Anti-tobacco lobby still blows smoke/If This Doesn't Make You Mad, Nothing Will!

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.

"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.

She's back! There for awhile, she had her email turned-off. She was receiving too much "hate mail." I wonder why? I just received this in email, that she is back....and still full of cruel hate for the smoker. I guess the Winnipeg doesn't care WHO writes for it. As long as they can fill up space:

Winnipeg Free Press story.
_______________________________________

Tuesday, August 27th, 2002
Baring their yellowed fangs

Tuesday, August 27th, 2002

Lindor Reynolds

In the past week I have been called a Nazi, a faggot, a nigger, criticized for lacking gonads of appropriate size, for being "foreign" and for the unforgivable sin of appearing to be fat.

The vitriolic response to an anti-smoking column on this page (Anti-tobacco lobby still blows smoke, Aug. 20) was expected. What was fascinating was not the vilification by the hacking minority but the way they expressed their outrage.

To be perfectly clear: I support the right of all readers to disagree with what I write and to fully express their displeasure. What surprised me in the 100 or more responses to last week's column (one paragraph of which was distributed over the Internet by an American pro-smoking lobby) were the lengths to which respondents would go to find a soft spot in which to insert the filleting knife.

First, here's the paragraph, taken from a column dealing with the condemnation of Canada's anti-smoking public education program by a coalition of health groups:

"Making smoking illegal would be a better solution, but apparently the rights of too many yellow-toothed smokers would be stomped to ensure the rest of us have clean air," I wrote feverishly.

"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."

Strong words? I suppose, but it was the news that cigarette smoke kills 45,000 people a year ("Name one," snapped an e-mail) that motivated me.

"The promotion and incitement to treat other human beings in a way reminiscent of Nazi-era Germany is outrageous," wrote Audrey Silk of Brooklyn, N.Y. "I demand a public apology. Reynolds should be fired."

Silk was one of a dozen people from the pro-smoking lobby who accused me of wanting to destroy Jewish businesses and slap yellow stars on people I don't like. It was a dramatic yet despicable charge. I wrote many of them back, polite notes that explained I found it repugnant that a person who chooses to engage in an activity known to harm others would dare compare herself to a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Robert Foster wrote: "Perhaps you should think twice before publishing such hate-filled rhetoric. Just a suggestion, you know ... at least until I can locate an attorney hungry enough to take the case."

"Coming from someone so badly in need of a root touch-up and with an obvious life-long weight problem," wrote Rose Kouroyen, "have you taught them (my supposed children) to demonize overweight people also?"

Anonymous made some presumptions based on my first name.

"Why don't you go back to your own country," that e-mail began, with wonderful solipsism. "We don't need foreign faggots telling us what Americans should do."

From another person: "Your nigger thoughts don't mean anything. What should I care about you and your stupid opinion?"

Wrote another: "I'm a white suburban soccer mom, a world you'll never understand or be a part of."

And from an anonymous correspondent: "Mr. Reynolds, if you had any balls you'd put your phone number in the paper. You need a good smack."

And so it came to this. It is impossible to write a coherent argument for smoking in 2002 so they wrote instead of what they hoped were my vulnerabilities. Was I black? Gay? Concerned about my weight? Terrified of a physical fight? Afraid of a lawsuit? An unrepentant dyer of hair? Then those were the points they would attack.

What they chose -- what they believed would be hurtful -- revealed their prejudices as clearly as my original column revealed my prejudice against smoking. They labelled their new enemy with the rawest of their fears and stepped off from there. I went from being a newspaper columnist in a city they'd never visited to a composite of every person they secretly loathe.

I can't say it felt good to be the subject of their prejudice. It felt worse to fully understand how close to the surface some individuals keep their hatred and how little it takes to tear the thin skin that covers it. (She writes about herself in this paragraph).

Email her at:
lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

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