Butts Out!

    October saw some tough, and for me, welcome, new laws come onto the books.  I suppose one should not cheer a segment of the population being marginalized but I am only too happy to have smokers far, far away from my lungs.
    Cigarettes have heavy taxes on them. A pack of twenty costs $12-15 each. Legislating a further deterrent for those who light up requires manufacturers to put gross pictures of mouth cancers  next to the warnings on the packaging. Well, people have found their way around such inconveniences by cutting back on other spending or buying  cigarette pack covers. In a bold move, the new laws limit where you can actually smoke including: not inside any car where a child under 16 is present, further than 10 yards from a playground and no cigarette packages are allowed to be displayed or otherwise visible to the public.  This is bold because Australians dislike being told they cannot do something (It's a nanny state!)  but clearly everything leading up to this move has not worked.  In a country that has a national health service, the government is all too keen to rid themselves of the healthcare bill smoking escalates.  
    The debate continues on whether packaging for cigarettes should be devoid of any embellishment.  This does not please manufacturers. Having their logos, color schemes, fonts and artwork all reduced to buff colored cardboard with Times New Roman print on it is making them very itchy.
    It's hard for me to feel much sympathy for them.  So much of the Korean population smoked like hot turds in January that my last six months there were marked by one long case of bronchitis.  Cigarettes are one habit worth breaking, in my view.  Butts out!