Interesting Links for 10-12-2021

[andrewducker]

This New Tech Cuts Through Rock Without Grinding Into It

(tags:construction tunnels technology )

2 bed flat for sale in London - with ridiculously massive bunker

(tags:property London wtf viaSwampers )

Scots told to defer Christmas parties by national health authority

(tags:Scotland Christmas Pandemic )

New Zealand plans to make it illegal for kids to buy cigarettes - for life

(tags:cigarette newzealand )

How Biden Is Reshaping The Courts (I am regularly aghast at how the USA chooses judges)

(tags:law usa viaDanielDWilliam )

Real life horror movie scene

(tags:light trains horror video )

The furries are everywhere!

(tags:furrie )

Student accommodation rents up by a third in three years

(tags:students rent Scotland )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

The New Zealand cigarette thing is interesting.

I do have some concerns about a black market.

[andrewducker]

A black market seems inevitable. Although New Zealand may be better suited than most to keep their borders secure.

The question is, I guess, whether the damage to health is higher with them being legal or not.

[danieldwilliam]

I think that's the question.


If a black market supplies 1% of the population rather than a legal market supplying 5-10% of the population that's a health win.

What I don't know, having never been a smoker, is whether tobacco is "fun" enough to buy on the black market. Nicotine is very, very addictive, so I can see a reason for a black market for people who already smoke but would a 14 year old be tempted to try smoking compared to dope or ecstacy?

On the black market there's going to be tobacco in the country so the risk is probably diversion of legal supplies rather than smuggling I think. And I wonder what the margin is for selling illegal cigarettes rather than legal ones.

[andrewducker]

Depends on the cost of smuggling to New Zealand, I suspect.

And yes, my understanding is that nicotine is very addictive, but not actually any fun. Certainly not after the very beginning. Also very easy to spot unless you're only doing it at home, so easier to crack down on.

[dewline]

Or, alternatively, whether the black market in cigarettes can find space enough to run grow ops in Aotearoa/New Zealand...

[anna_wing]

Smoking is really very easy to detect, though...

[danieldwilliam]

Easier than smoking dope do you think?

[anna_wing]

Really depends on cost-benefit. How much NZ is willing to enforce and at what level of penalties, plus transport costs, against the size of the market and the level of likely profit. I have long wondered whether jurisdictions that legalise cannabis will impose the same restrictions on smoking it as are imposed on smoking tobacco, and whether eventually the same level of social opprobrium will also eventually be applied. Secondhand smoking of cannabis would surely have very similar problems to second-hand smoking of cigarettes.

I was told that in Singapore, due to very high duties on cigarettes and a ban on vaping, cigarette smuggling is popular, because the profit is decent, and it is not directly life-threatening the way that smuggling cannabis or heroin or any other proscribed drug would be (Singapore has a mandatory death penalty beyond certain quantities of the pure material).