When
a social group of a country is unfairly discriminated against and nothing is
done about it, it points to a problem with the nation’s democracy. If such discrimination
is enacted under the veil of a bureaucratic mechanism sanctioned by the law, it
is more perfidious. When the oppression is hypocritically presented as an act that
is beneficial to society, it becomes repugnant.
Picture this scene. A cat is chased by a
group of young boys during a school break. The poor creature runs as fast as it
can into the nearby park, where the rowdy group pursues it. The cat has a sensible
and yet misguided idea of claiming up a toll tree. Two gang leaders follow it
there with sticks and taunt him. The panic-stricken cat, having reached the
highest branch, can do nothing but accept the goading and blows or fall. The
other pursuers down below either cheer on those up the tree or take it as a
form or entertainment. It is fun at the cost of the defenceless animal. Nobody
cares about if except a little girl observing this from a distance. Distressed
and in tears she runs for the teachers’ room.
Consider other images. A worker in an
office treats another worker with contempt, expressed by body language, way of
speaking or by not talking at all to make the victim feel intimidated and
alienated. A manager is particularly demanding with respect to a worker,
setting up unrealistic demands and deadlines. A different manager does not give
a worker anything to do, explaining that it would take that person
comparatively too long to deliver. Co-workers watch all this and do nothing, because
nobody wants aggravation. It would rock the boat too much for comfort. Besides,
they feel better about themselves by comparison. These and other forms of
bullying go on in offices because the victims, without having done anything
wrong, happen to be the weak elements of the group and it is easy to pick on them.
Bullying is one of the things that are
naturally abhorred by people sensitive about social justice. Whether mistreatment
is overt, by kids towards weaker peers or helpless animals, or covert at the workplace,
it is still harassment. It is easier to recognise it and do something about it
with respect to children under our care, but it is more difficult to address it
in the case of adults. It is harder, because the instinct of self-preservation,
which is a mechanism of natural selection as the main drive of Darwin’s
evolution, makes others feel stronger, as there is somebody else who is the
last. A team accepting bullying is nothing more than a group of people being
chased by a bear or a lion. It makes sense to let the weakest member fall behind,
so the rest can escape to safety. This is not necessarily driven by ill feelings for the person, and does not require any special traits other than the ability to run faster than the last. On the surface, it appears excusable, and yet more is expected from a civilised society in terms of its guiding principles.
Unlike the United States’ constitution,
which prohibits laws that would reduce rights and freedoms of the United
States’ citizens, the Australian constitution is ambiguous about discrimination.
As a result, the question whether the highest law in the land has the
overruling power with respect to discriminatory laws is yet to be tested by the
High Court. This means that oppression of a group of people in this country can
go on until successfully challenged. Despite the lack of clarity, there is
little doubt that overt unfair discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, skin
colour, religion or sexual persuasion would be spotted and adequately dealt
with. However, this legal ambiguity can be taken advantage of to engage in covert
persecution. Those subjected to it may be too week, dispersed or burdened with an
imposed or imagined sense of guilt to speak up, so the oppressors, through
twisted reasoning and hypocrisy, can get away with their persecution. Among the
groups victimized in this manner in the Australian society are smokers.
On 1 August 2013, the Australian government
introduced an annual increase of tobacco excise over four years till 2016 by
12.5 per cent each year, with the first increase implemented on 1 December
2013. The September 2016 rise has increased the excise on a cigarette to around
69 per cent of the price of a cigarette. The current government has decided to
continue this annual increase till 2020 in order to battle smoking-related
cancer and help to address the budget deficit. While the government boasts
about the prospect of reducing its budget deficit by $4.7 billion between 2017
and 2020, it appears short on health benefit statistics. Although declining
trends in smoking are acknowledged, it is still unknown how much smoking-related
cancers have declined in the last four years or how many may be reduced in the
next four years. Neither does government elaborate on health and social problems
– depression, alcoholism, obesity, suicides and crime – that have been and will
continue to be side-effects of the price increases on tobacco products.
On the face of the matter, smoking does not
appear conducive to good health. The cigarette smoke, with its toxic
ingredients, inhaled voluntarily on a regular basis, gets into the lungs from
where it detrimentally affects the rest of the body. One would think that there
is nothing in it that could be good to the smoker. But that would be shallow
and essentially wrong thinking. While smoking is harmful on purely physiological
level, the harm could be more than balanced when the psychological aspect of a
person’s wellbeing is considered. The little oasis of comfort and pleasure in
the otherwise stressful and unhappy existence could potentially counterbalance
the negative effect of smoking. It does not required stretching imagination
beyond normal limits to picture a person, who, with this sanctuary of relaxation
no longer within reach, would fall victim to health problems related to stress
and depression. Rather than living supposedly healthier and longer life free of
cigarettes, such a person could potentially be exposed to prolonged misery,
inviting diseases from depression to cancer and departing this world earlier
than it could have happened otherwise.
Many smokers are recruited from
low socioeconomic strata of society. The prospect of having a cigarette from
time to time is an important support in their otherwise not-so-happy existence,
and nobody can easily improve their lot in life. Additional pressures, due to
drastic price increases through rising tobacco excise, make those people even
more stressed and unhappy and create tensions in their families. Quitting due
to health concerns or other reasons related to voluntary self-improvement would
at least make the smoker more at peace with the rest of the world. Having a regime
imposing additional misery on him or her may produce the opposite effect.
Economic stagnation, with resulting declining wages and unemployment, has
already hard pressed these people. Cigarettes, as bad as they are to their bodies,
might be one of the bright spots of the otherwise cheerless life. The little spark
of contentment could produce hope that may help the mind to find a way to a
better future.
These people do not organize themselves to come
out on the street in protest. In the current ideological climate it would be dangerous
for a politician to stand up for them, and they have been shamed too much to
vocally defend their rights as a group. Instead, driven by frustration and
anger, they are more likely to engage in individual, seemingly unrelated,
random protests. Incidents involving aggrieved, bitter people taking a swipe at
strangers who have done nothing wrong to them are likely to increase. However,
more common and harmful to the social fabric are avenues of venting anger
through picking up quarrels with relatives, friends and neighbours. As a
result, relationships, not necessarily only in low socioeconomic spheres, may
be pushed to the limits, leaving a trail of social and related health problems.
Rising cost of tobacco products also makes smokers use the cheapest and poorest
quality cigarettes possible, which further exacerbates the situation.
Better results in getting rid of smoking could
be achieved by increasing educational campaigns, including through the mass
media. But that would cost money and would not help to fix the government
budget. Raising tobacco exercise, on the other hand, has the advantage of making
rather than spending money, and this method of fighting smoking is hard to
resist. It is also easy, as it involves targeting a defenceless group of
society. Industry and consumer lobby groups that are ready to fight similar
government actions with respect to alcohol and fuel are much stronger. This is
why excise rates for these products, which are acknowledged as responsible for social
and environmental problems, are only increasing in line with inflation, which between
2013 and 2016 declined from 3.0 per cent and 1.0 per cent. As for tobacco, the
12.5 per cent annual increases since 2013 have been in addition to these
inflationary adjustments.
When a small minority group was bullied in
the Roman Empire, Romans had few reasons to find a problem with it, as the system
took care to present the early Christians in a negative light. A similar plight
was shared by the Jews in Germany in 1930s. Some Germans must have been
convinced by the propaganda that Jews were bad apples, so mistreating them, depriving
them of their properties and sending to concentration camps was accepted and
indeed was as a sign of patriotism. Smokers in Australia are discriminated
against through callous increases of tax on a legal product that some people
chose to enjoy. They are not breaking the law and have a right to their
life-style choice like any other person in a free, democratic country. They are
being bullied in a hidden, hypocritical manner that should be unacceptable to
any person with moderately developed sense of justice.
If we accept smokers as victims today, then
tomorrow, as poor economic times continue, it will be easier to accept it with
respect to others – the Muslims, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans,
the coal sympathizers and the unpatriotic individuals who, rather than
conforming to injustice and hypocrisy, continue to disagree with them. Democratic
avenues are available to defend ourselves and others from oppression by legal
means, including through political parties, such as the Australian Smokers’
Rights Party, and representative proceedings (elsewhere known as class actions).
Using these and other avenues may assist in determining where exactly our law
stands on discrimination. Keeping records of the rising costs of smoking by
individual users of tobacco products may prove wise when the tobacco excise
increases since 2013 are found unconstitutional.
© Robert Panasiewicz, 2016
Reference note: This article is supported by publicly available data of the
Australian Government and its agencies such as the Australian Taxation Office
and the Bureau of Statistics, as well as by other information obtained from
sources in the public domain.