GMTA=Great Minds Think Alike!
I must have posted it the same time you thought about me posting it.
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
Have you actually read the column or simply the one paragraph the pro-smoking lobby has sent out over the Internet?
I'm a soccer mom too. I also know that smoking around my kids is harmful to them. It's also harmful to me and, since I want to see them grow up, I don't do it. Does that make me evil? I don't think so.
Again, read the entire column before you skewer me.
Lindor Reynolds
~sigh........she just don't get it. She thinks all I read was that one article.
I just finished viewing the ASH website and I applaud the action that you have taken against these sub-human smokers and the Criminal Tobacco Companies. When is the "Final Solution" against the tobacco problem in North America to take place? When it does, I have some suggestions to implement that solution.
First, we segregate all of the Pervert smokers and exclude them from virtually all aspects of life. This has largely been done. Second, This doesn't come cheap so, then we tax the tobacco companies and the puppet smokers. Personally, I think that this is the most brilliant part of the plan, having the persecuted pay for their own persecution, I just love it!! While this will undoubtedly reduce a lot of the smoking population, it will not eliminate it.
This leads to my Third Proposal. When the vermin smokers are reduced to a manageable level, I humbly suggest that we ship them by boxcar to Montana for 'resettlement'. This will liquidate the smoking problem once and for all! Not to mention, it will help the sagging profits of the Railroad Industry. I do not think that implementing this will difficult because we have a friend in President Clinton and I'm sure that his handpicked successor Al Gore will be elected in a landslide. We also have the press and history on our side. Now, if the Democrats can gain control in the Reichstag (Oops, I mean the House and Senate) all will be in place.
With such honorable men such as yourself and Dr. Koop leading this fight we cannot lose! I will close for now. Thank you for reading and considering my proposal.
Sieg Heil,
A. Eichmann
Obersturmbanfuhrer, Allgemeine SS
One of my letters garnered me a phone call from the Mayors PR man, told him I was spreading all their stupidity on web forums, and that the Mayor and Councillors were laughed at.
You ARE on OUR side, I hope! LOL
What do you think.
GMTA=Great Minds Think Alike!
I must have posted it the same time you thought about me posting it.
It's time for this to stop. The smoker bashing and the name calling.
When Mayor Bloomberg in NYC called smokers Crazy and Stupid, some people jumped on the bandwagon and are going after him.
Check out Sue Bloomberg
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.