Alcohol advertising should be banned

[HerrSchnapps]

Alcohol is harmful, causes cancer and kills tons of people. So does smoking. Ergo, alcohol advertising, in-store displays & discounting should follow the smoking model--which is socially accepted--and be banned.

Prove me otherwise.

[Greig McGill]

Can't. By that logic, it should be. My argument lies with the premise that smoking should be banned in the first place. Smoke all you like, so long as you a) don't make me breathe it, b) have health insurance. :)

[denimglen]

I'm a smoker and meh,

No offence intended, this isn't to you personally Greig but I come across this argument often -

I'm not MAKING you breathe it, if you choose to get in the way of my exhaling that's your problem - I don't smoke inside, I do my absolute best to exhale away from others.

And with the tax on cigarettes these days - that IS my health insurance.

Excuse me while I go have a smoke :-P

I also agree with Luke below, if he's getting at what I think he is. People get up in arms about all sorts of shit, so what, smoking kills lots of people so does all sorts of other shit, where do you draw the line?

I bet you like a bazillion electricians die every year, lets ban there trade. Fuck it, lets all be ultra-pc and ban everything.

Fuck I hate PCism.

[Greig McGill]

Dude, I was defending you. I fully defend your right to smoke. I don't want anything banned. I'm not suggesting you do make me breathe it, just that you shouldn't, and as you've said, you don't. :)

[denimglen]

Oh yeah, sweet as bro, like I said nothing to you personally aye, just ultra PC-ism pisses me right off.

Re-read your comment and makes more sense :-)

Cheers.

[nzbrewer]

motor vehicle advertising should be banned

[Sinykill]

280 thousand americans die of obesity every year, ban food advertising.

[Mike Neilson]

Yeah why not stop advertising alcahol? I would!! well beer anyway!! At least then beer sales will be built on the one thing the large walleted advertising frenzied brewery forget to add to there budgets, Flavour taste and purly Quality of product!!

Imagine a beer world that rellied on word of excedingly good product and word of mouth!! if that was the case the likes of Richard, Luke and the like would be filthy rich!!! and Deservedly

Lets face it, Humans have been get fucked up on beer for along long long time!! for fuck sake jesus had wine at his table ( I bet he was looking around for a beer) and he's a pretty well respected man isnt he?? So why the hell now are we trying to kull it? Leaders in Parliment get over it!! Stop Binge Drinking!!

[JoKing]

Well said bro.

[Barry]

I'll attempt to prove you wrong. It's not easy.
But simply, beer/alcohol doesn't kill you. Plain fact. In fact there is plenty of medical evidence to the contrary.
What will kill you is excessive booze. Like what I had the other night at Armageddon.
Do that every weekend for 40 years (like the average kiwi bloke) and your friends and relatives will watch you die before their very eyes. Not to mention the medical costs along the way, the social costs, violence etc. All that extra burden on the police/ambulance services, etc etc etc, the other bad stuff that happens as a consequence. It's all bad if you don't keep your shit under control.

Smoking on the other hand, at any level of consumption, will kill you. It's a carcinogen. The fact that it's been legal all these years is _the monumental fuck up_ of the 20th century.

So for me it's not even whether or not anything should be banned. It's that corporations have been allowed to legally sell an addictive poison for ridiculous profit, and that democratically elected governments have clipped the ticket to the tune of millions along the way.

And, if you think for one second tobacco tax pays for health, you are seriously misguided. It flows into the general fund so that the likes of Bill English can get his housing allowance on top of his multi-hundred thousand dollar taxpayer funded salary.

[studio1]

Your argument says that one cigarette a day will kill you but a beer a day won't?

Some people smoke all their lives with no detrimental effects. Tons of smokers who give up after 20 years smoking slowly revert the damage done (my grandfather smoked for 40 yrs, quit at 60 and is still going strong at 85). Of course there are many who aren't so lucky.

My old man was an interesting example - he smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish for 40 years. He had serious health problems for years - all related to alcohol, but with a perfect set of lungs and heart. The booze took him out in the end.

[Barry]

That's exactly what I'm saying. Because it's a medical fact.
Of course there will be incredible examples to the contrary, let's agree to call it luck of the Irish.

The cold hard medical fact is that inhaling a carcinogen, if the right chemical conditions are met, will result in cancer.

Saying that people can smoke their whole lives with no detrimental effect is sticking your head in the sand, I would argue that there is massive detrimental effect, it just hasn't presented itself yet. Make no mistake, it would eventually.

The same can be said for over-consumption of booze.

The same cannot be said for moderate consumption of booze. It's been medically proved to not only be safe, but beneficial.

And to your point below Greig, without dragging this into a politic fistfight, the reason democratic societies move to ban stuff, is that it costs us massive amounts of money. If the majority choose not to do it but still have to pay for it, some could argue that's a valid reason to ban. Surely it's a fiscal policy not a social one?

[Greig McGill]

I don't think you read the link I posted Barry. Part of the point of that article *was* cost. It costs more to enforce an unenforceable ban than not to. History shows this to be true. Is there any more to it than this? I don't mind what others put into their body, so long as I don't have to pay for it, or the results of it.

This doesn't mean I'm pro-smoking. Just anti-banning things. :) No offence to denim above, but even a whiff of cig smoke makes me ill, though for some reason I enjoy the odd cigar.