Smoking is dead, and costs billions in smoking related diseases. They can be 50$ / pack as far as i care. The sooner it is illegal the better.
At least here we are an island and got a fair hit at illegal smoking products coming in.
Growing the stuff is just as bad, if it wasn't for people smoking the stuff you would have clothing more durable than denim.

How about a stupidity tax, it'd cover Rudd's black hole in no time.
Just listening to the Green necks leader waffling on about the asylum seekers & how they deserve all our help. It is nothing short of interesting to note that not once did her concerns go to our pensioners or the homeless or the economy as a whole. It was all about the asylum seekers. I must say I do prefer an australian politician be it a Red neck or a Blue neck who wants to put an end to this invasion & gives at least some thought to their own instead of giving preference to those who don't even want to be identified.
Rudd's a dudd & Abbott ? Well, he is the one whom we haven't afforded the benefit of doubt yet. Big Clive has gone quiet so I don't know what he is up to.

I smoke, drink and use recreational drugs, if I can’t buy them I make them. This makes me acceptable in society because I admit to it; it helps me sleep at night and defends me from reality.

It also stops those who use these but don’t admit to it, from pontificating at me from the high moral ramparts.

My strategy also acts as a bulltish filter. I can still read treasury estimates that the health cost to the nation is a net benefit. The government earns in tobacco excise, fifteen times the cost of treating smoking related disorders.

rehctub, you are spot on. As for the rest of the anti-everything lobby, mind your own bee’s wax, stay out of other peoples lives and get a freekin’ life of your own.

Ah! I feel so much better now.

onthrbeach>> It is revenue raising. Alcohol is more difficult to ramp taxes up on because of the effect on the wine industry<<

Otb, have you forgotten the Alcopop tax that Kev introduced in 2008 a year after gaining power and when he first began to run out of money. Labor bullsheisers sold it as a way of curbing teen drinking.

Latest figures reveal that it did not put a dent in the teen drinking stats, which any one with half a brain could have predicted given we are talking teens....but it has raised an extra $5 BILLION in taxes for Labor to piddle against the wall. For a "party for the battlers" Labor is worse than the Libs.

Every chance Labor gets they tax us. The “working family” and the “battler" is now paying additional taxes on power, food, fuel, alcohol and cigarettes. Labor now want to steal our super and tax our savings each time we deposit or transfer funds.

If Labor could work out a way to tax us while we slept they would.

Onya Spindoc...

sonofgloin,

It might have looked that way but I am not in favour of the high tax already on alcohol.