2501LabsRodworks / Rodbuilder / Fisherman / Woodworker
Australia
Joined May 2016
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Paul Blamire retweeted
A quiet rebellion is taking root across the fields of Italy. Far from the boardrooms of multinational agricultural giants, local farmers are banding together to build a powerful, independent seed network. Their mission is clear: to preserve the ancient, heirloom, and GMO-free seeds that have sustained their culture for generations.
This is about much more than just farming. It is a direct act of resistance against the massive agricultural corporations that seek to monopolize our global food supply. For too long, questionable government protections and corporate lobbying have prioritized profits over people, attempting to push independent farmers toward dependency on patented, genetically modified seeds.
By saving, sharing, and planting their own heirloom varieties, these Italian farmers are reclaiming their heritage and securing their livelihoods. They are proving that true food security comes from biodiversity, community cooperation, and a deep respect for the land, not from corporate monopolies. It is a powerful reminder that the most revolutionary act can sometimes be as simple as planting a seed.
Paul Blamire retweeted
No name calling, no smears just absolute facts from Dr Alex Wodak
Australia’s steep cigarette excise increases and restrictive vaping policies have fuelled a massive illegal tobacco market while undermining the country’s long-standing harm-minimisation approach to public health.
pearlsandirritations.com/pos…
Paul Blamire retweeted
🧵 THREAD: What has @THR101 been working on lately?
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been analyzing major tobacco and nicotine policy proposals across the U.S. — from tax hikes to regulatory overhauls.
Here’s a snapshot of what’s happening across the states 👇
#THR #HarmReduction #PublicHealth
Paul Blamire retweeted
Utah’s HB 337 would more than DOUBLE the cigarette tax — from $1.70 to $3.70 per pack — while slapping an 86% wholesale tax on nicotine pouches & alternative products.
Smoking is already at record lows. Why raise regressive taxes now?
#UTLeg #UTPol #HB337 thr101.org/post/hb-337-would…
Paul Blamire retweeted
🤣🤣🤣 What a joke! Ask an expert. Honestly Universities shouldn’t be letting their staff go public with such unscientific ‘hypotheses’ 🤦🏻♀️ Robust credible science shows head to head trials of vaping for smoking cessation beat nicotine replacement products (see Cochrane Systematic Reviews to start with). Real life data shows smoking rapidly dropping where people have access to risk-reduced alternatives to cigarettes e.g. in Sweden, NZ, Japan, UK, USA, South Korea and on and on…
Paul Blamire retweeted
🚨 LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: HB 145 has DIED in committee in Mississippi.
Another win for THR101 and evidence-based policy. 🎉
The bill would have raised cigarette & vape taxes to fund hospital uncompensated care — relying on regressive excise taxes.
#MSLeg #THR101
thr101.org/post/mississippi-…
N-Joi - Anthem (Official Video) youtu.be/mDURChQ7w54?si=IbQK… via @YouTube
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N-Joi - Anthem (Official Video) youtu.be/mDURChQ7w54?si=IbQK…
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Egyptian Lover (HYBRID) | HÖR - November 16 / 2025 youtube.com/live/Q3GRfPUO_Ok… via @YouTube
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Frankie Goes to Hollywood ft. Steve Howe - Welcome to the Pleasuredome (... youtu.be/3R8Bq_aZ0Pg?si=UVce…
Paul Blamire retweeted
We are beyond excited to announce THR101's Board of Directors! Such an amazing team of folks, from vape shop owners and state association presidents, to consumer advocates, to a state lawmaker and an international doctor to a PR guru. We are stoked to get to work on educating policymakers on all things tobacco and nicotine-related.
thr101.org/about
Paul Blamire retweeted
The first report from ITEC has just been released.
It shows the national illicit nicotine market is valued between $5.7 and $8.6 billion.
This is more than double previous official estimates. Nicotine is now 32-42% of entire Aus illicit drug market.
itec.gov.au/sites/default/fi…
Paul Blamire retweeted
Why has the rapid decline in smoking prevalence in NZ stalled?
a) a small minority of prohibitionist researchers and lobbyists want the smoking deaths gravy train to keep going. So they spread misinformation about nicotine and risk-reduced alternatives eg vaping, and now oral nicotine pouches. They do their utmost to put people off using these very effective quit smoking methods, and go back to smoking.
b) All the reduction has been achieved. Everyone who was going to switch to vaping to quit smoking has. See Ben Youdan’s talk at ECig Summit, London. Is it gonna get us Some people just don’t want to vape and other effective options are being blocked by the “a” people.
c) The 5% smoking prevalence target was an aspirational goal that was picked out of a hat. It was not based on evidence that it was achievable. So now we know 7% is achievable. That’s lower than what some of us real experts thought we could get to.
Sweden has reached 5.3%. NZ could get there too but we would need to allow adults who smoke access to oral nicotine pouches.
Unlike the twisted story being fed to NZ by “a” people who don’t want to lose their jobs & $ because people stopped smoking, oral nicotine pouches are NOT NEW to NZ. They were on the market and the last Government banned them. The Coalition promised to repeal the ban and that’s what they should do. Then the smoking prevalence could drop again and 5% or below could be achieved.
theconversation.com/8-reason…
@MarewaGlover
Another scare piece pretending to be “public health.” The authors clearly decided before they looked at any evidence that all nicotine products are bad and then cherry-picked anything they could find to support that view.
1. “No evidence pouches help people quit.”
There’s hardly any research yet because the products are new that doesn’t mean they don’t work. What we do know is simple:
They’re far less harmful than smoking.
That alone makes them worth considering.
Saying “no perfect evidence yet, so let’s ban them” is the same thinking that gave Australia a booming tobacco black market and higher smoking rates.
2. “We don’t know the risks.”
We do know the risk of cigarettes: they kill 50% of long-term users. Compared to that, nicotine pouches are a tiny fraction of the risk.
But the authors avoid that comparison because it blows up their whole argument.
3. “Nicotine harms young brains.”
This is a claim that keeps getting repeated, but there’s no solid proof in humans. It’s a scare line. Nothing more.
4. “Nicotine addiction is bad.”
Smoking kills.
Nicotine doesn’t.
These authors basically argue that even if a product saves lives, it should be banned because people might like using it. That’s not health that’s moral judgment.
5. “Kids might like the flavours.”
Adults like flavours too. That’s why they switch to safer products.
“Kids might like it” is not a valid reason to block lifesaving tools for adults.
6. “People could use them secretly in schools!”
People can use phones secretly too.
You don’t ban a product just because it’s discreet.
7. The “old lady who swallowed a fly” analogy is ridiculous.
Harm reduction isn’t some slippery slope.
It’s how we’ve tackled drugs, alcohol, HIV, and smoking for decades by giving people safer options, not none.
8. The real agenda: a nicotine-free fantasy world
At the end they admit what this is really about:
They don’t just want smokefree they want nicotine-free.
That has nothing to do with saving lives, and everything to do with ideology. Meanwhile, Māori communities who suffer most from smoking stand to gain the most from safer alternatives.
Bottom line:
This article tries to paint nicotine pouches as some teenage apocalypse, but the real danger is sticking with cigarettes while blocking safer options.
New Zealand got smoking rates to historic lows by allowing harm-reduction tools like vapes and snus not by banning them. Copying Australia’s bans would mean copying Australia’s failures:
bigger black market
more smoking
worse health outcomes.
This article isn’t about protecting people it’s about letting ideology trump evidence.
Paul Blamire retweeted
Psst Hey Simon, welcome back to X
@SimonChapman6 @Mark_Butler_MP
Using seizure statistics as a success metric is like boasting that you’re winning the war on meth because you just had your biggest drug bust – while meth use and meth profits keep climbing. That’s where Australia now sits on tobacco.
•Legal sales are falling off a cliff.
•Illicit sales and seizures are at record highs.
•Illicit tobacco is costing billions and fuelling serious organised crime.
That’s not a “game changer”. It’s a textbook sign that policy has lost its grip on the market.
The ABS has also quietly admitted legal sales have crashed – a 29% drop in legal cigarette sales in the year to September 2025, driven by smokers fleeing to much cheaper black-market products.
So what are we actually doing?
•Driving more of the market from semi-visible shopfronts into harder-to-police channels (door-to-door, encrypted apps, “back rooms”).
•Pushing small retailers and landlords into a legal minefield while the upstream criminal wholesalers remain largely intact.
•Normalising yet another “emergency” power set that will be around long after this particular policy experiment is discredited.
It’s the exact same pattern we’ve seen with illicit drugs: high-profile busts, press conferences, then back to business as usual for the syndicates.
You can keep the current tax settings, or you can have a shrinking black market. Having both is the actual fantasy.
Simon & friends, is this success?
•Treasury is missing out on billions in excise while paying for the fallout of organised crime.
•Public health is watching firebombings, extortion of small retailers, and rising youth access to unregulated products.
•Legal retailers are being undercut – or literally attacked – by criminal competitors.
•Tobacco and vaping companies see their legal, regulated products losing share to tax-free, unregulated products.
Simon & friends, is this success?
Every stakeholder is now paying the price of a policy mix that tried to tax and ban its way to a smoke-free nirvana and instead created a parallel, untaxed, uncontrolled market.
What a rational, harm-reduction policy would look like
A serious alternative would start from two adult realities:
1.Nicotine isn’t going away. Millions of Australians still use it and many will continue to do so.
2.How they get it matters far more for health than whether they get it.
A coherent strategy would:
•Legalise and strictly regulate nicotine vaping for adults, with quality standards, age checks and controlled retail channels.
•Tax products by risk, not dogma: highest excise on combustible tobacco; far lower excise on vapes, pouches and other smoke-free alternatives.
•Shrink the illicit profit margin by avoiding absurd price gaps. You don’t have to eliminate tax; you just need to make it much harder for criminals to undercut the legal product while still making big money.
•Focus enforcement up the supply chain, on importers and major wholesalers, instead of constantly raiding the latest front store in a strip mall.
•Measure success by disease and death, not by how many cartons are seized or how many press releases can be churned out.
Yet Simon & friends will ignore because it’s not in their business plan!
Fk their business plan!
Australia deserves real health outcomes, NOT spin!