Thailand had just raised the retail price of Marlboro 20s from 60 baht to 75 baht in one fell swoop, but luckily there was a military coup in mid September and prices were restored back to the pre-takeover equivalent of $2.00 AUD a few days later for top quality imported tobacco, better than these local copies that they fob off on the small contingent of Australians who have the vision to see the danger to public freedoms of many different kinds in the guise of these inexcusable fiscal tricks caused by the sort of propaganda that makes me dream of one day returning to a civilised country like Australia once was, a long time ago.

A military coup caused a drop in cigarette prices? How? Maybe we can stage one here in the US with toy guns.

It's merely the politics if disillusioned control freaks, but it's costing me 40% of my weekly income here in Australia now.

What's the situation like in Australia, tobacco-wise? I think we're behind the curve here in the US. We just got FDA control and they're planning the gruesome cigarette packs in a few years. I've read that things are worse in other countries, including Australia.

So what's it like? Have there been any good rebellions aimed at stopping the insanity?

I copped a rather memorable bite from a mosquito the same day I got off the plane from Changi to Perth with those last 200 duty-free marlboro, and the Ross River Virus has taken my respiratory fitness to the extent that asthma is a very serious risk now, and that forces me to stay with the one tailormade brand I've always stuck to, to give my body a fair chance.

A friend in Vancouver told me recently that Canada had implemented high tobacco tax years ago, and dropped it because it didn't work.

What is the Ross River Virus? I never heard of that. Are you in the service? We have some service members who post here regularly.

We were just having a discussion about Canada on another thread, in case you didn't see it. Might want to check it out: Totallly Confusing Ontario Smoking Ban in Trucks. It's in the Smoking Bans section.

One thing I forgot to mention about the radio news story I mentioned above, was that as well as the 'community' the PR expert who was reported in the story also included the good logic that because most of the cigarette smokers in Western Australia apparently 'want to quit' she has proven conclusively that we would very much like to have to pay $20.00 per packet.

That is the sort of propaganda that has become acceptible in Ontario as well now, from what that good-truckin' article tells me.

Unfortunately, smokers have used the "I want to quit but can't" line a little too often in an effort to get well-intentioned nannies off their back. People will often stop nagging and leave you alone if you pretend that you can't quit, as long as you don't admit the reason you can't quit is because you don't want to.

There might be a few smokers who quit as a result of coercive government "help," but for people like myself it has the opposite effect. The harder people try to control me, the more determined I become to thwart their efforts. I don't think the tobacco control people understand that smokers tend to be rebellious sorts, and coercive rules only magnify that effect.

The fact that some smokers are willing to thank the government for robbing them just goes to show how effective the antismoking movement has been, as far as mental conditioning. It's really painful to watch smokers not only cooperate with, but encourage their own oppression.

I might change my mind one day, whether it be willfully or due to some unavoidable misfortune, but as far as I see now, there is only one possible mechanism apart from death that will ever convince me to even consider the idea of living without tobacco as a part of my daily life, and that is the tobacco tax.

If they drop the tax down to something like petrol/gasoline (which causes far more pollution, road deaths and hospital time than the durries) from the 500% or more that we're paying, then I could go back to the original plan and would probably have far more interesting things to take up my time with all the extra money I've parted with for cig-tax than sit here on the Internet all day smoking.