I’d like to continue where I left off last night, thinking about an antismoking blog post about “Why campaigns that stigmatize smokers can make them want to quit even less”.
One of the other things I noticed about this article was a reference to the “self-induced social isolation” of smokers, and also to “smoking self-stigma”, as if smokers were isolating and stigmatising themselves, and had only themselves to blame for their isolation and stigmatisation.
In reality, as I was explaining yesterday, Tobacco Control is doing all the stigmatisation of smokers. And it’s also the principal driver acting to isolate smokers. But if they can blame isolation and stigma on smokers, they relieve themselves of all blame.
And the way that isolation works is quite simple. Smoking bans in pubs and cafes make those formerly-welcoming places into unwelcoming ones. Smokers no longer feel welcome inside them. So they stop going. There’s nothing “self-induced” about it at all. Nor has it anything to do with stigmatisation. Smokers have been “exiled to the outdoors”, and that’s where their isolation begins.
The same happens if they have antismoking friends who also make them stand outside their homes if they want to smoke. That kills friendships just as much as state-legislated smoking bans. If you don’t like visiting your newly-unwelcoming local pub, you won’t want to visit your newly-unwelcoming antismoking friends either.
But it’s not just the smokers who become isolated. There are always two parties to any friendship. For every friendship or acquaintanceship that disintegrates under the impact of voluntary or involuntary smoking bans, one party will likely be a smoker, and the other party will be an antismoker. Smokers become isolated from antismokers, but not from each other. If antismokers shun smokers, then smokers will equally shun antismokers.
And in many cases, it may well be the formerly-accepted but now shunned antismokers who end up the most isolated. Perhaps this might be another example of “self-induced isolation”.
But aside from all that, the article is based on another paper which starts with the words:
Little is known about the consequences of tobacco smoking stigma on smokers and how smokers may internalize smoking-related stigma.
They don’t know much about the effects of stigmatisation? You’d think they’d know a great deal about it. But when you read that they’ve done a “review of almost 600 articles”, you realise that they’re looking in the Tobacco Control literature.
They’re not going out onto the streets and asking smokers questions, which is what I (along with a number assistants) was doing with the ISIS social impact survey of smokers. I didn’t just get completed forms, but I also had a bunch of very interesting conversations with smokers.
But they’re not doing that. They’re reading the literature that’s been produced inside Tobacco Control, complete with its nonsensical “self-induced social isolation” and “smoking self-stigma” by smokers.
And to the extent that they’re reading Tobacco Control literature, rather than going and asking smokers questions, they are simply employing existing Tobacco Control dogma – a bit like some Communist who, when he wants to learn about the working class, doesn’t go and talk to working class people, but reads Marx or Lenin instead.
Lastly, the article includes the following passage:
These types of social control strategies, which are employed in an effort to reduce the prevalence and incidence of smoking and reduce exposure of non-smokers to second-hand and third-hand smoking may actually further marginalize ‘residual smokers’ who may be more disadvantaged and have fewer resources to help them quit.
I highlight two places in this passage. Firstly, the author doesn’t seem to wish to “further marginalize” smokers. But it seems to me that the entire purpose of Tobacco Control is to isolate, marginalise, and stigmatise smokers to the greatest extent possible: they want to drive smokers out of society as thoroughly and completely as they possibly can.
But also the reference to “social control strategies” reveals that this is all about control. They’re engaged in social engineering. They want to control people. But you knew that already, didn’t you.
Frank Davis 
From yesterday.
Cecily: “However, this is not my experience. I have had complete strangers come up to me to tell me I should stop smoking and some have been aggressive.”
I had a recent encounter with a rabid antismoking nut case.
Setting: Outdoor dining area of a restaurant. It’s a place at which I’ve had lunch over many years. In the State in which I reside there is no ban (yet) on smoking in outdoor dining areas. This particular restaurant has divided the outdoor area into half smoking, half non-smoking.
On this particular day I was having lunch at the usual table at the end of the smoking section. The outdoor area was pretty full. I had been there for well over an hour and had had maybe 4 cigarettes [I did notice that I was the only one smoking] At this point a group of 5, 3 men/2 women, sat at the end table of the non-smoking section, three tables away from me. They were at least in their fifties and, looking at the group after the following incident, seemed like a bland bourgeois brigade (BBB).
The BBB hadn’t been there for more than 10 minutes and I was having a cigarette, chatting with a friend. As I was chatting I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone approaching my table and flapping their hand (yep, it was a “hand flapper”). As I looked around it was a woman from the BBB table that was standing a few feet from my table, still flapping her hand “displacing” non-existent smoke.
As we made eye contact she spouted in an aggressive tone, “what you’re doing [smoking] is illegal”. I replied, with a smile, “it’s not”. She repeated emphatically, “it’s illegal!” I again replied, with a smile, “no, it’s not”. At this point she decided to huff and puff back to her table. As she began walking away in self-righteous indignation, she left me with, “remember, it’s all about respect”.
“It’s all about respect”??? This coming from an ignorant, neurotic, bigoted nitwit that went out of her way to confront a complete stranger and making baseless, inflammatory accusations.
But little Ms Superior wasn’t finished yet. Back at her table consulting with her neurotic buddies, she called over a waitress to lodge a complaint about having to put up with someone smoking nearby. The waitress informed her that there was no smoking ban in the outdoor area and that the area was divided into smoking/non-smoking sections (clearly marked). This seemed to shut the group up of the overt whining.
I was there for another 15 minutes. It crossed my mind that Ms Superior, being a stickler for “respect” [giggle], might have made another visit to my table and apologized for her senseless outburst. Fortunately, I wasn’t holding my breath. Antismokers don’t do apologies. They only do explosions of [irrational] fear and hate, even with complete strangers.
The stigma is the result of social engineering and relentless propaganda. The true believers of tobacco control promote persecution of smokers and banning smoking in all settings. They mock cough when they see smokers enjoying a smoke–even from across the street (and never mind diesel fumes). They complain when you smoke in the smoking section, and they believe they will I’ve longer due to their moral purity.
They are enforcing bans outdoors at breakneck speed. They also seek to raise the smoking age (although they had a set back yesterday in New Jersey–they will be back). They are relentless because they have been brainwashed and because they fear dying. Never mind that much of the evidence against tobacco is based on lies and exaggeration, they believe it, the media prints the propaganda, and dissent is suppressed.
Now they are trying to ban smoking in the military. This recent article at Cicero Magazine addresses that gambit: “As the Smoke Clears: Tobacco and the US Military,” http://ciceromagazine.com/opinion/as-the-smoke-clears-tobacco-and-the-us-military/
The only way to stop the stigma its stigmatize the antismokers. Their lies and intolerance need to be emphasized.
“If antismokers shun smokers, then smokers will equally shun antismokers.”
A friend from work invited me to his house to watch a football game on T.V. I asked if I could smoke in his house. “Hell no!” As if I had a communicable disease. He said I could go outside if I wanted to smoke. I replied that negates watching a football game together. No thanks, ‘friend’. Shunning works both ways.
Excellent writing, Frank.
You should go to his house and watch the game, observing his ‘house rules’ as a respectful friend would do. Then, invite him round to your house when the next game is on – reciprocating the friendly gesture.
Just as the game has settled down, and you have both got comfortable with a couple of beers, take out a cigarette and offer one to your friend. When he (inevitably) refuses, tell him, politely, that he will have to go outside into the garden until you have finished your cigarette.
He will howl with anguish at the effrontery of what you are asking, of course, but you can then quietly inform him that “this is exactly how you treated me, so now you know how it feels”.
It will probably end your friendship, but hey, he’s no true friend, anyway.
I once jokingly asked a young adult smoker who forbade smoking in his own home to step outside when he wanted to smoke at mine – a fully fledged smoking household.
When my 80 yo mother in law visits, it takes an hour or so for her to be temporarily de-denormalised. Of course, like we all troop outside at her place, often in the freezing cold or wet. My God, outside the woman can suck a cig to death in 60 seconds flat.
The entire tobacco control industry tactic of denormanisation is based around fear mongering, particularly in non-smokers, to isolate and stigmatise smokers.
Sir George Godber in 1975 may have phrased his ” causing harm to others, particularly family and children” in terms of convincing smokers of the harm they cause but he was not stupid, he knew he could not overtly encourage non smokers to turn on smokers but that was undoubtedly his goal. The message of harm was for non smokers. Hence the ensuing years of hyperbole, second hand smoke is rape, murder, assault etc. Telling a rapist or murderer that he is a rapist or murderer achieves nothing whereas telling his friends, neighbours, family, employer…… I am sure I don’t need to labour the point.
Forgive the paraphrasing of Godbers speech, I can’t be arsed looking up his poison.
It’s all about the language used,this tells you all you need to know about the sort of human being involved in attempting to control human behaviour of which they disapprove. To them humanity is no better than rats in a maze experiment – torture,provoke and observe. Who on earth uses language like “Little is known about the consequences of tobacco smoking stigma on smokers and how smokers may internalize smoking-related stigma” except somebody who was trained in animal experimentation methods. You are right Frank it’s all about control, approved of by governments world wide.
Another gem – thank you.
Smokers have been “exiled to the outdoors”
Painfully true in cold climates.
BUT where it’s warmer you can always savour some poetic justice along with your coffee and cigarettes because anti-smokers are marginalised and confined to their indoor bubbles.
Seems like Tobacco Control is primarily an authoritarian aberration experienced by the declining [and neurotically narcissistic] English language cultures.
Thankfully England ends at Eastbourne.
Will the last ones out please stub out their cigarettes and turn off the lights.
Buckshot:
Even in her apparent concern for stigmatized smokers, the author’s real concern is only that stigmatization, as a tactic, may not work! That “residual smokers” (we are residues, guys, like the sticky stuff left at the bottom of a pot, like the last-to-go symptoms of a nasty disease) when driven into corners, may therefore lack the resources to “help” us quit, –which presumes that (like all rational beings) we actually want to. No moral concern is expressed here at all
Of smoking nonsmokers: As I reported at the time I was interviewing smokers for Frank’s survey, I only stopped people on the street who were smoking. Yet at least half a dozen, cigarette either in hand or in mouth, looked me in the eye and with double-think sincerity, said: “I don’t smoke.”
Over the years I’ve had many encounters with in-your-face ants. Even going way back to when smoking was still legal in ( some ) NY restaurants ( the only restaurants I went to at the time) middle-aged female diners would indignantly approach the table and holler that I was a crude selfish lout who’d just ruined their meal. (Oddly, they never sent their husbands to do it.)
“I don’t smoke.”
I had one of those. She was a Northern Irish lady sitting at a table with her family, with a cigarette in one hand. I asked her if she’d care to fill in a questionnaire about the effect of smoking bans. “I don’t smoke”, she replied. I didn’t reply, but instead just kept my eyes fixed on the cigarette. Eventually, she turned and looked at the cigarette, like she was surprised to see it. After that, she agreed to fill in the questionnaire, grumbling all the way through. I should add that she was very drunk. So drunk, perhaps, that she didn’t even know she was smoking a cigarette.
It remains the case that no-one has ever approached me to say anything about my smoking. If they did I’d almost certainly instantly tell them to F off. I’m sure it’ll happen one day.
Of smoking nonsmokers: As I reported at the time I was interviewing smokers for Frank’s survey, I only stopped people on the street who were smoking. Yet at least half a dozen, cigarette either in hand or in mouth, looked me in the eye and with double-think sincerity, said: “I don’t smoke.”
My reply: “I can see that”.
I have come across some scroungers who told me that they didn’t smoke. I just told them that it would be a waste of a wonderful ciggie if I gave one to him/her.
I hate LIARS.
” ‘residual smokers’ who may be more disadvantaged and have fewer resources to help them quit. ”
Disadvantaged! Fewer resources! – Not the right description of those who are so pi**ed off with anti-smoking lies, propaganda and hatred that they would never ever want to play any part in a world that encourages such behaviours.
Xopher B
Am I the only one who sees that phrase differently?
I see it as a transparent call for more funding by TC.
self-induced social isolation” of smokers, and also to “smoking self-stigma”, as if smokers were isolating and stigmatising themselves, and had only themselves to blame for their isolation and stigmatisation
It’s called pride, let’s face it antismokers would have cracked long ago under the same pressure and simply can’t understand why formerly respected persons would just quietly remove themselves from public life rather than give in to them.
Here’s an article from a man who clearly has no clue about the hurt and insult caused to people who smoke. Somehow having your own government turn on you makes it so much worse.
Hamish Champ: Ironically, belligerent smokers are helping to close pubs -2009
“I was particularly taken with one commentator who said she used to frequent her local pub four nights a week but now, since the smoking ban, didn’t visit any more.
“I know when I’m not wanted” she added, as if the licensee had made a point of singling her out and shouting “You’re barred!
There are a number of things about this attitude that really get my goat.”
“First,boycotting pubs because they won’t – can’t- let you smoke in them is the biggest example of cutting off your nose to spite your face I’ve ever come across.
Ironically many smokers who say they’ll never visit their local pub again because of the ban are among the first to moan about the pubs shutting down.Has it never occured to them that …no , I don’t suppose it they’ve put two and two together on that one.”
http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Legal/Legislation/Hamish-Champ-Ironically-belligerent-smokers-are-helping-to-close-pubs
So we were supposed to stand outside in a “shelter 50% open to the elements” just to keep their pubs warm and comfortable for the flood of nonsmokers they were assured would take our places?
Millions will return to the Pub after Smoking Ban – 20/02/07
“840,000 people who currently never go to a pub said they will after the smoking ban. Added to the figure for people who currently visit regularly that is a total of 7,040,000 people who will visit pubs more often.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20070313005142/http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=233601
“Ironically many smokers who say they’ll never visit their local pub again because of the ban are among the first to moan about the pubs shutting down.”
Perhaps just a touch of schadenfreude would be understandable under the circumstances?
Apart from which, derelict pubs make the area look terrible.
Rose like most if you cant smoke in it I don’t go in it. Im lucky Ive still got about 8 places within close proximity to smoke in. A few new restaraunts opened up and well they are non smoking as chain stores but their what you would call easy money built businesses. Where cheap loans guaranteed by the government to expand their service oriented businesses ends up becoming an extreme over build and ends up throwing the corporation into bankruptcy as has happened with so many corporations in America over the last 25 years.
That’s what we are seeing corporations bowing to government diktat to get loans guaranteed so they can expand in the middle of whats becoming known as the 2nd great depression. Even the Huddle House just tried to reopen up here after closing it when it went non smoking 4 years ago. They lasted just 5 months and just reclosed it again.
Wafflehouse claimed business was great and they were suddenly able out of nowhere to build and finance 500 new stores as the VP told me. I said your lying your actual net value is only 90 million a year to 130 million a year.
Basically said they cant afford to build much less get approved for what would take nearly 700 million dollars for such a move as to build 500 new stores.
Our local WH went non smoking its a dead store fixing to shut down as the locals just told me. They now only have a shift of 2 people 1 waitress and 1 cook…………they cant afford any more and its like that all over the south at breakfast shops that were forced to go non smoking. Up in Bowling Green they have 2 WH both with the same staffing and just barely make enuf to stay open since the ban. 12 other local mom and pops went under and closed up after the ban within 6 months. Only the big chains seem to be holding their own but even there they are over building to the max. It still means when the fall comes they wont even exist anywhere.
The service industry while it makes money it really isn’t a basis of true economic power,that comes thru manufacturing base not service industry.
How does a waitress afford a new car or a dishwasher or a cook……..its simple they don’t.
How can these people afford to go out and eat every nite at a nice restaurant its simple they don’t. 50% of americans are getting some form of government welfare assistance like food stamps or cash assistance. The DOWS crashing and the low oil prices mean but one thing nobody is manufacturing anything,no ships are sailing,trains aren’t running and truck traffic is cut.
Todays world has all the signs of a great depression………its basically here including the prohibitional mindset that created it.
“First,boycotting pubs because they won’t – can’t- let you smoke in them is the biggest example of cutting off your nose to spite your face I’ve ever come across.
Ironically many smokers who say they’ll never visit their local pub again because of the ban are among the first to moan about the pubs shutting down.Has it never occured to them that …no , I don’t suppose it they’ve put two and two together on that one.”
LOL! FINALLY!!! They admit that it was the smoking ban that kills!!
I’m not cutting off my nose to spite my face – in my house there are ashtrays on the tables, music is dicided by a small group’s choice (incidentally, the group that used to meet in a pub but was split by this idiotic law which ASSUMES that ADULTS cannot tell the difference between “Smoker” and “Non-smoker” rooms), cheaper drinks can be bought in advance and a seat is there for everyone.
*priceless*
I was once admonished for smoking by a child. I was having a fag with a colleague and moaning about something latest fuckwittery being implemented at work when this young boy of about 10 or 11 cycles up to us. We’re standing on private property, but he comes in off the street just to tell us we should stop smoking because it’s really bad for us.
My colleague, a kindly man, tried to explain to the boy that he’s an adult and can choose to smoke if he wants to. But the boy wasn’t taking that for an answer and carried on regardless.
“You’re killing yourselves”.
It was getting boring and as I’d nearly finished my smoke, I intervened. “Yep. And if you stay around us much longer, you’ll be dead first. Now fuck off and go practice your homework on someone else. This is private property”.
The boy quickly left, but the look my colleague gave me, like I was some sort of monster. But then again, his girlfriend used to make him stand in the garden to smoke because she’d given up. Yeah, that relationship didn’t last very long.
Instead of dignifying his interruption by arguing with the arrogant creature why not increase his vocabulary with a good old fashioned word
rude
synonyms: ill-mannered, bad-mannered, impolite, discourteous, impertinent, insolent, impudent, cheeky, audacious, presumptuous, uncivil, disrespectful, unmannerly, ill-bred, churlish, crass, curt, brusque, blunt, ungracious, graceless, brash, unpleasant, disagreeable.
That’s why I gave him a practical demonstration ;)
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=rude&allowed_in_frame=0
The Royal Statistical Society has been doing some slapping down:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/stats_gurus_open_fire_on_bogus_booze_guidelines/
No doubt this aspect has been covered by many commentators here but I still find it disappointing that so few smokers speak out or do anything about the pogrom. Here’s my attempt at an explanation. Please bear with me for a moment while I try to describe the mindset:
***
Many people continue to smoke despite the dire warnings. They mostly suspect that the claims are exaggerated. They even have a private fantasy that there is little or no danger from smoking. This fantasy allows them to remain sane while still smoking.
In their heart of hearts they don’t really believe the fantasy. But they daren’t investigate the subject because if they did it would mean facing up to the truth. And the truth might prove very uncomfortable to live with. They might even have to give up smoking. So they’d much rather stick with their private fantasy than discuss or research the subject.
***
I have often had quite a hostile response from smokers when broaching the issue. Initially because they’ve assumed I was anti-smoking but even after re-assurance that I wasn’t, an (extreme) reluctance persisted. I can still recall my own considerable apprehension over ten years ago when I first typed the word ‘smoking’ into an Internet search engine.
I think the mindset I’ve described explains or at least sheds light on both.
Of course I have since been forced, by the evidence, to the conclusion that all of the anti-smoking claims are false (to put it nicely and in brief). In other words, the ‘fantasy’ turned out to be the truth after all.
You were singularly fortunate to find any real facts by googling ‘smoking’, since the search results tend to be dominated by all the junk science and propaganda.
I started to realise the truth because when the ban arrived in UK (I wasn’t living there, but it was nevertheless a personal attack, I felt, based on a chimera), I got involved in some hot debates on a forum I frequented about the reality of dangers from SHS. Even though I’d more or less accepted all the propaganda, the SHS thing just seemed like utter tripe. It flew against all commonsense. As a result of my online debates, I started to research, and I found I had to really dig deep to get past all the standard PC narrative. The first few results pages were full of the ‘smoking kills’ mantra, and ‘SHS is deadly’ garbage. It was only after I found blogs like this that I started to realise that most of the information is suppressed, or swamped by the TC stuff. The comments on this blog provided a positive cornucopia of information. People like Harley, Rose, Mag01 and indeed yourself, to mention but a few, provide references that would be very hard to find via Google. Not to mention the input of Frank himself and the other bloggers I discovered.
Thus I, someone who was just mildly sceptical of the TC claims, became a full-blown anti-TC activist, attacking the bullshit at every opportunity. I don’t get around as much as Harley, who seems to be everywhere in various guises (his prose is unmistakable, whatever name he posts under), but I comment wherever and whenever I can, because comments matter. Particularly in the MSM. They get read. If a comment alerts just one person to the lies, it’s worth the effort.
I’m sick to death of self-righteous, holier-than-thou arseholes assuming the right to dictate how I should live my life. They can just fuck off.
Sorry. I didn’t intend to get into a rant, it just happened. Blame the wankers in TC. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have anything to rant about!
I hope I haven’t raised anyone’s stress level with that comment. I am just trying to understand the mindset. I think I used Alta-Vista rather than Google – it was a long time ago :)
I must have used a lot of other keywords too. I was already highly sceptical about SHS. I found forest, forces and Dave Hit fairly early on and then, shortly afterwards, Joe Jackson.
You did great and keep on fighting is all we have left that matters and thru our strength of fighting back perhaps others professionals will finally throw off their chains and speak out against the lies.
Well it doesn’t work with me.before the smoking ban came in I was on about ten fags a day.now I smoke about forty a day.why it’s simple.the more the anti smoking lobby come out with garbage and lies the more it makes me proud to be a smoker.
self-induced social isolation
Another 10 cent word not worth a penny. Its a term meant to exclude TC of any blame against themselves in causing depression and anxiety in this group and it also means they excempt themselves from any and all suicides or manic depression that may be caused by such isolation due to smoking bans.
One thing I have found is all to many doctors, physician assistance, nurses, medical staff have all been not only schooled to forcibly push lifestyle warfare on the public but threatened to do it or lose their professional liscences to practice medicine. The DEA DRUG ENFORCEMENT TASK FORCE has issued DEA ID numbers to every doctor or anyone who can write a narcotic script and its used to basically threaten with force via visit or letterhead to any and all whom the government ABC agency deems writes to many so called scripts.
The VA instituted such policies across the board last year against all veterans.
I read this morning where war veterans being treated for 15 years and longer with pain management over war wounds and other conditions came in to get their usual refills and were told sorry you get no more anything. They were treated like scum,Criminals,drug addicts. It was obamas own people appointed to the VA as administrators who made these drastic life threatening changes under pressure the docs were forced to comply,its the same with tobacco use or caffeine use or sugar use or or or…………..
This is whats become of our world and is truly what we have been fighting for years.
Until Obama is gone nothing in the world is going to change as its from his office/throne that much of these edicts are forced down our and the worlds throats. The WHO have only limited power,but when Washington demands these things the WHO will carry them out along with your own DHS services if you can call it that.
My own doc was treating me with low dose loritab and I went for a refill last week only to be given the ADDICT TALK and all the shit terror talk one asshole PA could give. Best I don’t say what I told her as shes lucky to have kept her life. But then I thought this is a deeper problem and I dug into it and the finger prints of government intervention and threats were all over,verified by Jason my smoking doctors son who is also a PA/ physicians assistant.
He said that his dad wouldn’t been to the will of the government but got the DEA letter along with other literature he was to push within his clinic or he would be targeted. He was basically forced to retire. That’s whats happened to every single private practice doctor in America over the last 3 years since obamacare came down the pike.
The peoples of the world have become the victim of a tyrannical regime mostly run and operated via the whitehouse in America with all the big pharma fucks that keep whiepering whats next on the war on people.
You feel like a political prisoner yet rather than a self induced social isolated soul……….
Your not going to get any help for anything,nor will you get the truth from any doctor for fear the truth get out. 1984 is indeed well entrenched across the board in all walks of life.
We didn’t realize it but a few just how deep the socialist divide had driven into the very core of humanities soul.
We found if your over 70 with my mother in the hospital that they really don’t care anymore to even try and save you much less make your quality of life better.
Occassionally you find that few medical personel who will break the fanatical rules and know whats really happening. My mother was deprived of her Xanax in the hosipital causing her several seizures. A nurse finally noticed but the standing orders of no drugs and their attitude that everyone is an addict now made them smile when they wouldn’t give her any.
The nurse took it upon herself to contact my moms own doctor who marched into the hospitals ICU took personal charge ordered up her Xanax and the next morning she was up talking and eating again and all sezures gone.
They would have left her to die,the same as they would to any of us.
In fact that’s what they are hoping for that the hold outs will become so distraught they commit suicide. You may have noticed in American headlines over the last several years the outrageous number of American Veterans committing suicide. I can tell ya it aint from PTSD its from social isolation and out right neglect on the part of the VA hospitals to do their jobs and those jobs are threatened by the Obama administration thru its threats using federal power to enforce such inhumane treatment of all of us. It isn’t just the VA its all of the entire medical establishment.
Those medical in service training classes aren’t about medicine their about government lifestyle management and threats to force their will thru these medical professionals on us all.
Professor Evin warned us about this in his write up after he retired………..its all to true across every part of medical treatment.
The VAs answer after they refused low grade pain management scripts was we can offer you acupuncture,chiropractic services or 3 weeks a our own HANOI HILTON for addiction recovery which you can also assumes total abstinence from smoking and a constant 24 seven group of male nurses to enforce their policies.
That’s what veterans can look forward to if they even mention pain manangement anymore or even if they smoke. The Stazi had nothing on these people not even hitlers own death camp doctors at auszwitch.
My doc had me on low dose pain management for the lyme arthritis and arthalgias Ive suffered for years,besides multiple diagnoses of fibromyalgia. All service connected yet VA services told me what I repeated above. Oh you can get some pain management but only if you can provide cat scans and other such info to prove need for the treatment. Mine has always been on the cellular level with spirochetal infection and has been diagnosed by over 37 doctors in the last 20 years.
I put up with the pain until last year when it finally got so unbearable I needed just a small amount to be able just to sleep from the pain.
What happened next was a dose of Biaxin anti biotic said to be good for treatment of chronic lyme disease,all it did was cause a blood clot near my heart and a hell in the hospital and since.
CPR and crushed bones and muscle left me in deep pain for 3-4 months and then finally I found it was over I put the 4 loritabs I took each day up and 14 hours later only to discover I was hooked. I immediately began cold turkey to beat the innocently acquired addiction tot he test. 4 days no sleep and pain from withdrawels but I got it back down to one lousy pill a day again at nite.
Then when I go back for a refill I get told all the above…………..
Or a referall to a pain clinic that will not take anyone unless you have insurance. You see obamacare fixed it so veterans cant get the obamacare insurance on low income since we had the VA……..All we can do is hope we can afford a private insurance plan to have something else.
VA wont even pay for an ER visit if they deem it non essential like 3 stitches in my hand 2 years ago. No shit.
Rant over,just so we are all on the same page medical practioners it would seem are as much a victim as the rest of us,only we speak out and they DARE NOT.
My smoking has increased because of smoking regulation.
The first boost to my smoking rate was caused by a very boring badly paid job happening in a boring life, then the next boost was FE and HE as a mature student in the 90’s – which were the first places I experienced the beginning of the smoker’s huddle, and the first places I learnt how to get through 3 cigarettes in 15 minutes.
Subsequently the increasing pop ups of little banlets trained my speed smoking further (public transport being a good example).
There’s a corollary here with drink, for at much the same time the cost of drinking in pubs became steep, so pre loading with vodka and going out later became a habit. This segued into going down the pub with a concealed bottle.
There’s a horrible class of people established themselves in this country who believe that they simply know what is good for you by virtue of their social position and better manners, and they actually breath Eugenics without realising what it is. They see their sense of nudge as justified and enlightened, even philanthropic, when in fact it is clumsy bullying. One of the most crucial things they know is that they naturally deserve 50 grand a year for telling people like me how to think.
The ultimate sanction, after they have punished you like a misbehaved lab rat for not obeying their obvious authoriteh, is to label you mad, which I believe is a Frankfurt School technique used to smite disbelievers.
Better then freedom in madness than to breathe their philosophically pipsqueak ambrosial odours (PL bk 2 ln 245) – may History brush them away like flies.
Btw Frank I was over at Tobacco Control Tactics again a couple of weeks ago – that page on you is an admirable symptom of recognition, well done.
As a fellow big tobacco funded shill with an entirely made up 91 year old smoking father, who fought for King and Country, I would say that.
I’ve said it before and repeat again one of my dad’s sayings: “I wish someone from the NHS would come round here and tell me why I’m not dead yet!”.