Deluded wowsers

It's time to laugh at the Aussies again. 

 

The article is here. The delusion and hubris is strong in this one. Australia hasn't beaten tobacco. Tobacco is beating Australia. It has unleashed a crime wave, and it seems that the underworld is now expanding into bootleg alcohol. It will be bootleg hamburgers if the wowser who wrote this article gets his way. 

It contains all the usual NPC talking points from someone who has considered the issue for about five seconds. "Let's have a sugar tax!' (They've never worked anywhere.) "Let's ban advertising! (Ditto.) "Let's subsidise healthy food!" (How?) And then there is the usual diversion about TeH iNdUsTrY.

 

There will be predictable objections. Industry will argue that taxes are unfair, advertising restrictions are excessive, and governments should stay out of people’s kitchens. Similar arguments were made about tobacco. But Australia did not become a world leader in tobacco control by accepting industry talking points. It acted because the health and economic costs were too large to ignore. 

 

If Australia is the world leader in tobacco control, send me to whichever country got the wooden spoon. It will probably be safer there. And yes, the government should stay out of people’s kitchens.

 

As for those "industry talking points", they turned out to be correct. Every one of them. The taxes were regressive, the black market did explode and, as this article proves once more, there was a slippery slope. 

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