Posted on 08/20/2002 11:36:27 AM PDT by SheLion
Anti-tobacco lobby still blows smoke Tuesday, August 20th, 2002 Lindor Reynolds
Cigarettes don't cause lung cancer; ineffective advertising causes lung cancer.
A coalition of health groups -- including the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society and Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada --yesterday condemned Canada's anti-smoking public education program, claiming it should be directed at the tobacco industry, not at smokers. In an open letter sent to Health Minister Anne McLennan, they demanded anti-tobacco advertising that is "ambitious, hard-hitting, explicit and in your face."
That's a good start. Making smoking illegal would be a better solution, but apparently the rights of too many yellow-toothed people would be stomped in order to ensure the rest of us have clean air. The ghettoization of smokers, reducing them to pack animals huddled together in parking garages and in back alleys , has been wonderful to watch but it hasn't gone far enough. It seems ardent smokers, the sort who claim they enjoy every cigarette (yes, even the ones stolen outside in minus 40 weather) are too hopelessly addicted or willfully stupid to quit.
So it's time to get busy with a new propaganda war.
"More than a year ago," a portion of the letter reads, "Ottawa established a fund of $480-million to be spent over five years to reduce tobacco-related disease and death. It earmarked 40 per cent for mass media initiatives. The first year of this five-year program has already expired, deepening our concern for the implementation of an effective strategy to deliver this mass-media campaign."
The letter condemns Canada's use of ads that preach to young people, saying those nagging messages simply ensure smoking is seen as an adult activity that mean big people want to deny adolescents. Having figure skater Elvis Stoyko declare he's chosen not to smoke is about as effective as those hectoring messages (complete with pictures of diseased lungs) on cigarette packages.
"Smoke from a lit cigarette contains toxic substances. These include hydrogen, cyanide, formaldehyde and benzene," reads a typical warning. Smokers already know butts are harmful. They don't believe a lit cigarette emits vanilla and kitten's breath. They just don't give a tinker's damn.
So what do they health experts suggest? Nothing less than the demonization of the tobacco industry, explaining in blunt language the consequences of smoking and the deliberate misrepresentation by tobacco companies who lied to smokers even as the hazards of smoking became abundantly clear.
"Industry denormalization works because it is powerful with non-smokers and smokers alike," the letter to Ms. McLennan reads. "It helps direct the frustration smokers feel about their addiction away from themselves and toward the tobacco manufacturers. It helps non-smokers understand why they should care about this public-health problem."
Most non-smokers care because second-hand smoke clings to our clothes, causes our chests to constrict and imperils our asthmatic children, but I digress.
"Industry denormalization also helps young people understand that smoking is not an expression of free will, but rather a form of submission to an unscrupulous industry," the letter continues. "This new perspective puts the health messages they have been taught in a different light and encourages them to rebel against the tobacco companies instead of the health establishment."
In short, these health-care professionals are hoping to pull off an end run around the tobacco industry, reducing their complicity with young smokers, stripping their effectiveness as purveyors of something illicit and desirable. Big bad tobacco should be revealed as the money-grubbing, heartless industry it is, content to sacrifice lives in a quest for a better market share.
There are two questions that need answering. First, does the Canadian government have the will to change course and launch a head-on attack against the tobacco industry? Second, is a leering villain all it will take to reduce smoking, especially by young people?
As long as our government permits the sale of a drug that has been proven to kill 45,000 Canadians every year, it seems unlikely a propaganda war will be the most effective method of saving lives. To its credit, the coalition of health-care groups is willing to use the best means available until common sense finally reigns.
You can email this Communist wanna be here:
lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca
"Just saw your photograph with Mr. Ewatski. The following remark, coming from someone so badly in need of a root touch-up and with an obvious life-long weight problem, is really rich:
That's a good start. Making smoking illegal would be a better solution, but apparently the rights of too many yellow-toothed people would be stomped in order to ensure the rest of us have clean air. The ghettoization of smokers, reducing them to pack animals huddled together in parking garages and in back alleys , has been wonderful to watch but it hasn't gone far enough. It seems ardent smokers, the sort who claim they enjoy every cigarette (yes, even the ones stolen outside in minus 40 weather) are too hopelessly addicted or willfully stupid to quit.
Aren't you the "writer" who pointed out the difference between "public manners and private manners?"
This is a quote from you, right?
"Of course there are 'family' manners and 'public' manners," says mother and columnist Lindor Reynolds, who often writes about family issues in the Winnipeg Free Press. "But don't wait until you have your child out in public to tell her."
Is calling smokers "yellow-toothed" and "stupid" your version of "public manners?"
Or have you taught your children that passing hate for people who indulge in an activity of which you disapprove around the family supper table along with the peas is OK, just don't let the cat out of the bag in public? Wouldn't they be better served by just teaching them to be honest?
Have you taught them to demonize overweight people, also (Oops, watch out Mom, this one might come back to bite you.)?
More importantly, you've made very clear that you are astoundingly, resoundingly stupid. Not ignorant - stupid.
The life-style police, of which you are apparently a charter member, are the biggest threat to individual freedom that exists today. You've never understood the concept of "live and let live" and never will, unless of course the subject is the latest liberal pet group du jour. Then, of course, we must bend over backwards to "accommodate."
There you go!!! Good for you, Bella!
Hey Joe!! Welcome back. Glad to see your back, Joe.
Isn't that statement one of the most illiterate pieces of chit that we have read in a long time? What a pompous ass she is!
For the record: I'm 5'10" and weigh 130 pounds. But thanks for trying to make me feel bad. As for the hair, that's natural too. But nice try again. Maybe you'd like to insult the colour of my eyes? Blue, but there's no accounting for taste.
Sound advice!
The Green Guide to Winnipeg, by Lindor Reynolds (Middle/Senior Years)
This is a publication of the Manitoba ECO-NETWORK. Manitobans are looking for information about the environment, but more than that, they are also looking for ways that they can make a difference. Once people realize why a particular action or item is important they want to know how they can participate, who to call, and where to get the goods or services. This book it is a resource to help people "green" their homes, their neighbourhoods, and themselves. ISBN: 0-9696653-O-X. Available from #59
White, suburban soccermom who is giving the rest of us white suburban soccermom’s a BAD NAME!
Like most women of her generation, Reynolds was raised by a cold, dispassionate mother who placed practicality and a fear of emotions before anything else.
Sounds like her mother rubbed OFF on her.
" I just want to go on living in Tuxedo," says Reynolds,.”
PLEASE, GOD, KEEP HER THERE IN TUXEDO!
WOW! Excellent response, Madame Dufarge!! Good going!
What, not working for World Peace, too?
Anyway, I can attest from personal experience that she doesn't like "fan mail."
She LOVES touchy-feely, but just not from a smoker. LOL!
LEISLER, YOUR KILLING ME! LOL!
This paragraph sounds like it came out of a spoiled 14-year-old kid on crack! This is from a very dark and evil mind, you know it?
Uh, yeah, sure...demonization of the industry isn't working fast enough. We need to demonize the smokers themselves. Making them huddle in groups is OK, but that only works when they're actually smoking. I think it'd be more effective to make them wear some sort of identification ALL the time, maybe a yellow hexagonal star thingy or something. We know second-hand smoking is a hazard to society at large, and we've had enough - it's time to segregate this antisocial group completely. I'm thinking camps here, camps with barbed wire and machine-gun posts. Here they can work to give up their habit - work makes for freedom, dontcha know...well, it sounded better in German...
Ms. Reynolds,
The following paragraph, to which you made, sounds like it came from a 14-year-old teenager on crack! You must have a very dark and evil mind:
"The ghettoization of smokers, reducing them to pack animals huddled together in parking garages and in back alleys , has been wonderful to watch but it hasn't gone far enough. It seems ardent smokers, the sort who claim they enjoy every cigarette (yes, even the ones stolen outside in minus 40 weather) are too hopelessly addicted or willfully stupid to quit. "
Mayor Bloomberg called New York City smokers stupid and crazy, and he is being sued over it.
I would much rather hang out with my surburban white soccer mom friends who smoke ANY day then someone like you. You’re a pathetic and sad woman. Why don't you find a life that you can live for yourself, instead of trying to live it for everyone else.
She is one nasty piece of work!
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