Adventure Ausrama Blog

Hypocrisy reigns. The Australian Government is bringing in extremely tough smoking laws, yet investment in tobacco companies is seen to be alright. In 2006 the then Coalition Government set up a future fund. Its goals were to fund future costs of pensions for public servants, judges and so on. A look at the books as shown that the fund's managers deem holding shares in 14 tobacco companies to be a good thing. They obviously don't think the Government's actions to ban tobacco firms from putting their name on cigarette packets will lead to a fall in profit nor affect secure future operations. Tobacco investment is only 0.5 per cent of total investment. However, it is unethical and it goes against Government policy. While making the highest return is written into fund guidelines, the body is supposed to be monitored by the Treasurer. There seems to be a difference of opinion between the Prime Minister and Treasurer. The Prime Minister fully supports the name and logo ban initi...

Some new medical findings can be a bit "oh-hum". It has been found that smoking, just intaking smoke from one cigarette, can damage DNA almost immediately. This does make one think about not taking up the habit. However, it is widely accepted that danger is only there after smoking for 20 or 30 years. So much work has been done on tobacco. Very little on the other widely used smoking drug - marijuana. Stay away from cigarettes one may say and partake of weed instead. Apparently, the intake of grass is quite safe. Why is there such a desire for humans to consume such a highly addictive naturally occurring compound? It all boils downs to evolution, natural selection. Unless something you consume reduces your competency to reproduce until the age of about 25, genes will not be selected to combat it. Whether smokers die later in life when they are way past producing and bringing up offspring is irrelevant to survival of the species. Smoking is like drinking alcohol - it is enjoy...