Senator John Crown calls for ban on tobacco products by 2025

B0 SELECTRA

So in 25 years time people will be getting contaminated tobacco and weed from their local dealer causing more damage to peoples health and more deaths to gangland violence brillant :eek:

Pedant

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

exactly also banning dope or other narcotics didnt work so why would banning ciggies work

If that's not sarcasm...

... then you'd actually be right. Banning narcotics has actually created more problem then the bans were intended to prevent. Gangland crime runs on the sale of narcotics.

Greentopia

Odysseus wrote: »

Looks like someone felt they needed a bit of publicity, sad fcuk. Such a ban will happen about the same time as heroin is made freely available.

To call a highly intelligent man at the top of his profession as Professor Crown is a "sad fcuk" is risible. Have you ever heard him interviewed? he's smart, articulate, doesn't suffer fools and is one of the few people in politics I could ever see myself voting for if he ever stood for Dail elections.

And what ressem said.

Jame Gumb

The State's hypocrisy won't allow it - On the one hand, it's "anti-smoking" but on the other it's reliant on the revenue.

Pushtrak

This Crown chap has brought forward two pieces of legislation. The smoking thing and also this one.

Government to block “bizarre proposal” restricting lobbying of judges

THE GOVERNMENT is to block a bill being brought to the Seanad today which would require TDs and Senators to inform the Minister for Justice of any attempt they make to lobby the judiciary – describing the proposal as “bizarre”. The bill is being introduced by NUI senator Prof John Crown today, but the government parties have already agreed to vote against the motion. A Department of Justice spokeswoman this morning the bill would have the opposite effect to its intended aim – to stop parliamentarians from trying to lobby the judiciary in legal matters.

The spokeswoman said the bill would provide a mechanism for communications to be made to the DPP, and to individual judges, concerning criminal offences – as long as they were reported to the Minister for Justice at the time. Such communications, the spokeswoman added, would be a “gross violation” of the separation of powers. As a result, the government was opposing Crown’s “bizarre proposal”.

Crown, however, believes the government’s motives are more ulterior. “The government was thinking of going along with the bill, but when they considered the impact on how the business of politics is done in this country, they decided otherwise,” he said. Crown added that he had not been approached by the government parties with any suggested amendments to the bill, though he would be happy to accept input in that regard.

He explained that his original hopes had been to introduce a bill which placed an outright ban on lobbying of the judiciary by TDs and Senators, but he had been advised that doing so would pose constitutional problems regarding freedom of speech. It is understood that the bill had been slated for discussion yesterday, to allow for the attendance of justice minister Alan Shatter. Shatter is unlikely to attend today’s debates on the bill, as he is due in the Dáil – taking ministerial questions as the Minister for Defence – while the debates on the bill will get underway.

Edit: This stuff is a year old, trying to find what has happened with it since.
Column: The war on drugs isn’t working. We need to medicalise heroin.

I am not an instinctive liberaliser of drugs. I am against drugs – but I simply don’t believe that our current policy of adding more harm to the harm they cause has worked. Heroin addiction is a major fuel for criminality in this country. The money which comes from the supply of narcotics helps finance the gangs that terrorise the poorer communities in our cities.

....

The war we are waging on drugs appears to not be working, not only here in Ireland, but also internationally. This is especially evident in the case of hard narcotics such as heroin and morphine. There are, by most estimates, twenty thousand opiate addicts in Ireland.

Its an article worth reading, but the main topic of it is heroin. This is written by Crown, too. He wants to medicalise one illegal drug. The worst one, by the measure of most I'd imagine. His sentiments with regards tobacco ought to make one pause for thought.

RUCKING FETARD

Scientists invent vaccine to help smokers quit habit

Scientists have devised a vaccine for smokers which prevents them from gaining pleasure from nicotine.

A single dose of the vaccine allowed the liver to produce antibodies that stopped most of the nicotine from getting to the brain, according to a study published yesterday in the US journal 'Science Translational Medicine'.

The researchers carried out their experiments on mice, and it showed that levels of nicotine in the brain were reduced by 85pc after vaccination.

Years of research are still needed before it can be tested on people.

However, Prof Ronald Crystal, who led the research team, is convinced there will be benefits.

Of the more than 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, it is nicotine that leads to addiction, he explained. Keeping the substance away from the brain can stymie nicotine's addictive power by preventing smokers from enjoying their cigarettes, Prof Crystal added.

"This looks really terrific if you're a mouse, but they aren't small humans," said Prof Crystal.

The gene therapy delivers the vaccine to the liver using a virus engineered not to be harmful. The gene sequence for the antibodies is inserted into liver cells, which then begin to create antibodies to nicotine.

"The antibody is floating around like Pac-Man in the blood," Crystal said. "If you give the nicotine and the anti-nicotine gobbles it up, it doesn't reach the brain."

Other "smoking vaccines" have been developed that train the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to nicotine -- the same method used against disease.

The challenge has been to produce enough antibodies to stop the drug entering the brain and delivering its pleasurable hit.

Teyla Emmagan

I really like John Crown. He's intelligent and articulate and seems to have great integrity. We need more politicians who can think for themselves.

And although I think this is a great proposal (as a smoker), I can't see it working. I'd be all for the State giving it a go though...

Varied

I cannot understand why we have to be constantly trying to ban these things?

Are we going to fill our already overcrowded jails with smokers now?

Burt Lancaster

When are the banning booze, that other very costly drug ?