The Malaysian woman deserved the sentence just for being totally thick. Customs wouldn't be interested!

Tobacco is not an illegal drug, is not as dangerous as illegal drugs, and it's all about grabbing government's exorbitant taxes on a product that they are spending millions of our dollars on telling us to stop using (hypocrites). If they ever wipe out smoking altogether, they will need to up the excise on alcohol. Get ready, boozers. They are already starting to spend more millions of your dollars broadcasting the cancers and other problems caused by your drug of choice.

And, despite the yabber about the wine industry being so important, remember that the Australian government has wrecked our economy on the dubious opinions of medical "experts". There is a steady rise of the same types trying to influence gullible, self-serving politicians in the same way they have with other health issues. And, alcohol is dangerous for everyone, including teetotallers and children, unborn and living, unlike ciggies, which mainly affect only the smoker.

Yes the tobacco taxes are indeed immoral.

The immorality of socialists. Devoid of productive skills, feigning superior wisdom and care for others is their profession.

And don't we have a lot of them these days.

If you are going to smoke, then be good enough to pay for the self-inflected harm and the passive harm you do! And pay for some of your future medical care, hospitalisation, for yourself and that of the harm you do to other passive smokers! And cop it sweet on our tobacco excise duties!

Dad, the smoke is getting in my face, gasp, choke. Well then Junior, move your face? Sounds about right for the Senator we all know and despise? Yes!?

I get that you, David, don't give a rats about others and the harm you do to them as an addicted smoker, who as a medically trained vet, should know better!

I mean it's not as if you are intellectually challenged? Just a non-empathetic A-hole? Who seems to be, encouraging tax avoidance, smuggling and breaking the law?

Smugglers are gonna smuggle cause the non-compliant A-holes in society, who just don't give a continental, are gonna provide a market! No market, ipso facto, no illegal smuggling!

Seriously, honestly, You come over as yet another self-serving elitist (big guy) who thinks they're entitled to ignore the (inconvenient) Profit harming law?
Alan B.

" And pay for some of your future medical care, hospitalisation, for yourself and that of the harm you do to other passive smokers!"

There's basically no evidence that so-called passive smokers suffer any harm.

As to the actual smokers, they are, in fact, national benefactors, willingly laying down their lives for the good of others....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIMffhpZRw

If you intend to hang you self in competition to smoking yourself to death, there are thirteen turns of the rope in a hangman’s noose.

Just like the topic from this author, once every blue moon it pops up. Coincidentally though, the blue moon tomorrow night coincides with Halloween. The first blue moon in seventy six years that does line itself up for the strange event.

And on the subject of strange, I wonder if this author is using the date to cynically align promoting the death habit of smoking cigarettes, with the spooky ghosts from Halloween’s past.

Laugh and play little children, little do you know there is a big bad man out there hiding in plain sight that wants to kill you.

I can tell you his name, David Leyonhjelm.

Dan

I get so frustrated constantly telling friends and acquaintances it's ok to smoke around us. So brow beaten they first disbelieve you and even after you insist they stay near they still nervously watch for your reaction. It's horrific people are being made to feel like they deserve to be ostracized.
My wife and I quit several years ago and every time we're around others who smoke it's the same. We love the people around us and we always want them to feel welcome.
Fact is, it doesn't smell awful like the vocal sooks whine it does. Not at all. This was something we discovered after we gave up. Sure when someone walks back in after a fag there's a particularly pungent ash smell. But it goes away. We could smell the same when we still smoked. The tobacco smell itself is gorgeous.
The ex smoker who grizzles is only jealous after getting a whiff of that cigarette. The whining's all BS.

As for paying their way, they do. Many many times over. And still they don't get the treatments they could be getting. They're even made to feel they shouldn't seek help. That's utterly immoral.

I think pipe smoking was great !

Over a dollar tax for every cigarette.
The people who are really paying for this are the single mothers of dysfunctional boys.
Some of these kids will put their mothers in hospital just for a cigarette;
And they will rob people for money just to get smokes.

Only 10% of people in the country smoke now.
This is why they keep putting the taxes up.
The government has increasing expenses and this is the easiest way to get it.
It needs to maintain (and increase) the money it makes from tax.

Only 10% smoke? And big tobacco is looking for more victims it can addict with its carcinogenic product! Cause addicts are usually, customers for life? And seem relatively healthy while they are comparatively young?

But as an older cohort who smoked for years, require massive medical assistance with cancer and (puff, wheeze) emphysema! And ongoing care for years, that invariably cost much more in every which way than their tobacco tax!

They also occupy expensive hospital beds that are then denied to non-smokers with serious non-self-inflicted ailments.

Moreover, if all the money they burned or sent up in smoke had been put aside and invested in income-earning investments. Their retirement and quality of life could be so much better! And even less of a drain on a diminishing cohort of taxpayers!

And our public health could concentrate on other non-smoke related health issues!

The addicted 10% have no right to oblige non-smokers to inhale a product as passive smokers who have never ever given consent to this offensive carcinogenic pollution being forced into their airways by some indifferent and selfish up-wind A-holes!

Keep lifting the tax until these brainless (puff, wheeze, cough, Houck, spit) suckers finally get the message!
Alan B

Smokers are paying for that care, many times over.

"The addicted 10% have no right to oblige non-smokers to inhale a product as passive smokers who have never ever given consent to this offensive carcinogenic pollution being forced into their airways by some indifferent and selfish up-wind A-holes!"

Yeah, everything you say is true, health is the greatest wealth.
But please also keep this in mind:
The government doesn't really care about the non-smokers right to not inhale others smoke.
It cares about revenue, and in order to help these non-smokers enjoy a right of not having to inhale others smoke, it will issue more fines.
That's how government helps - by taking more of others money.
Taxes and fines, the government wants your money anyway it can get it.
Because they cant even pay themselves if they don't take from others.

I remember when I first started smoking
Billboards everywhere.
'Anyhow have a Winfield'
'Peter Stuyvesant'
'B&H'

The government didn't just profit from the cigarettes themselves.
It profited off the advertising that helped to get me hooked.

Yes I should've given up by now.
It does cost too much in the end.
Bad teeth, eyesight, and that cough.
- But the government has been cashing in the whole entire way.
And now kids between the ages of 14 and 20 will have to go to desperate measure to get $50 for a pack of smokes.
They will steal and rob you if that's what it takes.
I know, I was 15 once too.

Lucky for me ciggies were only $2 back then.

Some people have crap in their lives, they grew up around others who smoked and they are going to do it anyway.
I was one of those kids.

Football is to the mind what cigarettes are to the body !

If the obscene taxes were really about reducing smoking rates they'd be used to fund tobacco replacement therapies such as gum and patches so they'd be available free.
For that matter nicotine vaping products wouldn't be banned. Nicotine itself isn't the harmful part of smoking.
We all know tax is the trains gravy and that's the real addiction problem.

-Armchair. Don't be guilt tripped ol'mate.
-Individual. That's funny, and so true.

Yes A.C. Everything you say is essentially true. Governments seemed to be able to do more with less. Then privatised as if it was a worthy goal for inherently incompetent governments from both sides of the aisle. That added insult to injury by squandering mining booms 1 and 2!

And followed that by selling the country and iconic industries to foreigners, sent our manufacturing base offshore with price gouged, privatised energy that in too many cases was higher than the wages bill.

And as the world moves to address climate change, we threaten to boycott a bank who doesn't embrace sovereign risk or stranded assets! And moves to reduce taxes on mostly the rich, who like a couple of now-famous ministers, a treasurer and finance minister were seen to be enjoying a couple of very fine Havanas out the back of parliament.

That said and set aside, quitting is difficult as you make it and until you really and truly want to! And when your won't power is stronger than your will power. During the period of withdrawal, avoid coffee, tea and alcohol.

Remember the most intense cravings last only for minutes and when your hands are idle! Understand that the most powerful of these craving last for not much longer than 14 days, thereafter, to diminish with time.

That believing you can get there by gradually reducing consumption is self-delusional. If you want to quit? And that's a big if, then you need to actually be the master, not the slave!

And throw your lighter and gaspers in the bin and then fight your cravings until you control them, not visa versa. In truth, all successful quitters will tell you the same! Only cold turkey puts you back in charge of what you imbibe or partake of! Patches and gum may help but only deal with cravings, but not the nicotine addiction!

The good news is, your lungs will return to near normal after three years as a non-smoker, so will your sense of smell and taste.
Good luck, Alan B.

your lungs will return to near normal after three years as a non-smoker,
Alan B,
My personal experience as a former unfiltered cigarette smoker still makes me gasp for air at times 28 years after quitting.
I'm just glad at the amount of money no longer wasted. I simply can not believe the cost of smoking nowadays ! It's outright insane !

The only criminals I know of operating out of SE Asia are all Chinese.

I see a lot of Chinese smoking around Sydney and lots of discarded packets of Chinese cigarettes in the garbage so I reckon just put two and two together.

You will probably find that half of the Malaysian Chinese criminals live in Sydney and Melbourne in high class suburbs and send their children to the best private schools.

All part of Australia now being an Asian nation-state I suppose.

Cost was never going to stop us smoking. Was in fact considering growing our own tobacco. Would've too.

The conscious decision to stop came after an afternoons fishing out in the dingy. Wet fingers, couldn't wait to get ashore to have a smoke without it going out or falling apart wet. That evening it struck how pathetic it was the fags were ruling me. That was that.
Nicotine gum helped but it was mostly that I'd made the decision.
Had been getting bouts of chest inflammation so that boosted motivation to actually stick it out this time round.

The stupid socialists cost imposts and taunts had nothing to do with it.
Funnily, have had a number of 'em excitedly ask if it was the price that made me quit. Seeking confirmation no doubt. Never sorry to disappoint them.

Most socialists who are against smoking cigarettes are in fact heavy Cannabis smokers ! They say it's for medicinal purposes & in a way they're right because it deadens the brain !

‘[Excise taxes] discourages smoking… [that] may once have been true in Australia, but it is not now. Rates of smoking are not falling.’

That rationale is as ridiculous as the oft said comment that the death penalty has no deterrent effect. Extremely high taxes, or swinging from a rope, never encourages people to indulge or break the law, but there will always be some people who will be deterred. It is just that the government proscribed harm may be a lot less of a deterrence than first thought.
Perhaps the excessive taxes on tobacco keeps the smoking rate at a level that is lower than it would naturally be without the tax.

‘Profits from tobacco smuggling are funding these other activities, including human trafficking. According to the US Department of State, traffickers are denying nearly 25 million people "their fundamental right to freedom, forcing them to live enslaved and toil for their exploiter's profit."’

If human trafficking is a profit-making enterprise in it’s own right, why do you need tobacco smuggling profits to finance it? Is it so the Mister Bigs can add slavery to their résumé to enhance their evil reputation?