It is often said that nicotine addiction remains one of the strongest dependencies. It increases the processing speed between the brain and the body, creating pleasant feelings including relaxation and happiness, which urges you to reach for another tobacco product to maintain the high.
Of the $80.3 billion dollars, "Tobacco related harm was the largest contributor to costs ($35.8 billion, 45%)".
Read MoreThe revelation was twenty-years in the making following the resurrection of a friendship.
The accusation of an overly-ambitious nature troubled me and forced ongoing consideration of alleged behaviour.
The trouble manifested in different ways: fidgeting, pensive, distracted, and procrastinating to a stop.
Read MoreWomen and girls - unashamedly, yes - as a collective - assertive, empowered, and most telling of all, safe.
Safe to walk to the MCG, safe to line-up, safe to engage with fellow fans who they may not have known, and safe to be overcome with emotion. They were free to express themselves; free of judgement, free of society's expectation to conform, and free to move and sing and jump and hug and cry and experience a state of utter happiness for three-and-a-half hours.
Read MoreThere were vapers in the mosh (jampacked dancing area in front of the stage), vapers on vapers as revellers boosted mates on shoulders, vapers in camping areas, vapers in the toilets, vapers at the food and coffee vans - it was a chemically induced cloud of vapes, vaping, and vapers.
Read MoreLast Friday proved a hot Tasmanian summer's day - 29 degrees at its peak.
It was the type of day that is unexpected by mainlanders, particularly those taking the stage, who were quick to point out that they didn't realise Tasmania could get so hot.
The words they used were choice but the description apt as the strength of the sun with very low humidity baked all and sundry.
Read MoreThere is now an argument to be made, backed by the likes of constitutional law expert Scientia Professor George Williams, that with only eight referendums for constitutional change passing in the affirmative, it's as Menzies offered more than 70 years ago - far too difficult to make change.
After all, Hercules was the Greek god of strength and heroes, not the Australian god of constitutional reform.
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