I’m always interested in trying to figure out how antismokers think. And today I came across a Canadian study of antismoking professionals, a number of whom had been interviewed, and their attitudes noted.
One passage describes the ideal “self-managing” individual:
Lupton (1995) argues that public health
discourses both constitute and regulate such phenomena as normality, risk and health. She then notes (in her collaboration with Peterson) that, as a political practice, neoliberalism emphasises approaches to health that are increasingly individualised and focused on ‘the self who is expected to live life in a prudent, calculating way and to be ever-vigilant of risks, self-regulating and productive’…. Lupton further emphasises how health promotion in neoliberal times operates as moral regulation, encouraging people to modify their bodily activities in the pursuit of good health. Of particular concern is how people are enjoined to identify and manage a host of risk factors as part of what Monica Greco (1993) has called the ‘duty to be well’. We orient to tobacco control as an expertise that promotes self-governing, ‘healthy’ subjects by exhorting them to conduct themselves in accordance with expert advice about the health risks of smoking.
For Tobacco Control, it seems that the ideal individual is one who lives life in a prudent, calculating way and is ever-vigilant of risks, self-regulating and productive – and in accordance with expert advice.
The “self-managing” or “self-governing” or “self-regulating” individual is one who exercises iron self-control. He resists the temptation to take up smoking. Or indeed anything else. He doesn’t take risks.
Smokers, by contrast, exhibit lack of self-control. They don’t regulate or govern or manage themselves properly. Worse still, their propensity to engage in risky behaviours like smoking extends elsewhere, as one of the health professionals explains:
“[I]t’s a higher risk population that takes the chance, yeah. I have this one sheet that
shows that smoking can be correlated to skipping, lateness, all kinds of high-risk
behaviours, a whole page of them, early sexual activity, so all of those factors,
although tobacco is also correlated to a lot of other things, like family issues.”
It seems that smokers may have a “biological propensity” for smoking that is linked to poverty:
While the so-called low-hanging fruit were responsive to tobacco control in a rational, self-regulatory and responsible fashion, low class youth, believed to have a biological propensity for smoking linked to poverty, are non-compliant and therefore require specific forms of pharmacological intervention to stop them from smoking.
I must say that, reading all this, Tobacco Control’s ideal “normal” individual, who conducts himself in a “rational, self-regulatory and responsible fashion”, struck me as dreadfully dull. Taking no risks, he wouldn’t smoke or drink, but he also probably wouldn’t gamble, ride motorbikes, surf waves, climb mountains, sky-dive, or do anything that had the slightest degree of risk attached to it. And if he ever was tempted to do so, his iron self-control would immediately cut in, and steer him away.
I also thought that most of the people that I’ve liked in my life have neither been completely averse to any risk, nor exercised iron self-control over themselves. They rode motorbikes, and smoked and drank, and gambled. And they were very often did things spontaneously, without careful planning in advance. And they laughed and smiled and joked in spontaneous ways.
Why should I wish to model myself on the kind of cold, calculating person that I’ve spent most of my life avoiding? Why are such people morally superior to the kind of people that I usually like to surround myself with?
And who really is “self-regulating”? For we have learned in reading this little treatise that the ideal “rational, self-regulatory and responsible” individual is someone who listens to “expert advice”. If he is doing this, then he is not actually regulating himself, but is being regulated by experts or authorities of one sort or other.
Seen this way, the real “self-regulating” individuals are those people who make their own choices for themselves, very often in the teeth of antismoking experts or other moral authorities.
After all, everybody engages in self-regulation of one kind or other. Nobody ever does exactly what they like the whole time.
The real crime of the self-regulating smoker is to disregard experts and other authorities, and be an autonomous individual. And once he has disregarded authority in respect of smoking, it’s quite likely he’ll disregard it in respect of pretty well everything else as well.
Tobacco Control’s ideal individual is one who believes what he’s told, and who does what he’s told, by authorities of one sort or other.
One might say that Tobacco Control is primarily about top-down moral regulation. This used once to be the concern of religions of one sort or other. But with the decline of religious observance, Tobacco Control (or Public Health) has stepped in to fill the moral vacuum. The virtues and vices of the old religions have been adopted wholesale, but renamed. The bishops and priests have been replaced by “experts” and “researchers”, and the old theology by “reason” and “science”. Good conduct has been replaced by “healthy living”, and failure to conduct one’s life in accordance with its tenets results in “premature death”. The “true believers” in this new pseudo-religion believe everything they’re told, and live in fear of a variety of new hobgoblins in the form of tobacco, alcohol, sugar, salt, fat, and carbon dioxide, which they live as much in fear of as the Devil himself. Much like with the religions that preceded them, it doesn’t really matter if none of these hobgoblins pose any real threat at all – all that matters is that people believe they do. And if the zealots advancing this new religion are filled with self-righteous fervour, it is because they regard themselves as new missionaries come to convert the heathens, and teach them the ways of healthiness.
The new churches of the religion of Public Health are the gyms. Attendance at these is not compulsory yet, but probably soon will be. And gym-goers will also be required to confess list any sins non-compliance (e.g. a bar of chocolate), and be awarded suitable penances penalties (e.g. 30 press-ups)….
But I’m not sure that this is the lesson that the authors of this treatise wanted me to draw. They instead were making the smaller point that “the tobacco control discourse on youth smoking in Canada appears to be producing and constituting socially marginalised smokers.”
But I already knew that.
Frank Davis 
Why should I wish to model myself on the kind of cold, calculating person that I’ve spent most of my life avoiding? It’s really that simple. A-1 posting, Frank!
Although he never seems to drop in here or even receive a mention, Longrider’s excellent blog is a daily read of mine. If I understand it correctly, he himself doesn’t smoke, nor has he ever so much as taken a solitary puff off a cigarette, a pipe, nor a cigar. Yet he defends us like a Kurdish fighter ridding Kobane of the ISIS pestilence.
His postings are short and to the point and he is unremittingly consistent.
Characteristically he just took apart yet another insipid attack on smokers and the never-ending fraudrot of passive smoking morbidity mindlessly regurgitated by the BBC.
The sixth comment out of six total by Monty is worthy of repeating.
“They said moving to smoke-free homes could have major health benefits for non-smokers.”
In other words, the assault on smokers now includes a campaign to break up their marriages and estrange them from their families. If that isn’t pure filth, I don’t know what is.
Amen Monty and amen to Longrider. Long may he run.
Oh, Do…
After that, I had to read more of this ‘study’. It is very interesting. The language and attitudes are astounding.
Firstly, when did ‘tobacco control’ start calling themselves by the name? I consider it a derogatory term. When did it get to the stage where their superiority permitted them to be unapologetically forthright? Was it after the compliant “low-hanging fruit” (barf) had been largely picked off with TC’s propaganda (incl. guilt trips)?
Not only is there a tobacco “epidemic”, but there has been a “war on smoking in Euro–American societies” and of course, the first casualty in war is truth. But it’s a war, so that’s OK and in an age of moral relativism, truth is whatever you want it to be.
We know that a lot of TC’s coercion revolves around thinking about the cheeeldren, yet, “The popularity of smoking among young people challenges the progress of cessation and prevention campaigns.”
They note that (like elsewhere), smoking is more prevalent among poor people. Of course it is. The punitive taxes will make you poor(er) than your non-smoking, non-risk taking, weigher-upping intelligent ones who listen to TC.
But I’m sure they mean people from lower-income families, meaning that their ‘war’ is against the financially worst-off in society. Part of that war is lobbying for increased taxes and ever more ingenious ways of dehumanising smokers. These are the people they are trying to “reach”. Then there’s all their preaching. Hardly surprising that,
In recent years it has become clear that Canadian tobacco control faces a particular challenge with regard to youth smoking, with the prevalence of smoking in Canada highest (21%) in people aged 20–24 (Health Canada 2010).
Talking of preaching, I agree that these modern crusades are a replacement for religion; their ‘studies’ and edicts are the new scriptures. Except that they don’t seem to do forgiveness and they definitely don’t do ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’, although they probably think that their constant propaganda and impoverishing and making life difficult in many other ways is a tough kind of love which has to be done to make those at TC feel ‘spiritually’ awake.
You can tell by their language how they see their role and they admit their use of mind control like the cultists they are, “Not only are there age differentials with regard to smoking prevalence but interventionists are becoming increasingly concerned with the imbalanced effect of their programming across socially differentiated youth.”
I had thought that propaganda was their forte, yet they invented this:
In Ontario, ‘Stupid.ca’ is a well-known provincial programme targeting youth smoking.
Calling your ‘target’ (harder to reach fruit: unreceptive to TC) ‘stupid’ sounds, er, stupid. Or are they referring to themselves?
Anyway, type in that and you go directly to the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care. The second tab in is “About the Ministry”. Just like you would find on a typical religious website!
Back to the ‘study’. TC have various projects going on to try to influence the youth, in this vein,
They suggest that with the right kind of knowledge, young people can be made responsible and thereby make the right choices: that is, with the help of these tools, self-controlled and smart youth will be able to stop smoking.
It’s the same tried and failed method of curbing drug-use and teenage pregnancy/STDs. The result is that it encourages experimentation and guess what, it produces more adults to keep the social engineers in business for evermore.
It’s something I have noticed recently that people’s number one priority with their job is their salary rather than their service. I have lately experienced it personally in several fields, particularly in the ‘caring’ professions. And yet, I have had far more support and consideration from the least likely of sources.
Your initial quote from the study about “‘the self who is expected to live life in a prudent, calculating way and to be ever-vigilant of risks, self-regulating and productive…” is a strange tactic to try to reach “the socially marginalised youth smoker”, who think they will live just about forever and are often prepared to take risks because that’s what young people do, whether knowingly or through ‘peer pressure’ or some other cue.
It doesn’t follow that they cannot also be “productive”.
It’s the constant nannying/bulling/restraints/legislation that seems to be causing people to be less productive. They just haven’t a clue. They think they’re clever talking about “Foucault’s biopolitics of population” but when it comes down to it, they don’t understand how to reach the youth who continue to smoke. Worse (from their point of view – or is it – as I’ve previously hinted at?), their ideas seem to be meaningless at best and probably counter-productive.
I found this interesting, Youth smokers are thus not only framed as smokers: smoking appears to engender other deviant social and behavioural tendencies. So, smoking is “deviant”. I suppose it would be, according to their religion.
Then there’s this cracker,
A number of interviewees made comparisons between tobacco and illicit drugs, particularly crack cocaine, expressing the view that in Vancouver tobacco use was seen to be on par with smoking crack.
Many years ago, in the UK, I noticed that tobacco and alcohol were being bundled in with illicit drugs. Again, weird propaganda which may have encouraged those normal smokers and drinkers to experiment with these ‘other drugs’?
So confused are they now in Vancouver that they don’t seem to know the difference between a cigarette and crack. Does this kind of weirdness go part and parcel with the dumbing down of ‘education’? Or just the constant bleating about cigarettes being a ‘drug’?
Don’t choke on your coffee at this next bit,
The one thing that we most desperately need in this province is funding for NRTs, nicotine replacement therapy or pharma, pharmacotherapy – [Zyban, Champex]…
You will choke on this. These are the thoughts of one practitioner:
I think that it is more the … not lobbying, I am using the wrong term, but this kind of demonisation that we have done of smokers that has made people stop smoking. The smoker is the ‘big bad guy’, after the paedophile comes the smoker practically, these days, in our society, the bad guys. You see a smoker outside smoking a cigarette, children, ‘Oh’ and they look at the smoker with big wide eyes as though he was going to kill a baby seal in Alaska. It’s the same thing for them, it is really the demon. They are really viewed, we marginalise, we really, really do marginalise smokers, the more we do, the less place smokers have.
They do acknowledge the “unintended consequence”, “that tobacco control discourse and
policy may even be creating a bond among those leftover people who smoke.”
The strange reasoning throughout seems to be that if you stopped the youth from smoking then all their other ‘risky’ behaviour would go away, that their ‘mental issues’ would be healed and that their ‘socio-economic’ status would be improved.
Maybe this shows, more than anything, that these social engineers live on a different planet?
They do indeed live on another planet, Stewart. I find the arrogance quite breathtaking – they really do believe that they are superior human beings whose duty is to force everyone to conform to their (superior) moral code.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C S Lewis
Except that they don’t seem to do forgiveness and they definitely don’t do ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’
Which is why I increasingly think that, if we must have a religion, I’d much prefer Christianity. Because it has a depth and breadth far greater than than this tin-pot new ‘religion’. And also it’s got Gregorian plain chant.
It seems in the newspapers the NHS is going to have an 8 billion pound shortfall of funds,how can this be with the benefits from stopping second hand smoking in the workplace and entertainment areas where has this money gone?
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I have just copied that whole essay of yours to have and to hold till ( premature, smoking- related) death do us part, but Christ, it’s so brilliant, so topical and newsworthy ( you’ve uncovered something the public at large should know about) that I need to urge you once again to submit it to a paper as op ed or a libertarian-style magazine. Hey, try some US ones, like Reason, Weekly Standard. I’ll wrack my brain for others if I thought you’d do it.
On the subject itself, glad you got to the point that hit me off the bat. That these paragons of health are not at all self- regulated, but fearful, Authority- worshipping robots brainwashed into living like cog- in- the- works ascetics. An ever-calculating, risk averse life would also prevent our healthy iconic ideal from falling in love, choosing an occupation in the fire department ( or the arts — let me tell you, a risky gamble) , eating sushi, starting a business, or sweating it out in a basement somewhere in Menlo Park, playing around with tungsten. These ice-assed Experts need to be exposed– which gets me back to point one: try to get this published; verbatim, as is.
How about Spiked?
It is good, as usual. That’s why I’ve written a post around it. Didn’t think he’d mentioned Christ though.
Well, I’m glad you liked it so much. I only gave myself 7/10. The antismoking mindset is so hard to fathom.
But why not just let it propagate across the internet as it may. That’s how the internet works, after all. If people like something, they’ll pick it up and repeat it. And in that manner it will spread outwards like a little ripple.
Walt is right that you deserve a wider audience. The problem with going mainstream (if you get the chance) is that they may make you water things down, because, as we know, they don’t like the barefaced truth.
BTW, you can take all but my middle pingback off. The first one appeared without the ‘friendly URL’ which it normally makes automatically, so I had to change it and the real street back-up was another attempt at bypassing Reddit’s censors.
They have admitted to blocking Real Street, but refuse to say why (it’s not politically correct) but I got around it by also posting on my own blog, adding “DUE TO MY PROPER BLOG STILL BEING CENSORED BY REDDIT, I HAVE ALSO HAD TO POST THIS HERE,” but the last post was the last they would allow. Someone left a comment which suggests that they reported me to Reddit. They’ve blocked my new back-up blog instantaneously, so I need a Plan C.
“sweating it out in a basement somewhere in Menlo Park, playing around with tungsten” – If you’re referring to Thomas Edison, he was a notorious anti-smoker. “In 1914 Edison wrote a widely publicized letter to Henry Ford alleging that unlike cigar smoke, the smoke from a paper-wrapped cigarette ‘has a violent action in the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite rapid among boys. Unlike most narcotics, this degeneration is permanent and uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes cigarettes.'”
It’s rather odd, don’t you think, that a simple pleasure like smoking cigarettes could provoke such extreme reactions in some people.
On my Twitter account I’ve just picked up a follower who goes by the name of @hatecigs. I initially thought it must be a parody account, like @TobaccoTacticss, but no! He (or she)’s the real deal; I read some of his / her tweets.. A genuine smoker hater. I will no doubt follow back, just to keep track of the vitriol. But the point I’m getting at is: what is it about cigarettes and smoking that so exercises some people? I know we all have our foibles, but the anti-smoker reaction really is quite exeptional.
Cigarette Smoking and death from Heart Attacks – not what you think
What we told is carefully controlled: we are not told things that somehow do not fit in with conventional wisdom, especially if something that is supposed to be very bad for us turns out not to be …
A publication in the renowned medical journal The Lancet in April 2014 compared the outcome from heart attacks (myocardial infarction, or MI) in Sweden and in the UK…
The time period of the study was between 2004 and 2010. The people studied came from national registers, 120 000 in Sweden and 390 000 in the UK. The average age in each country was about 70 years…
…Now we come to the interesting data. In both Sweden and the UK, the death rate following MI was higher in people who did not smoke! In Sweden the death rate was 4.4% in those who smoked and 7.2% in those who did not smoke. The corresponding numbers in the UK were 9.6% in those who smoked and 12.9% in non-smokers…
…The point is that things that do not fit in can either be investigated further or they can be suppressed, as is the case here. It shows the importance of reading carefully the methods and results sections of scientific papers, and not relying on conclusions, abstracts, and newspaper summaries.
Further interesting observations on cigarette smoking will follow shortly.
http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/
Frank, lovely rant, but it’s not just Tobacco Control, brought up with the Scientific Method, there’s a reason none of it makes any sense to us.
A long read and people would be forgiven for not getting to the end, but that is where the most interesting part lies.
Like Post Normal Science, this is a new concept of Public Health from 1974.
The Lalonde Report – 1974
A New Perspective On The Health Of Canadians
A working document
Marc Lalonde
Minister of National Health and Welfare
The Health Field Concept
“The ultimate philosophical issue raised by the Concept is whether, and to what extent, government can get into the business of modifying human behaviour, even if it does so to improve health. The marketing of social change is a new field which applies the marketing techniques of the business world to getting people to change their behaviour, i.e. eating habits, exercise habits, smoking habits, driving habits, etc.
It is argued by some that proficiency in social marketing would inevitably lead government into all kinds of undesirable thought control and propaganda.
The dangers of governmental proficiency in social marketing are recognized but so are the evident abuses resulting from all other kinds of marketing. If the siren song of coloured television, for example,is creating an indolent and passive use of leisure time, has the government not the duty to counteract its effects by marketing programs aimed at promoting physical recreation?”
Chapter 9. Science Versus Health Promotion
“The spirit of enquiry and skepticism, and particularly the Scientific Method,so essential to research, are, however, a problem in health promotion.
The reason for this is that science is full of “ifs”, “buts”, and “maybes” while messages designed to influence the public must be loud, clear and
unequivocal.
To quote I Corinthians, Chapter XIV, Verse 8:
“If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”
The scientific proof underlying cause-and-effect relationships between, on the one hand, environment and lifestyle and, on the other, sickness and death, is fraught with disagreement.
Without looking too hard we can find scientists on both sides of the following questions:
(a) does exercise lessen the likelihood, or abate the severity, of coronary artery disease?
(b) is obesity an important contributory factor to sickness and death?
(c) does marijuana have any serious long-term effects?
(d) does the ingestion of high levels of fatty foods and cholesterol increase the likelihood of coronary-artery disease?
(e) is frequent self-medication, particularly with over-the-counter drugs,bad?
Even such a simple question as whether one should severely limit his consumption of butter and eggs can be a subject of endless scientific debate.
Faced with conflicting scientific opinions of this kind, it would be easy for health educators and promoters to sit on their hands; it certainly makes it easy for those who abuse their health to find a ready “scientific” excuse.
But many of Canada’s health problems are sufficiently pressing that action has to be taken on them even if all the scientific evidence on them is not in.
” The scientific “yes, but” is essential to research but for modifying the behaviour of the population it sometimes produces the “uncertain sound” that is all the excuse needed by many to cultivate and tolerate an environment and lifestyle that is hazardous”
Click to access perspect-eng.pdf
So it doesn’t matter if the apparent science is speculative at best as long as it speaks constantly in a very loud voice.
Post-Normal Science
“The traditional distinction between ‘hard’, objective scientific facts and ‘soft’, subjective value-judgements is now inverted. All too often, we must make hard policy decisions where our only scientific inputs are irremediably soft.
The requirement for the “sound science” that is frequently invoked as necessary for rational policy decisions may affectively conceal value-loadings that determine research conclusions and policy recommendations.
In these new circumstances, invoking ‘truth’ as the goal of science is a distraction, or even a diversion from real tasks. A more relevant and robust guiding principle is quality, understood as a contextual property of scientific information”.
http: //www.eoearth.org/view/article/51cbeea77896bb431f699655/
Ecological Integrity – Post-Normal Science – “Ecological Footprint” – Ethics – The Precautionary Principle – 1997
Abstract
” Present laws and regulations even in democratic countries are not sufficient to prevent the grave environmental threats we face. Further, even environmental ethics, when they remain anthropocentric cannot propose a better approach.
I argue that, taking in considerations the precautionary principle, and adopting the perspective of post-normal science, the ethics of integrity suggest a better way to reduce ecological threats and promote the human good globally”
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely practiced by the States according to their capabilities.
Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific uncertainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental damage.
This principle clearly indicates that, because of the gravity and the urgency of the many environmental problems and crises that face us, it is sufficient to be aware of the threats, even before the scientific certainty might be available,to indicate priority action on the part of policymakers.
This principle is introduced as an agent of change in order to counter the arguments of those who would appeal to scientific uncertainty, or to disagreements among experts, as a delaying tactic and as a reason to postpone action.”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h2870733078384h2/
Perhaps the change from Scientific Method to Post Normal Science has not been pointed out to our politicians either.
Even such a simple question as whether one should severely limit his consumption of butter and eggs can be a subject of endless scientific debate.
Sort of sums the whole thing up. Except there’s nothing ‘scientific’ about it. How about…
Even such a simple question as whether one should severely limit his consumption of butter and eggs can be a subject of endless lunatic debate.
” The scientific “yes, but” is essential to research but for modifying the behaviour of the population it sometimes produces the “uncertain sound” that is all the excuse needed by many to cultivate and tolerate an environment and lifestyle that is hazardous”
They all seem so perfectly sure that they actually can “modify the behaviour of the population”, simply by bombarding people with messages couched in the language of absolute certainty, like the antismoking messages on every tobacco pack.
To me it all seems fatally simplistic, and bound to fail. Because people just switch off. They stop listening. And so the messages cease to get through.
They seem to have forgotten that individual people are not just passive receivers, like radio sets, but have their own thoughts and dreams and hopes and beliefs that are independent of the state broadcaster. And they also seem to have forgotten that these individual people can talk to each other, and very frequently do. And they also seem to have forgotten that a social culture is something that grows out of those thoughts and dreams and hopes and beliefs, and their intercommunication with each other.
In the end, it won’t matter whether their trumpet makes an “uncertain sound” or not, because nobody will be listening anyway. And quite possibly, nobody may be listening already.
The scientific method would have suited them very nicely if it had confirmed their beliefs.
It is only now that the public can go back through history and find what these beliefs were originally founded on.
I wouldn’t expect that the 1604 religious, pseudoscientific rantings of a King would stand up too well under laboratory conditions
“To me it all seems fatally simplistic, and bound to fail. Because people just switch off. They stop listening. And so the messages cease to get through.”
You mean, in the old timers. But the old timers are not the ones who matter! Don’t you realize that all they have to do is wait until the old timers die off? Just take a look sometime about how they’re gloating about declining rates of smoking in the young. That ought to destroy your comfortable dense of complacency.
Over here they keep trying to convince us that smoking rates amongst the young are going up.
Up to 600 children under 16 across the UK take up smoking every day, report warns
2013
“An estimated 463 start smoking every day in England, with 50 in Scotland, 30 in Wales and 19 in Northern Ireland.
Each day, 67 children, more than two classrooms full, start smoking in London, and of 74,000 young people under 16 in Birmingham, nine take up smoking every day.
Experts used survey data from more than 6,500 youngsters to estimate there were 207,000 new child smokers between 2010 and 2011.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2518520/600-children-smoking-day-UK-study-says.html
Note the word estimated.
Anyway it’s all about the latest demand for the misleadingly named plain packaging as they admit in the last sentence.
You can’t say that your measures are to protect children if you can’t produce some children to protect.
In the UK, at least, I read recently that lots of young people are taking up smoking.
And the Canadian study above bemoans the fact that they’re not getting to the youth.
And I think that it’s the response of more or less anyone to switch off listening to repetitive messages.
Seems to me the last time they had tobacco prohibition here in America the old timers did die off like Mark Twain and his kind who fought the Nazis back then tooth and nail……..
Yet the bans were repealed and smoking became the main part of most folks lives along with alcohol when that became attacked and outlawed. Still today alcohol is mostly an untouchable commodity for the Nazis……….
Yet even thru all that, smoking is still here and so are we. I see more and more young folks smoking today than I did 10 years ago and that’s down here on the TENN/KENTUCKY LINE!
The old guard prohibitionists died off too,yet they created universities and non-profits to fulfil their failed social changes…………..
We see their back and as always they will be and we the freedom loving masses will always be…………..hense history will always repeat again and again.
They will lose this time just like the last time……….History and human nature assure it.
So we fight back and we win. But mostly we win because in each of us is the basic nature to be free and choose our own destinies and deny those who would criminalize those choises.
All a load of tripe. Anybody who imagines that they’re guaranteed to win because of “history” or “human nature” or any other magical mystical hokum is just begging for reality to kick him in the butt. The statistics show what a rotten job of fighting the anti-smokers the smokers are doing, and it’s primarily due to the anti-smokers’ health lies, NOT “Big Pharma.”
http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substance-abuse/tobacco/trends.html
And anybody who endorses their scientific fraud of lifestyle questionnaire studies that ignore the role of infection is helping them get away with it.
1.
Frank, to echo other commenters, excellent job.
Permit me to toss in my few bobs worth.
Antismoking isn’t new. It has a long, sordid, at times very violent, 400+ year history. There were antismoking crusades long before the large tobacco companies came on the scene. There were antismoking crusades long before movies and mass media. There were antismoking crusades long before attempts, however bastardized, at scientific investigation of smoking. There were antismoking crusades long before “socialized medicine”. There were antismoking crusades long before the recent concoction of secondhand smoke “danger” [The term “passive smoking”, without basis, was coined during the Nazi era].
The common theme over those 400+ years is the extent to which rabid antismokers will lie to rationalize their hatred of smoke/smokers/smoking. There’s more than ample evidence over the last few centuries that the rabid antismoking mentality is a significant mental disorder. Yet here we are again.
The indoor smoking ban was introduced in England in 2007. There didn’t seem to be all that much debate involved. But it’s America that’s popularized antismoking – again. There was a quasi-debate back in the 1970/80s that most other countries missed out on.
Antismokers view smoking as a “deviant” behavior. Ergo, smokers are deviant. For example, see:
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Smoking As A Deviant Behavior (1978)
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/dvz35d00/pdf;jsessionid=7EA70BBD2A44234F27CDF45D28F0F4A1.tobacco03
2.
Then there’s this article attempting to distinguish nonsmokers and antismokers
The Distinction Between The Antismoking And Nonsmokers’ Rights Movements (1980)
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lqp46a99/pdf;jsessionid=5647F950375B5064AA449F152F20E8C9.tobacco03
This article is interesting because it’s written by nonsmokers’ rights activists. It was published a year before the first study on secondhand smoke “danger” and 12 years before the corrupt, agenda-driven EPA meta-analysis on SHS “danger”.
In this paper it is argued that it is important to extend the analysis by drawing a distinction between the general antismoking movement and the nonsmokers’ rights movement . It is shown that the nonsmokers’ rights movement in its pure form is devoted solely to the protection of the rights of nonsmokers and does not endorse, and may even oppose, other elements of the general antismoking movement . The essential motivation is not the denigration of smokers but rather is the refusal of nonsmokers to be victimized by the oppressive conditions of the social support system of smoking that gives smokers the implicit right to smoke in shared areas and puts bothered nonsmokers on the defensive.(p 129)
…The general antismoking movement may be defined as a variable combination and emphasis on the following four elements : (a) opposition to the behavior of smoking, (b) criticism of smokers for their smoking behavior, (c) opposition to the tobacco industry, and (d) protection of the rights of nonsmokers . The nonsmokers’ rights movement on the other hand in its pure form is devoted solely to the protection of the rights of nonsmokers and does not endorse and may even oppose other elements of the general antismoking movement. (p 131)
….Markle and Troyer correctly point out that one result of the smoking controversy has been attempts to stigmatize smokers as social deviants, to make them sit in segregated areas on airplanes and restaurants, and otherwise to lower their social status into second-class citizenship . What the authors do not describe is the other side of the coin . Wherever the social support system of smoking is dominant it is the bothered nonsmokers who are stigmatized as the social deviants, who are made to put up with aversive conditions in shared areas, and who otherwise have to accept a second-class social status . Within the context of the social support system of smoking it follows that smoking in shared areas is defined as normative, and therefore appropriate, whereas objecting is implicitly characterized as a norm violation. Questionnaire studies in our laboratory suggest that a large number of nonsmoking respondents feel caught in a conflict situation in which to object to another’s smoking is to risk the sanctions of a norm violation (such as ridicule, abuse, ostracism, and the labels of fanatic and social misfit), while to remain silent is to accept being harmed or discomforted. Nonsmokers feel that although they have the right to request that smokers stop smoking in shared areas, they typically feel very reluctant to make the request . This is because of the power of the norms that implicitly characterize them as social deviants if they do so. (p 140)
….On the contrary, the symbolic redefinition-and by that we mean in our terms the dismantling of the social support system of smoking-is merely a step along the path toward the real goal of creating a world in which nonsmokers are not forced to breathe tobacco polluted air .
We also argue that the essential purpose is not to denigrate smokers as social pariahs. Rather, it is to prevent nonsmokers from being themselves denigrated for objecting to smoking in shared areas . We argue that the underlying motivational impulse is not to take status away from smokers . Rather, it is to gain status for bothered nonsmokers against the oppressive conditions produced by the social support system of smoking . In that regard we argue that a more apt historic model than the American temperance movement for understanding the dynamics of the nonsmokers’ rights movement is the struggle of blacks for social equality against a pervasive system of social oppression . The blacks were certainly not satisfied with the mere symbolic victories of tokenism or of lofty legal pronouncements that were readily evaded and unenforced . The symbolic victories were useful beginning steps in the long struggle but not ends in themselves . In the blacks’ rights and nonsmokers’ rights movements we see the historic parallel of subordinated groups struggling for their rights against oppressive conditions-against the institutionalized system of racism in the case of the blacks and against the institutionalized social support system of smoking in the case of the nonsmokers . (p 141)
….The polite request may be a useful element in a broadly organized nonsmokers’ rights campaign involving many people and methods . However, used in isolation by one person it must be considered self-defeating by advocates of nonsmokers’ rights for three reasons . (a) The nonsmoker would be worn down by having to make endless individual polite requests and would soon risk earning the reputation of being a crank, joke, or busybody ; (b) Making a polite request places the decision to acquiesce or reject the request squarely in the hands of the smoker, which means that the smoker is thereby acknowledged to possess the fundamental right to smoke in shared areas . For his or her part the nonsmoker ends up only with the right to make a polite request ; (c) The very act of making a polite request puts the nonsmoker in the position of implicitly acknowledging that the right to smoke in shared areas is the fundamental and superordinate right, because, after all, all that is being asked for is a special and temporary exception to that right . The difficulty here is that even if the polite request is successful is getting the smoker to stop smoking on that one occasion it merely becomes the special and temporary exception that proves the rule-it is the Phyrric victory of winning a battle but only at the expense of helping the opposition win the war . (p 142)
3.
So, the nonsmokers’ rights movement wants smoking banned from all spaces with public access – indoors and out. These “bothered” nonsmokers are antismokers. They believe that their request to not have people smoke around them should always take precedence even under the force of law. The only difference between these antismokers and the antismokers they refer to in the article is the extent of militancy, aggressiveness, and coercion in achieving the antismoking goal. However much they attempt to distance themselves from the nastier elements of antismoking, it is only when this nastier element holds sway with the legislature that smoking bans are enacted en masse.
The foundational point of antismoking is that antismokers don’t like…. hate…. are “bothered” by tobacco smoke and shouldn’t have to put up with it – ever. Yet why should something be banned simply because a small group doesn’t like the smell? So the antismokers have concocted all sorts of “hazards” from exposure to tobacco smoke that goes back centuries. For example, from 1911:
The right of each person to breathe and enjoy fresh and pure air . . . uncontaminated by unhealthful or disagreeable odors and fumes . . . cannot be taken away by individuals pursuing their own thoughtless or selfish indulgence . In the matter of smoking, and carrying lighted tobacco in places where nonsmokers are present or entitled to be, or where the fumes or odor of tobacco can reach those who do not indulge in the habit-an extremely flagrant invasion of the rights of others-we have allowed custom to ride roughshod over us . .
The work of the league . . . is not reformatory, but protective, since it concerns the harm which the using of tobacco causes to those who do not use it, rather than to those who do
. . . The league does not seek to abridge the personal rights of any one, but it does seek to awaken the sense of fairness in those who use tobacco and to impress upon them the fact that they have not the right to inflict discomfort and harm upon others . (32, p . 10)
The letter also affirmed that many nonsmokers experienced aversive symptoms and injury from ambient tobacco smoke . That tobacco smoke and the odor of tobacco are irritating to normal, unpoisoned respiratory membranes is attested by the personal experience of thousands of persons who are daily, and in many cases hourly, forced to inhale them . They produce headache, dizziness, nausea and even fainting ; they injure the eyes and the lungs, the nervous and alimentary systems, and in other ways they cause harm, discomfort, and pain . (p 134)
Not understood a century ago by antismokers, and certainly not understood now, is that many of those symptoms are typical symptoms of an anxiety disorder (e.g., “contamination” phobias).
Since the contingencies of the social support system of smoking mean that bothered nonsmokers often will not speak up, smokers are apt to conclude that the issue is not serious or important, and that only a tiny and super-sensitive handful of nonsmokers are bothered . In other words, silence is frequently interpreted to be acquiescence . (p 143)
So the antismokers don’t like being labeled as “super-sensitive” or as neurotic or as bigoted. With the advantage of 35 years of hindsight, we’re in a position to evaluate the current antismoking crusade. Antismokers are neurotic. They hold fixed beliefs that have no rational basis. Most noteworthy are a) the myth of “clean air”, and b) the myth of “passive smoking”. To save reposting, see comments by JohnB here:
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/passive-vaping.html
These “bothered” nonsmokers are antismokers.
That’s what I immediately thought.
4.
And with the appeasement of antismoking and its militancy, coercion, and inflammatory propaganda, the situation has further deteriorated. Here’s an example of a “progressive” antismoker demanding a smoking ban on the main street of where he lives. In the comments section he expands on his motivation for demanding the ban. Apparently one night after walking down the main street, he returned home to feel a “tar goop” in his hair. He was convinced that it came from the tobacco smoke in the air on the main street. Fortunately, he was derided in the comments section for this deluded belief:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2014/jul/26/petition-calls-smoking-ban-massachusetts-street/?c=2429393
5.
Then we have another rabid antismoker declaring that being exposed to remnants of tobacco smoke is like being “raped”:
http://urbantimes.co/2014/02/lets-talk-about-rape-and-smoking/
And who can forget manufacturing some particulates from cigarette smoke as warranting a smoking ban on the entire [320+ mile] coastline of Oregon:
“Even though you’re outdoors — and it might be really windy — the particulates from secondhand smoke are still in the air and can still impact people around it and downwind,” Havel said.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/local/2014/09/04/public-comments-show-narrow-support-smoking-ban-coastal-beaches/15104635/
Antismokers have created an atmosphere for all sorts of deluded, toxic beliefs. Tobacco smoke has been manufactured into a “magic mist” that defies the laws of physics and chemistry and capable of producing all manner of “detrimental effects”, limited only by antismokers’ self-terrified, deranged imagination.
From the article cited above, we have antismokers trying to liken their neurotic, bigoted demands to the black rights movement. Then there’s the attempt to conjure “thirdhand smoke danger”.
Hindsight reveals that antismokers are neurotic. They are bigoted. They are “super-sensitive”. They are megalomaniacal. They are dictatorial. They are pathological liars. Antismoking is like a deranged cult whose primary, unquestioned belief is that they never be exposed to tobacco smoke. Not even a whiff, indoors or out. Only more deranged and dangerous is the “authority” (medical) that has enabled/empowered these miscreants.
Antismoking has a very sick, twisted history including torture and executions. If one has to pick the deviant – smokers or antismokers – antismokers win hands down; it’s a “no contest”.
The new churches of the religion of Public Health are the gyms.
Yep. And it’s symptomatic of out-of-control physicalism (cult of the body). If Narzi and his Public Health buddies have their way, even parks will be hijacked, transformed into “beacons of health”. Sitting, being worse than smoking, is not permitted at all – even on the grass. Out with the park benches. Standing is only permitted for 10 seconds at a time. Only “healthy” locomotion is acceptable. And don’t dismiss the possibility of having calisthenics sessions made mandatory. All people must be on the pavement at 12 noon for a half-hour of compulsory locomotion. Ah! It’s so “healthy”.
Back to antismoking. If it was only up to antismokers, they wouldn’t get too far. Antismoking has to be legitimized by a perceived “authority”. In the past it’s been abuse of monarchy (e.g., King James, King Murad), abuse of medical authority (eugenics), and abuse of religious authority (e.g. Temperance groups).
The current crusade was initiated by the medical establishment. Public Health is an ideo-political arm of the medical establishment. Public Health courses are taught under the auspices of medical faculties. We can see that medically-monopolized Public Health is after social-engineering the standard targets of the behavioral dimension of eugenics – anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol, diet, physical exercise.
The Master of Public Health must be one of the, if not the, most dangerous degrees created. MPH’s are administered under the auspices of medical faculties. Students come from a variety of backgrounds to study a medically monopolized course. Antismoking is an ideological given. Students are put through a crash course in “bio-statistics”. “Mass behavior modification” and “social marketing” (i.e., propaganda) and media profile are spoken of highly. Students are encouraged in the attitude of changing society, poking their noses in more and more of individuals’ lifestyles. They are taught that the only opponents of “health” measures are vested financial interests such as industry, e.g., tobacco industry. Since they are taught to think in population terms, the idea of individual autonomy, the cornerstone of relatively free societies, has no meaning. The critical dimensions of psychological and social health are never entertained. Students have no comprehension that propaganda is an assault on psychological health that then has consequences for social health. It’s also immoral. Students also have no grasp that their very thinking in population terms views citizens as the playthings of Public Health, turning citizens of relatively free nations into the property of Public Health. This is an assault on the ideo-politics of relatively free societies. The MPH is the attempt to give agenda-driven stupidity a veneer of “scholarship”.
So, graduates that understand little about anything that have been trained to pursue and parrot a medically-defined agenda and bastardized version of science (lifestyle epidemiology) are let loose on society. Having no coherent standard and rooted in physicalism, it attracts folk with all sorts of mental issues – the neurotic, the ego maniacal, the megalomaniacal, the bigoted, the dictatorial, and pathological liars. Worse still is that they have strong influence with the legislature, viewed as “health” experts.
The “health” in Public Health would better be understood as “control” – Public Control, and in the most negative sense of “control”.
Some background on Public Health:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health
From Siegel’s blog – the standard spiel for [physicalist, neo/crypto-eugenics] Public Health courses:
He teaches social and behavioral sciences, mass communication and public health, and public health advocacy in the Masters of Public Health program.
…‘duty to be well’….
That’s straight out of Nazi eugenics (Gesundheitspflicht), or eugenics generally, where the individual is viewed as property of the State…. a cog in the State machine.
From Stewart’s comment:
I think that it is more the … not lobbying, I am using the wrong term, but this kind of demonisation that we have done of smokers that has made people stop smoking. The smoker is the ‘big bad guy’, after the paedophile comes the smoker practically, these days, in our society, the bad guys. You see a smoker outside smoking a cigarette, children, ‘Oh’ and they look at the smoker with big wide eyes as though he was going to kill a baby seal in Alaska. It’s the same thing for them, it is really the demon. They are really viewed, we marginalise, we really, really do marginalise smokers, the more we do, the less place smokers have.
That’s utterly obscene. Again, these shallow fools who want to rule the world have no concept of psychological or social health. To intentionally set out do demonize and ostracize a group for questionable social engineering purposes? It’s typically done through fear and hate-mongering – inflammatory propaganda – which is a serious assault on mental health that then has detrimental social health consequences. It’s in violation of the WHO’s own definition of “health”. For anyone interested, see my comments here:
OT, some news on how next month’s Rochester and Strood by-election is shaping up.
I’m rather astonished at this. It looks like Britain is turning to UKIP in a very big way. I think that’s because UKIP is now the real conservative party, unlike David Cameron’s ‘progressive’ conservatives. Nigel Farage is identifiably a ‘common man’ in which many people can recognise themselves. If you’re sick of the EU, immigration, smoking bans, global warming, gay marriage, and all the other atrocities that we have been subjected to in recent years, UKIP is the only place to go.
The only question now is just how many seats they’re going to win in the General Election next year. It looks to me like it’ll be a bit more than 6.
WOW! I must admit, I am surprised!!! Pleasantly. UKIP is the only party that wants to treat people with the respect they deserve.
The Tories only protect the bankers; Labour wants to nanny the workers and the Lib Dems? well, they are only waffeling, blagging and ‘clanking’. (the latter is a scouse term for not having the faintest of ideas what the subject is to talk about, but talking is done, anyway).
The more seats for UKIP the better!
Agreed. Seems their claims are correct; they’re taking votes from all parties and in R & S it seems the Lib/Dems are getting whooped. They managed 16.3% at the General election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_and_Strood_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
So it seems sensible to take a look at the home base of Stephen Williams (he of hiding tobacco displays and pushing for plain packs). Bristol West.
The Lib/Dems won hands down with 48% of the votes in 2010.
I care not which party grabs it from the crusading wart, but it would make my day if it’s UKIP. They managed 1.2%!
On reflection, I’m actually not that surprised that UKIP are doing so well in the Rochester polls – indeed, I’m slightly surprised that they aren’t doing a bit better. Why? Well, when you tot up the number of “groups” whose only viable option has to be UKIP it comes to quite a sizeable number (even taking into account that some voters will span more than one category).
You have smokers for one, who have been marginalised, persecuted, discriminated against and treated with utter disdain by each and every one of the three major parties whilst those who support and actively promote that marginalisation, persecution etc have been enthusiastically support – and none of those parties have made even the slightest indication that they intend to redress the balance. Not even to stem the flow of bullying and harassment and make the hatred-filled anti-smokers pull their horns in a bit.
Then there are those who want us out of the EU, all of whom have been either completely ignored, or else promised “jam (in the form of an in/out referendum) tomorrow” so often now that, to be perfectly honest, they’ve rumbled the fact that “the referendum” will only ever be “tomorrow.” And in the time they’ve been waiting the whole EU situation – the decimation of our own (and other countries’) economies, the mass influx of countless EU migrants who, deprived of jobs in their own EU-wrecked countries, are now flooding into the wealthier nations in search of either work or of a more generous benefits system than their own countries provide; all of this whilst our own wealth-making businesses have been systematically tied up with so many rules, regulations and red tape emanating from the EU that all but the very largest are now almost incapable of providing the jobs and/or the tax-for-welfare money that EU migrants are coming over here to seek!
And there’s the very, very big group of previously loyal Tory/Labour voters who have seen successive Governments of “their” chosen colour moving steadily away from their traditional values and aspirations and thus further away from those who have always supported them. The sense of betrayal amongst these erstwhile dyed-in-the-wool types is almost palpable. So no wonder they now want to get their own back in the most painful way that they can against those who have treated them so shabbily after years – sometimes generations – of loyal voting.
And, of course, there are the floating voters – the group who ultimately decide who the next Government will be. Floating voters have always decided which way to vote on the basis of what they feel is best for them and also what they feel is best for the country. Their choice has always been between keeping things as they are, or changing them. It’s as simple as that. But in recent years, floating voters have been denied the opportunity to make this decision, because all of the Big Three parties, as mouthpieces of the EU, all espouse pretty much identical approaches to virtually everything from smoking to climate change to taxation to childcare, so that option 2 has been off the table for many years. And I think that floating voters have found this immensely frustrating – in fact I think it’s this lack of choice which has resulted in declining numbers of people voting; it’s a sign that people do want change but to date they just haven’t had a party to vote for who could offer it. What’s the point in voting when one of your choices has been removed? With UKIP, that option is back on the table, and floating voters are grasping it with both hands, because it’s the only party not offering more of the same-old-same-old, just with a different colour tie.
So, given all of that, I’m actually surprised that just under 60% of the population are still, robot-like, intending to trip along to the polling station and put their cross in the same old boxes!
I’m actually surprised that just under 60% of the population are still, robot-like, intending to trip along to the polling station and put their cross in the same old boxes!
I’m not surprised. After all, I used to trip along to the polling station and put my cross in the same old box for about 25 years. I only stopped around 1 July 2007, when I realised that the Lib Dems I’d been voting for were neither liberal nor democratic.
I think people have to be shaken up quite a lot before they change the habits of a lifetime.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/23/camel-maker-reynolds-snuffs-out-workplace-smoking
For years, I’ve been telling everyone that the tobacco companies are really controlled by the anti-smokers. It is flagrantly obvious, because they refuse to attack the anti-smokers’ scientific fraud. And by the way, British American Tobacco holds 42% of Reynolds American’s stock.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1275283/000119312514109692/d672509ddef14a.htm#toc672509_65
Look at BAT’s home page and puke. “Reducing harm through innovation. It’s simple – we want to reduce the public health impact of our products.”
http://www.bat.com/
What is harm reduction?
In the world of public health, harm reduction is about developing policies to try and minimise the negative health impact of a risky activity without stopping it entirely.
For example, advocating the use of condoms reduces the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. For tobacco, this means offering less risky alternatives to regular cigarettes for those smokers who cannot, or choose not to, give up.
BAT has bought into another market: the e-cigarette.
Transparency and world-class science
We are committed to exemplary corporate conduct and transparency across the whole business – this includes our research and development.
Being transparent about our science is central to our approach. We publish details of our scientific research programmes on our dedicated website, http://www.bat-science.com Opens in new window, submit the results of studies to peer-reviewed journals, and present widely at leading international conferences and events.
We understand that some people are sceptical about research conducted and funded by the tobacco industry, but we know it’s our responsibility to contribute to the science of tobacco harm reduction.
We have state-of-the-art R&D facilities and hundreds of scientists covering many different disciplines, and we work in collaboration with external researchers around the world, such as in the USA, Canada, Spain, Germany, China and Russia.
Indeed, they probably have the BEST state-of-the-art R&D facilities – Politics now enter the scene……
The tobacco industry once was found amongst the top spenders for research – they have been culled and to make up for the lack of money, university students find themselves in great debts on completion of their course. Recently a company (?Apple) decided to offer female workers to have their eggs frozen – maternity leave takes it’s toll….
When the tobacco industry funded education there was no such problem.
What “harm reduction” REALLY means is first of all buying into all the big lies about the supposed harms. Instead of opposing the scientific fraud, they PANDER to it, and make it their religious faith. It means churning out reams of propaganda about chemicals to frighten people away from smoking. And in the future, it will mean forcing smokers to use e-cigs instead of smoking real cigarettes. The bottom line is that the first step of harm reduction should be to expose the fraudulent “harms.”
What “harm reduction” REALLY means is first of all buying into all the big lies about the supposed harms.
Or it means simply ‘taking the piss’.
With respect to the e-cigarette……
And look at this putrid piece of excrement who’s a director of BAT, Brigadier General (retired) Dr Richard Tubb: ” Prior to joining British American Tobacco, Dr Tubb, who grew up on a tobacco farm in south west Wisconsin, was one of the longest serving White House physicians. For over 14 years, he was director of the White House Medical Unit and served under the presidencies of Clinton, Bush and Obama.
Dr Tubb is a leading public health figure actively involved in the science and policy development of tobacco harm reduction and alternative nicotine products.”
There should be a special place in hell for him!
“Dr Tubb is a leading public health figure actively involved in the science and policy development of tobacco harm reduction and alternative nicotine products.”
??? The last time he was in the news was in 2002 after Bush’s pretzel attack. “He fainted due to a temporary decrease in heart rate brought on by swallowing a pretzel,” Tubb said. “I do not find any reason that this would happen again.” [SIC]. His only publication is “Travel medicine for the President at the White House, aboard Air Force One, and around the world.” (Travel Med Infect Dis 2014 Jul-Aug;12(4):300-302.) Probably the best way to characterize him is as a crony/henchman of former President George W. Bush.
Actually, what amazes me is the short sightedness of the antismokers posting comments. They just don’t get it. They are just too selfabsorbed to get it.
The no-smoking policy will go into effect once Reynolds builds indoor smoking areas for those still wanting to light up indoors, spokesman David Howard said.
“We believe it’s the right thing to do and the right time to do it because updating our tobacco use policies will better accommodate both non-smokers and smokers who work in and visit our facilities,” Howard said. “We’re just better aligning our tobacco use policies with the realities of what you’re seeing in society today.”
While Reynolds will no longer allow smoking, it will allow the use of smokeless tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, moist snuff and pouches of finely milled tobacco called snus (pronounced “snoose”).
In effect, there is no smoking ban; there is what we all want: SMOKING ROOMS INSIDE buildings.
Reynolds is actually a winner!!!
I didn’t close the brackets again…..
And, e-cigs and snus are allowed in the offices….
“non-compliant and therefore require specific forms of pharmacological intervention to stop them”
I would translate that into German but I’m scared.
It’s scary enough in english….
Why Smoking Bans Are More Dangerous Than Smoking
When ordinary citizens are the criminals.
One lamentable feature of the contemporary West is the ruthless efficiency of the nanny state. It works overnight. You wake up, slouch over your coffee and corn flakes, and read of the new Bad Thing that must be stopped Right Now. In Britain, the latest activity slated for oblivion is smoking in public parks. Readers, I’m sure, do not need to be reminded that parks are outdoor places; the traditional excuse of “secondhand smoke” does not appear to apply (although it is possible to find “studies” on the dangers of “thirdhand smoke”).
Nevertheless, British officials moved quickly. In September 2013, the mayor of London, alleged conservative Boris Johnson, ordered a “major review of health in the capital,” according to The Independent. The results are already in: Lord Darzi, Britain’s former health minister and the appointed chair of Johnson’s special commission, has said smoking needs to be banned in London’s parks and public squares. There is news that ”councils throughout England are also understood to be analysing how the proposals could be applied locally, paving the way for potentially the biggest crackdown on smoking since the Smoke Free legislation of 2007.”
Compare this swiftness of action where personal freedom is concerned with the sclerosis of “public service” in general. For Americans, the classic example of bureaucratic torture is the Department of Motor Vehicles, the initialism “DMV” being an instant punchline to anyone over school age. Other government bodies—the Post Office, the TSA—elicit our chuckles and grumbles as well. It is no different for our friends across the Atlantic. I don’t know whether “NHS” produces the same degree of cynical amusement as “DMV,” but the reasons for any displeasure are the same.
Ordinary Britons know in their viscera that despite the official pretense of a “debate” over the latest smoking ban—”studies” and “reviews” and such—the outcome is preordained. There’s nothing about U.K. politics that would suggest any serious concern with preserving their liberty. Within the past year the British people have seen domestic terrorists behead a soldier, drummer Lee Rigby, in the broadest of London daylight. They’ve seen foreign terrorists—actually, domestic terrorists on holiday abroad—make snuff films of themselves beheading journalists and aid workers in the sands of Mesopotamia. They’ve discovered that police in Rotherham, a town in northern England, sat by for years while a child sex abuse ring ran efficiently under their noses. (It was the fear of being labeled “racist” that created their reluctance, the perpetrators being men of Pakistani heritage.) And yet the official reactions to these wicked events were nothing like as swift or absolute or moralistic as when tobacco enters the discussion.
It is now a given in Western civilization that “law” refers to restrictions against those least in need of them. It is not criminals but users of incandescent light bulbs who must contend with the power of the state. As I said, it all happens very quickly. Smoking has acquired a taboo that was inconceivable even a decade ago. That cigarettes are obviously unhealthy for you has only made this taboo easier to impose. But there’s a ratchet effect at work here: with each restriction against the clearly unhealthy comes a restriction, not long after, against the less clearly unhealthy.
Consider the steady campaign against electronic cigarettes. Nearly every day another city or county or school district or business has banned or restricted these devices. Type “e-cigarettes” into a search engine and you will see the paternalists at work all over the world.
Electronic cigarettes are odd targets for extinction. They emit no actual smoke; the “smoker” is inhaling and exhaling a flavored water vapor that contains a bit of nicotine—or none at all, depending on the brand. This is “smoking” only in a simulated, metaphorical sense. There is no tobacco and thus no odor, no tar, and no carbon monoxide. Even if they are not completely safe—what is?—what marginal health benefit could we possibly enjoy by stamping them out?
MUCH MORE HERE
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/10/23/why-smoking-bans-are-more-dangerous-than-smoking/?singlepage=true
Whoop-de-doo – another fake friend who calls criminals “nannies.” The whole reason the anti-smokers have gotten away with it for so long is because pablum like this has been pawned off as opposition. This is mere feely-talk, and it’s for stupid people.
Id call todays Nazis movement MORAL INSANITY…………
Mel B denies being booted out of MOBO Awards after ‘ignoring smoking ban and lighting cigarette’
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/mel-b-denies-being-booted-4489849
I must say that, reading all this, Tobacco Control’s ideal “normal” individual, who conducts himself in a “rational, self-regulatory and responsible fashion”, struck me as dreadfully dull. Taking no risks, he wouldn’t smoke or drink, but he also probably wouldn’t gamble, ride motorbikes, surf waves, climb mountains, sky-dive, or do anything that had the slightest degree of risk attached to it. And if he ever was tempted to do so, his iron self-control would immediately cut in, and steer him away.
Dreadfully dull indeed. No wonder the anti-smokers think that they live longer. (It’s not the case but to them it seems so).
What goes on the typical anti-smoker’s head? God only knows! They give the impression of having one focus in their lives: to destroy tobacco and smokers. Nothing else counts!
And they have cheated their way into places very few people have managed to cheat themselves into.
Last night I ended up watching this documentary about Lance Armstrong; I wasn’t going to as peddling a bike is not one of my hobbies and therefore I only remembered bits of him making his way rather rapidly from the world’s darling to the disgrace he actually was. It is not that the anti-smokers are the world’s darlings but they sure behave the same way as Lance Armstrong did: RUTHLESSLY pursuing their course of action, attacking and destroying the lives of those who stand up for the truth to be told. And, like Lance Armstrong, they are getting carried away with themselves, believing they cannot be touched; therefore arrogantly pushing for more.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/lancearmstrong/11044592/Lance-Armstrong-admits-he-would-still-be-lying-about-doping-if-he-had-not-been-found-out.html
Armstrong, serving a life ban from sport, said that he would not have confessed even for the sake of his five children. “Well, that’s a conversation for my kids. But there was a lot of stuff in that lie, not simply me saying, ‘no’. I couldn’t change the story.”
The relentless ferocity of Armstrong’s denials has been re-examined in the wake of his admission, his behaviour cited as showing the signs of narcissistic personality disorder.
It took that little step too far to bring him down. And, like Armstrong, tobacco control is heading that way, too. The little step too far.
I also thought that most of the people that I’ve liked in my life have neither been completely averse to any risk, nor exercised iron self-control over themselves. They rode motorbikes, and smoked and drank, and gambled. And they were very often did things spontaneously, without careful planning in advance. And they laughed and smiled and joked in spontaneous ways.
Ah, wonderful memories of my youth, too! (Actually, not only my youth, given the chance I’ll still do silly things today! Growing old disgracefully is fun. Fun is good! No stress, just laughter…). These things become priceless memories of having really LIVED!!! I vivdly remember that the owner of the huge, heavy “Honda” let me ride it only once (with him at the back) – at the age of 16 (illegally riding this bike but that’s not important right now) I quickly figured out that I was able to get “air” when speeding over “lumps” on the path. Girls just want to have fun….
There was no space for worry in our heads; we all did a job at the time we hated but we needed the money, so we did it, free time with friends for LIVING was PRICELESS!!! WHO worries about health when you have so little time to have fun?
The new churches of the religion of Public Health are the gyms. Attendance at these is not compulsory yet, but probably soon will be. And gym-goers will also be required to confess list any sins non-compliance (e.g. a bar of chocolate), and be awarded suitable penances penalties (e.g. 30 press-ups)….
Actually, gyms…. I have been thinking for a while to attend one just to see if I can freely pick the gadget I choose to use or if I am directed to a heavy rubber ball to pad onto the floor like to “old” people do. They could not have seen me coming but they will know I was there by the time I have finished with them!
The churches of the religion of Public Health will excommunicate me. I do hope that they will provide a SMOKING ROOM for me!!! (Ideally with a bar inside, as well…..)
Harvard hand-picks the next elite to rule Africa. By picking and choosing from the cream of the crop and applying indoctrination to them, they deprive the masses of leadership to oppose them, and create a permanent self-perpetuating ruling elite class.
Carol–\
earlier, were you suggesting we boycott the incandescent bulb?
Nisakiman–
I think the new categorical hatred against smokers is entirely at the feet of the state-sponsored, pol promoted propaganda that gives Permission to Hate. And once permission is granted, all the people without insight but with subconscious rage and unidentified flying grudges learn where to ) funnel their angst. In a socially-hip way.. Basically, it’s nothing at all to do with smoke or even smokers per se. We’re just an acceptable outlet for inchoate anger and feelings of victimization.
Huh? I thought we were being forced to anyhow.
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having grown up with two parents who smoked in hermetically sealed automobiles whilst i gagged in the back seat, i cannot admit to being a fan of cigarettes. it is refreshing to breathe air that does not abrade ones throat, though it has been achieved at the social cost of demonisation of a group of people who engage in an entirely lawful habit.
now and then i espy a smoker puffing away outside an establishment, furtively eyeing those who approach, in the manner of a mouse about to be eaten by a snake. as i pass through the cloud of smoke, i breathe deeply because it reminds me of my parents, both now deceased— neither, however, from lung cancer.
a few breaths a year of allegedly toxic second hand smoke is not going to shorten my life measurably. it is a small price to pay for a momentary trip into a time when one was free from constant hectoring by miserable scolds who perceive themselves as arbiters of our best interests.