnings; as you usually get a different warning each time they stop me absent mindedly picking up an empty pack and taking it to work (2-5km from any shop) rather than a full one – Alas, I seem to be getting through this carton of Lucky Strike quicker than I’d wanted to (they are unobtanium in the UK) – I’m already up to “Rauchen mindert ihre Fruchtbarheit” (not that that bothers me, last thing I’d want to be saddled with at this stage in life is parenthood!)

Its getting the stuff back into Blighty which is the problem, especially in the coastal area where I live (there have been smugglers for centuries), work colleagues are even wary to buy legit import amounts on their foreign holidays for fear of being called aside by Border Force.

The biggest annoyance is that prices are perfectly fair in neighbouring European countries but unlike all sorts of other commodities its illegal to buy cigs online from the rest of the EU (which we are still in for at least the next 2 years) and import them without paying UK duty (rather than the source duty at the country). Yet If you travel to Europe in person you can bring at least 2 cartons back.

Another counter productive consequence of these warnings is I was looking at cigarette cases, and found some good German and French ones sold by a online tobacconist in the North of England. I also noticed that pipe tobacco has not gone up in price so much. I might not have time for a pipe at work but am even considering that for times when I am home, so was thinking “it is better to eye a pipe, than to pipe your eye” :laugh_at: