Be heard

Via email, an update from the I Deserve To Be Heard campaign:

[...] The Government has recently announced that they intend to introduce plain packaging. Now is the time to tell the Government that plain packaging for cigarettes just makes no sense and will not work. Click here

It's just another policy like the alcopops tax that they have not thought through. On top of unreasonable tax increases and outdoor smoking bans, this is just another example of the Government unfairly targeting you as a smoker.

With cigarettes already hidden behind doors in most shops across the country, plain packaging will just make it harder for you to identify and purchase your cigarettes, causing long queues and all for a policy that has not been proven to prevent or stop people from smoking.

As I've said often enough I'm not a smoker, so I'm not being unfairly targeted for being one. But I have no doubt that I will be unfairly targeted for entirely new things in the future, along with virtually everybody else. So if you're in Australia please do click the link and support the campaign even if you're not a smoker, and if you're not in Oz please lend whatever verbal support you can - blog it, tweet it, email it, chat about it over a beer in the pub, whatever. Most of all watch the situation where you are like a hawk, because I guarantee there are people where you are who want this to happen there too. Don't think they'll stop at smoking either. There is almost no limit to the number of things that someone somewhere would happily ban because as they see it it's for your own good.

The choice is a simple and stark one. You support the smokers right here and now, or you hope like hell some of them are still around to support you when it's your turn.