Toad, there is also a correlation between being maori and higher crime rates – I’m just glad that people don’t apply the same extension of logic there that you do with gambling.

If more people smoked, we’d have lower taxes. Think about that!

What is it with you Gweens?

Why is it that you guys think you know how to run our lives better than we can?

Why don’t you just fuck off and let us do what we want? (within the bounds of the law), I don’t play the pokies but it is my right to do so if I wish, the money I may put into the machines is my own and I am not going to be told by a communist Aussie, a mad yank, a grandstanding deaf shelia (who has contributed nothing to the house in her time there) or an overweight and nasty female co-leader that I cannot do so.

I assume that you do not see the blinding hypocrisy in your drive to control how we live, you guys want to legalise all drugs yet in the same breath want to tell us what light bulbs we can use and what we can feed our kids.

I’m not suggesting banning gambling, or even pokies in particular for that matter. Just suggesting that given the correlation between the number of pokie machines and the number of problem gamblers, we shouldn’t have any more of them.

And, unlike alcohol, pokies are deliberately designed to be addictive.

Sounds like we are marching them to the casino and force them to spend their money.

We are so lucky to have people like you that tell us what we can and can’t do with our money, what we can and can’t eat, what we are allowed to drink and how much…….
Honestly, we (the plebs) would be totally lost without the wisdom of you and your fellow greens.
Thank goodness for you guys.

Fucktards
Price it to high or ban it and face the rise of an illegal market. A far worse social consequence than a few dying early of lung cancer etc.

We would have no professional league or rugby or cricket without alcohol sponsorship.

Evidently there are people out there who can drink and have a punt without it destroying their lives.

Why should 99% of people be denied because of the 1 %?

You can not, have never been able to and will never be able to stop a certain percentage shelf destructing ( its called human nature – and human nature is brilliant , it brings many more positives than negatives), thats what so many ,especially socailists and religious fail to realise -the goals of some mean nothing to others, no matter what good or meaningful intentions lie behind the proposed rules.

Toad So you guys would ban convention centres as well?

No.

But the economics of conventions centres should stack up without ripping off money from and feeding the addiction of gambling addicts to support a convention centre being developed.

So you guys would ban convention centres as well?

Early parole could be part of the deal too.

I am not even convinced that a big new convention centre is a great idea – the Government should produce a transparent economic case for that – but it seems to me that we are so far from anywhere else that we are poorly competitive as far as international conventions go.

And if there is an economic case for one, it shouldn’t be built though a dirty “legislation for sale” deal.

FFS, if you go down that path you invite Waha Saifiti to build the convention centre in return for allowing him to lawfully set up a meth lab and dispensary next door to it.

But they won’ have and as BB points out, watch your direct tax rise.

And lastly, tobacco is a brilliant means of getting our tax dollar back from the bludgers who might take it in benefits ,but put it straight back in to the coffers, bless their bludging little cotton socks.

Thus we can now safely say that everyone has been informed & any who choose to continue to smoke do so well aware of the dangers. We could go so far as to say that it is their personal choice to spend their money & health in this way.

Why then the anal fixation of our leaders & betters on making NZ smoke free? Probably it gives them a touchy feely sensation in their tummies to know that they are doing good work while raising taxes & simultaneously interfering in the lives of the electorate. After all smokers die early, saving a fortune in National Super. Their deaths are no more demanding of health dollars than most & they have paid for a lot of it with tobacco tax.

If the same obsessive zeal was applied to other facets of social improvement we would be living in Nirvana inside a decade.