Alcohol should definitely be more heavily taxed.
Fully agreed. When I went tee-total overnight back in January, I found an immediate difference in my bank account. After a month, the money got used to help clear the credit card and after 4 months (with the assistance of many hours of overtime, granted) I had enough money to not only buy myself a mountain bike but also finish clearing the credit card forever. I also got to work on building my savings up, and 7 months in I'm doing really well on that front.
So I am hugely in favour of bankrupting breweries
Let's make Great Britain great again, let's show the world we're a country able to improve itself. The drain on the NHS and police force alone caused by drunken behaviour has gone on far too long.
I have an unpopular opinion on this. If you're someone who has smoked since the 50ies/60ies/70ies when it was commonplace, maybe into the 80ies, (i.e. a regular smoker, at least a pack a week) and if you have an illness related to smoking then you can get treated on the NHS. If you're someone who was born in the 80ies and was smoking in the 90ies/00s/10s, then you pay for your treatment - it was well known by that time that smoking caused cancer and other illnesses, yet you chose to smoke anyway. That was your choice and society should not have to bail you out for that, especially when there are people out there who desperately need healthcare for urgent and life threatening illnesses that are of no fault of theirs. I don't necessarily think you should have to pay the full cost as long as you've been a UK taxpayer for a significant part of your life, but you should have to pay a minimum of 50%.
It's a hard way of looking at it but I think of it just in the same way I think of drunks out in towns on a weekend - they go out, get drunk, hurt themselves and the NHS has to pick up the pieces. They should also have to pay for their treatment. Boy racers, idiots on bikes doing 100+ on motorways, same thing.
**puts flameproof suit on**
Ok, I'm done.
*joins hands in unison, also in a flameproof suit*
I can't disagree with anything you've said there. I knew full well in 2004 what would happen to me if I took up the habit, and that the lungs will never fully recover. It's just how it is, and my poor life choice will inevitably result in a poor state of health.
There may be very little, if anything, I can do to deal with that, but what I can do in the meantime is improve my fitness. For the amount of work I put the body through, the heart and lungs cope really well. They sure behave a lot better than they did before I quit, for obvious reasons, and it saddens me to see so many of my colleagues puffing away like chimneys. Some of which have things like COPD or asthma. They continue to smoke though, and I just don't get that. If you've got a nasty disease, caused by smoking, then surely continuing to do so is just crazy.
It really isn't pleasant being in a confined space next to a smoker when they start coughing and spluttering, and it goes into their hands which don't get washed for hours :roll:
So yeah, if it wasn't clear, I'd make smoking the most expensive habit for all but the most wealthy. Same for alcohol. No ifs, no buts, no coconuts. Want a fag? Then be prepared to spend £20 on a packet. Buying tobacco pouches to save money? Then be prepared to spend £1 per gram minimum. Fancy a drink? Then there's a £1 per 100ml of tax added on top of however much the drink already costs.
That might sound insane, but if it stops the disgraceful behaviour, and makes people start being healthier, then fantastic!