Now Tax Paid tobacco definately does not taste the same! It has a nasty cloying heaviness about it, it is a darker colour. The only difference is that you get a bag with a self seal strip, and no dire 'You are going to die from this' warning advertisements on the packet!.. .. .. I wonder why?
Perhaps the government only wants to discourage non duty paying smokers, and has realised that they are missing a large chunk of money from the health budget. Three of my Grandparents smoked like chimneys and they all lived until they were a ripe old age, and I don't think any of them got sick with much. My Grandmother that didn't smoke died first. The wheezing and hacking was comforting, it was just what they did!
It has obviously put the tax burden on us remaining smokers up considerably as my taxed packet cost £15.30, where my duty free packet costs £5.20. Remember it's generally poorer people who smoke, and it's more addictive than Heroin! How about reducing the tax now that so many people have given up, and letting us social lepers off the hook?
What is also interesting about the packaging comparison is that the tax paid packet does not have the printed box that says how much tar/nicotine I am getting per cigarette. (I wonder why?).. .. .. ..
My tax paid fags are saturated with tar residues far higher than my duty free tobacco, and they don't go out as easily. And I can taste salt peter in the tobacco. This is definately and genuinely a different product.
I like my 'hit', and I am definately not getting it! This tobacco tastes more like a rolled silk cut cigarette with the tip broken off. I don't like tips as the dioxins from the bleach taste horrible. I used to be able to get unbleached paper and tips, but these are off the market now.
Well that got me thinking about Afghanistan, and the war on terrorists. The main farming economy of Afghanistan is the opium poppy. It is a very important natural pain killer used in codeine and morphine.
Now I do like a shot of morpine now and again, I had some after my back injury, after 3 frozen shoulder manipulations, and a completely broken and displaced ankle that now has a titanium plate in it. That titanium plate and a couple of gold teeth make me quite valuable!
Anyway natural opiates are more effective than synthetic pain killers without the problems that wreck your digestive system!
Now when I broke my ankle, I decided to try a bit of faith to the situation, because there was a possibility I might have had to have my foot taken off. (Great bit of surgery I might add, and ten years on, none of the screws have come loose. Having the plate taken out might cause more damage).
Anyway I asked my Husband to bring my NIV Study Bible, and my Large dictionary into the Hospital, and wedged my foot still between them. The moment I did this, the foot propped up on a couple of pillows I got instant relief! So I said I didn't need the pain killers. Well, you just got to try these things! They hadn't dished out any morphine at this stage as I wasn't screaming the place down. Great sandwiches, they were prawn with nice sauce and lettuice.
I had actually unscrewed my ankle slipping on some wet grass while out walking the dog. It did a full 360 degree turn, like something out of the omen. It was raining and cold as well. Well right at that moment I was under a huge strain with all sorts of problems, and I was praying. I said to God, 'I need a break....'
Well God obliged, and I got a corker! I was black right up to above my hip. I lay on the ground for about 2 hours calling for help when I heard people nearby, and I actually heard someone speaking near me. I can't imagine why they could not hear. Anyway, once I realised I could not get help, I decided I had to get to the nearest house, so I got up and walked/limped on it. Which obviously displaced it.
Well it's too long a story, the guy that came wouldn't call an ambulance, and took 20 minutes to get his car out. He phoned my Husband, who had flu at the time and didn't want to get out of bed. Flue is quite serious when you have cardial asthema. In the time it took this guy to get his car out, My Husband had come to where I was walking, found the dog in the car park near my car, and gone home back to bed. Then this guy drove me home first, and my husband just said take her to the hospital! He had lost the plot as well!
I am seriously allergic to anasthetic, and I had the operation done under a twilight and an epidural.
People wonder why I am crazy!
Anyway, back to the Afghanistan situation. The production of poppys, and resin is an extremely labour intensive and specialised work. It is a very valuable crop. To produce the quantity and quality of this product from Afghanistan rates alongside Attar of Rose, and the finest Incence resin. All these are labour intensive, and a 'way of life' for these wonderful people.
What is happening now, is that because 10 years of war has stopped a legitimate purchase of poppy resin for the making of medicines, the UK and America are having to grow their own. The problem is that they do not have the skill, or expertise, or weather to get the best opium.
I hope those warology idiots haven't poisoned the land in Afghanistan, because that is definately the kind of act that get's God's back up.
The thing is that if the Afghanis were paid a higher price for their opium production than the terrorists can pay, the natural consequence would be that the money they get from turning an opiate into an 'illegal drug trade' would dry up.
Wouldn't it have been better for western nations to buy up all the drugs from producers and use the real natural product for genuine medicine, instead of trying to substitute the real thing which is far more effective, for a synthetic substitute that has dreadful side effects?
Wouldn't this be more cost effective than war? Probably not, perhaps the weapons industry is a better investment than producing world class quality natural drugs.
How about the cost in Human terms?
How is it that losing these young men and women at Yaroslavl, right on the doorstep of a world congress to discuss these problems,is considered more tragic than losing lives in Afghanistan, and any other war.
Look at the decimation of trench warfare in the 1st world war, and the loss of life in the second world war. Not only in concentration camps and genocide, but in fighting troops and civillians.
Is it that once these people become statistics they are de-humanised, and the loss to their familes just considered collateral damage?
There will always be users of drugs, but by controlling a legitimate supply and distribution, rather than trying to fight the 'wars' against the non tax paying distribution of these products, everyone benefits.
I am reminded of the film Dune, what an analogy! Great film!
As the importation networks are already in place, how about offering genuine amnesty to drug syndicates? This would mean there would be no need for the mules and local runners. Think of the saving if the actual criminality of this industry became a legitimate avenue of obtaining high quality natural supplies of medicines.
Might take a while for the criminality and privateering element to get a good education, and go to college, but at least it is forward looking.
I guess if someone is an addict, they might be better off working in a field, growing poppies, with people who have the use of their own crop and the tolerance for it, rather than rotting in some hovel in the western world? Send Afghanistan the addicts, to let them help grow the crop, the Afghanis will know how to get them better. They must have a way of managing the effects of their own addiction.
I will have to see if I can get some duty free tobacco, I cant smoke the stuff I bought yesterday, it's disgusting. I wouldn't have a problem paying a couple of quid tax on top of my normal better quality packet, but adding £10.10p to something that is definately a 'doctored' version of it, just means I will buy it duty free.
Thinking about it my chess/draughts playing grandfather grew tobacco in his veg plot, and had a go at making cigars. It wasn't successful if I remember, as he didn't know what to do with the tobacco... or did he, there was always tobacco drying somewhere! That was scammy we were always told as kids he never smoked it!
I have actually got flowers on my Aubergines at the moment, and a few flowers on my Ocra, I don't think they will fruit as we have too many vapor trails over Jersey, so we aren't geting enough sunlight for them!
However, Tobacco is made from leaves so this shouldn't be a problem... I wonder if growing tobacco plants is on the web? Yes! It is pretty much the same as growing tomatoes. Ho Hum, guess what's going to be in my plastic grower next year.
Also I found this snip, sorry no credits as the website I was on might land the writers in some problems. The Guy growing and explaining the tobacco process, actually doesn't smoke and uses a 'tea' of tobacco leaves as an insecticide. He says you need dynamite or a steam roller to kill the plants, and you can have a passable cured tobacco in 3 months, even in a climate that gets 3 months of frost.
This is a quote from the hub;
Five or ten years (from now) tobacco farmers could wind up being heroes in the pharmaceutical industry curing all sorts of wicked bad diseases.
In the US Stanford University is testing an injectable cancer vaccine in genetically engineered plants.The private sector; researchers and bioengineering entrepreneurs have used tobacco plants as hosts for processes that may produce new antibiotics, vaccines, cancer treatments, blood substitutes, biodegradable plastics and industrial enzymes and solvents.
Top tobacco dawg J.J. Reynolds created a subsidiary, Targacept, to compete with Eli Lily and Abbot Laboratories to treat Alzheimer’s.
A group of biomedical scientists from the University of Central Florida have established that insulin capsules produced from transgenic tobacco plants that can cure diabetes in mice.
Early tests suggest the leafy pariah can actually grow complex medicines, from blood thinners to a possible AIDS drug.
Who would have known that pharmaceutical tobacco could retain a higher price and be a gold mine.
End of Quote.
Now does this actually mean that these real cures are available and could be produced? Does it mean that drug companies do not actually produce real cures, but rather produce drugs and treatments that are expensive illness management techniques?
How much is the insulin industry worth? If a cure for diabetes was available, we would all want to be cured right? .. .. .. .. Wrong, we wouldn't need to take insulin medicine! Silly people, the drug companies don't want anyone to be healthy!
When will these politicians wake up, and make the right decisions, and stop feeding dis-information to the populus to cover their scammy, nefairious, nepotism with their sponsers?
Now, do I want to die from Boredom, lose my mind with Altzheimers, or grow my own Tobacco?
Here is where to get seeds! Check out the tobacco aditives section while you are at it!
http://www.tobaccoseed.co.uk/BandH.html
Hmmm, bit of a no brainer really.... Might as well reduce the tax and put good stuff in the packets, it honestly might be better to do this with the opiates, sell them with clean equipment and stop acting as though a fix of something now and again will destroy th fabric of society.
Better to have registered users using the real stuff, rather than chemical substitues, and help them get the addiction under control. Like me, some of us are natural substance needers, tobacco is still legal here, but if it wasn't, do you think I would really stop doing it, or find some other way to get my fix?
At least with genuine concern for addicts, and proper rehab facilities available without the demonizing of us social misfits we might actually move through this bottleneck of political v populus nihilism. Don't think it's the populus in a democratic society that has to answer to it's politicians.. .. actually, even drug barons, and criminati have the right to vote if they pay tax, and register for voting, (the ones not in nick obviously!)wonder if you politicians would get their vote if you changed the whole system?
I wonder if the drug barons would like to be legit buisnessmen, and send their kids to good schools? I wonder if terrorist organisations would like to be just regular mercenaries for hire? Ooops, I think that's what most of them are, they just get brainwashed into fighting without pay for some countries intellegence agency that part funds them to by their own countries weapons and ammo.
If I was a Libyan person right now, I would be very worried about who has got all those missing weapons that used to be in Mr Ghadaffis lock up sheds. I think you guys have been primed to fight out a civil war between yourselves. If anyone has got any sense it might be a good idea to sit down right now, and work out what you guys want before signing any trade deals with foreign governments.
Any faction still wanting to fight, will have to be an outside funded operation to make it look as though you can't establish a proper government. Then this gives outside powers the 'right' to step in and manage the situation for you, so you will just exchange one dictator for another one.
You guys need a proper elected non party political council. If you go for party politics you will just fight among clans. Choose good men to put forward at local level, allow a collaberation between local policing, religeous leaders, and politicians rather than the usual western model, and 'fight it out with words' before your country just becomes a further annex of western government interventions. Just ask them to leave nicely, ask for help in establishing a system that you want, not that they want.