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Joy Faulkner, Libertarianz Tobacco and Alcohol Deregulation Spokesman, is horrified that doctors can stands by and watch while smokers suffer and die for lack of oxygen therapy.

This in a welfare state where smokers are taxed blind, once through their paypacket, and again through an extortionate 75% tax on their chosen poison. "Lifestyle product use is not isolated to the smoker. Indeed with the extra taxes on alcohol. petrol and tobaccco -and the fact that clinicians say smokers die younger - other taxpayers are actually being subsidised by these 'pleasure taxes'. It would make you think that we would be first cab off the rank," wheezed Faulkner angrily.

But the non-smoker should not scoff at this. There is a list - published in Sunday News 26th Oct 1997 - suggesting that when smokers have been eliminated, then other lifestyle choices could bring about treatment denial - just remember Rau Williams!

The answer is very simple - make all people responsible for their lifestyle choices. It's your body, your health, get the state right out of it. " If the cigarette tax alone was removed, per year it would cover health insurance for my whole family, with some left over for a beer," grumbled Joy Faulkner, " and then what risks I chose to take in life would be my own business." It seems - when it is apparently socially acceptable to get drunk, punch the missus in the gob, and get off because of your mana. - that the attack on the smoker is very selective.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

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