Posted on 02/19/2003 7:17:52 AM PST by new cruelty
More than 190 countries yesterday began the sixth and final round of negotiations on an international tobacco control treaty designed to reverse the growing worldwide toll of deaths from smoking.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organisation, said the pact aimed to save "hundreds of millions of lives".
The proposed framework convention on tobacco control, the first-ever global health treaty negotiated by the WHO, will include binding rules on tobacco taxation, smuggling, advertising and promotion, product regulation, and smoking prevention and treatment.
It is due to be adopted by health ministers at the WHO's annual assembly in May.
"The tobacco epidemic is killing 4.9m people every year, which will double in 20 years if we do nothing to stop it", Dr Brundtland said. "We know that a big part of the solution lies in promoting stop-smoking programmes, raising tobacco taxes, increasing education, banning tobacco advertising and cracking down on smuggling."
According to WHO estimates based on current smoking trends, tobacco will soon be the world's biggest killer, causing more deaths than Aids, maternal mortality, car accidents, murder and suicide combined.
About 70 per cent of smoking-related deaths from lung cancer, heart disease, strokes and other diseases will occur in developing countries.
Anti-tobacco activists have criticised the draft treaty as too weak, claiming that the WHO has bowed to pressure from the US, Japan and Germany - home to powerful tobacco companies - to water down key provisions.
In particular, the draft does not require a total advertising ban although this has the support of the great majority of rich and poor countries.
However, Dr Brundtland, who set the tobacco talks in motion and has made them a priority of her five-year term in office, said the draft was "an excellent basis for an effective treaty". The text made clear that an advertising ban was the ultimate goal, and countries with planning bans could make binding declarations to that effect.
Luis Felipe de Seixas Corrêa, Brazil's Geneva ambassador and chairman of the talks, said what was wanted was "an effective convention that will make a difference" to public health, and that meant obtaining the support of a large number of key countries.
"Then we can go forward", he said.
What are you doing at Free Republic?
As I stated in an earlier post (which you were obviously too lazy to read), I don't drink coffee.
I think you need a drink.
If you're referring to alcohol, I don't drink that either. Not everyone does, you know. Although I recognize its antiquity, legitimacy, and necessity for religious rituals.
What are you doing at Free Republic?
I'm very sorry, but when I joined (almost two months before you did) no one explained to be that you had to be pro-smoking to post here. I suspected my Theocratic views were more out of line with FR philosophy, but apparently anyone can post as long as they're pro-smoking. Why . . . are you going to have me kicked off for being "politically incorrect?"
And to all you other anti-smoking conservatives (who send your kids to colleges that don't allow tobacco), thank you so much for your cowed and frightened silence. It certainly shows who's "on top," doesn't it?
Please forgive me if I don't drop out and leave the conservative movement entirely to militant pro-smokers.
The thing that you are failing to realize is that this is not about SMOKING.
Most smokers on this forum are not about to tell you that smoking is a right.
What most of us will tell you is that it is, currently, a legal activity. As such it should be left to the property/business owner to allow, or disallow, that activity.
I have no problem with you disliking smoking. I have no problem with you being a Theocrat, other than it does seem to color your thinking in a way that I can't understand.
You're right, if smoking, and especially second hand smoke, is SOOOO bad for a person, outlaw it.
Until the government, state OR federal, DOES outlaw the activity it seems to me that you, as a conservative, should be backing property rights.
Instead you seem to be advocating the right of the government to disallow a LEGAL activity through the tryranny of the majority.
Remember, just because you have heard it called a democracy doesn't mean that is what it is supposed to be.
I bow to a true master of rational, moderate, well-thought-out argumentation.
It's never about what it's about, is it? It's always "really" about something else.
Instead you seem to be advocating the right of the government to disallow a LEGAL activity through the tryranny of the majority.
"Disallow a legal activity" seems a contradiction in terms. I hope you understand that I am against liberals using tobacco as an excuse to achieve total power. I am for banning smoking (which is not anywhere on the radar screen of the most liberal liberal). I do approve of society's move in the direction of less smoking and hopes it continues until we are smoke-free. And I most certainly protest against the identification of the conservative movement with smoking and any intimation that conservative social victories (if we ever have any) must inevitably be accompanied by the reversal of the current anti-smoking trend.
What more do you people want from me? All I have done is to post my own position. I'm no threat to any of you! Has smoking become such a central tenet of conservatism???
Once again, thanks for all he support [/sarcasm] from fellow anti-smoking conservatives. I guess our candidates have to have tobacco money to win elections and we don't wanat to rock the boat.
Is there anyone else who wants to join the pile on top of me? Come on, the mighty conservative "gxd" tobacco demands that you use the vilest and most childish terms ("sucks;" "mentally ill") to attack any dissenting position.
If you smokers are looking to conservatism as a refuge from the outside world, that's fine. But that doesn't give you the right to run the conservative movement and excommunicate everyone who is anti-smoking as a "heretic."
Poor baby, pooooorrr "victimized" baby. Actually I'm surprised you haven't found a great deal of support for your anti-smoker stand; there are at least three rabid antis here--cinny, minny and finny. They must have overlooked the thread.
As I've said before and has been stated by others: You have every right to love or hate whatever you want, to believe or disbelieve whatever you want, to live your life as you want. But don't post comments that make clear you'd deprive others of those same rights and expect to walk away without being called on it by folks who value their freedom to make their own choices.
I'd wager that at least a third of the 200+ member "puff list" is made up of nonsmokers who recognize the dangers inherent in ANY movement allowed to run roughshod over citizens' rights. Shame you're so blinded by your hate you can't see it.
Okay. This is what I get for ticking off the smokers. This is going to go on and on forever, isn't it? All right. Go ahead. Whatever churns your butter.
You either did not read me or you are being dishonest. I demonstrated the fallaciousness of your slipper slope argument in my post #43 in which I clearly showed that the same logic could be used to oppose the banning of anything, doubtless including things you yourself would consider unthinkable. You didn't see that?
Then of course there was my post #58 in which I specifically addressed the notion that tobacco=guns. You surely don't claim that tobacco products are in the same danger of being banned (or limited to government agents) that bearing arms is, do you?
If I really need to say more on this subject, you must understand that my solution to smoking is not that of the liberals. They crusade against it for "health reasons," which is why "fast food is next." I crusade against no food at all (unless it is improperly slaughtered). My position has very little to do with "health." It is because it is a sickening, hateful, and unnatural moral vice which is unlike the ingestion of any other substance or compound. Greasy food does not fit this definition. Alcohol doesn't fit this definition. As it is, I am well aware of liberal attempts to forbid the eating of meat (which is expressly countenanced and regulated by the Bible). These liberals are hypocrites because they rejected G-d in the first place (so they claimed) becasue they wanted to be "free" of His onerous laws. Now that G-d is out of the picture, they find that legislating morality isn't so bad after all. And when has any Theist blocked traffic, allowing people on the way to the hospital to die? When? There are Theists who believe G-d has forbidden the eating of meat (Seventh Day Adventists for example), and if they mounted a campaign to fight meat eating in the name of G-d I would understand, though I would disagree with them. But if you'll notice, it's the atheist PETA people (who supposedly believe the universe is random and devoid of any meaning) who are so hopped up about it.
It is precisely because I am internally consistent enough to admit that the purpose of law is precisely to impose and protect morality that I reject any claim that my position is identical to atheist non-morality based "health" crusades.
And finally, one reason I posted to this thread is because I do not want any anti-smoking conservative to think that he isn't wanted as a conservative or that he should join Democratic Underground just because he opposes smoking. And the heading of this thread made smoking seem like a target of an evil United Nations plot in the manner of firearms. If you don't want anti-smokers in the conservative movement, if you think that all anti-smokers, despite their positions on other issues, should be sent to the liberals, why don't you come out and say so?
Two points only:
1) "Sucks" is an obscene reference to fellatio, however commonplace it has become. I don't use it personally because I remember when it was a naughty word scrawled on bathroom walls by junior high school students. I am sorry one so capable of erudtion feels compelled to use it, evidently for no reason whatsoever other than to hurt and wound.
2)If only you’d go, and go soon. You're saying you want me to die? Really? Is that actually what you want? In spite of the fact that you know absolutely nothing about me except that I am anti-smoking you would like to receive news that I am dead? And in spite of the fact that I have not indicated that I wanted any smoker to die? Yet you are so threatened by whatever I have said that you want me to die?
However much I have disagreed with pro-smokers on this thread it has been limited to that issue or to the issue of libertarianism. It has never gone beyond that.
Until now.
Up to you. Like all those of your inclination, you seem unable to use your own autonomy to CHOOSE, instead blaming others for your discomfort.
You either did not read me or you are being dishonest. I demonstrated the fallaciousness of your slipper slope argument in my post #43 in which I clearly showed that the same logic could be used to oppose the banning of anything, doubtless including things you yourself would consider unthinkable. You didn't see that?
Who's being dishonest? MY post addressing the slippery slope came AFTER your #43, and in fact was in answer to yours, which was, I might add, completely wrong in light of those things I pointed out. Those things you never addressed.
It is because it is a sickening, hateful, and unnatural moral vice which is unlike the ingestion of any other substance or compound.
My, what an objective, unbiased OPINION! To which you are, of course, entitled. You have every right to be wrong, you just have no right to force your skewed opinions on others.
It is precisely because I am internally consistent enough to admit that the purpose of law is precisely to impose and protect morality ...
Morality as YOU interpret it. Just like the Taliban interpreted the Koran. That's an arrogant, God-defying mindset and one I wouldn't want to stand before Him on Judgement Day and admit to.
the heading of this thread made smoking seem like a target of an evil United Nations plot in the manner of firearms.
It is. Permit WHO to gain this foothold in the name of "health" or anything else, and we will have lost our sovereignty because their attempt is based on lies and corruption. Whether you believe it or not.
If you don't want anti-smokers in the conservative movement, if you think that all anti-smokers, despite their positions on other issues, should be sent to the liberals, why don't you come out and say so?
Happy to: I don't want anti-smokers in the conservative movement. I don't want them because they are willingly ignorant of the facts, they back government intrusion into areas the government has no business in, they don't mind trampling the Constitution to get what they want, I don't believe they can understand other issues if they are incapable of understanding this one, and they're just basically mean and intolerant.
NONSMOKERS, on the other hand, are very welcome and without a goodly number of them, we will lose what freedoms we have left.
I'm against smoking. Yet you think that not partying should be a capital offense. And you're a libertarian?
Why don't we just abolish the state altogether? We don't really need it, do we, human nature being so good and benevolent and all. Rousseau and Jefferson said so!
Oh. So you're "pro-choice." I guess that's what "true conservatism" is all about, huh? Anything else you think people have a "right to choose," or is smoking tobacco the only thing?
I choose not to smoke. That choice, however, does not protect me from being forced to participate against my will in the presence of smokers.
If you don't want anti-smokers in the conservative movement, if you think that all anti-smokers, despite their positions on other issues, should be sent to the liberals, why don't you come out and say so?
Happy to: I don't want anti-smokers in the conservative movement. I don't want them because they are willingly ignorant of the facts, they back government intrusion into areas the government has no business in, they don't mind trampling the Constitution to get what they want, I don't believe they can understand other issues if they are incapable of understanding this one, and they're just basically mean and intolerant.
NONSMOKERS, on the other hand, are very welcome and without a goodly number of them, we will lose what freedoms we have left.
I hate to break it to you, but Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and all the people they represent (and whom you depend on for votes) are not "non-smokers." They are ANTI-SMOKERS. And neither they nor I are going anywhere. I never said I wanted smokers to leave the conservative movement. I did and do maintain that they should not run the conservative movement or turn it into their personal vehicle by making the "right to smoke" a major conservative tenet.
How many times are we going to continue repeating the same things to each other on this thread?
There aren't enough of you libertarian whorehouse "conservatives" to elect a dog-catcher. You depend on Bible-thumpers and "blue-nosed moralistic busybodies" like me to elect your libertarian politicians (you get all the action and we get all the rhetoric). As an anti-smoker I'm willing to live with you in the conservative movement. Why can't you live with me? Who is the intolerant one here?
My list of "against" is endless. I just don't go making a federal case about it. I have a life and move on.
I'm sorry, but despite your evident cleverness (and full knowledge and appreciation of that fact) I have no intention of dialoguing with someone who wishes me dead. Farewell.
You provide no rpoof, scientific or anecdotal. All you do is say, in effect, "I don't like it and it should be banned and I'm a conservative."
This issue is NOT about smoking, at least not to me.
It is about the government taking my liberties, incrementally, for no good reason other than someone doesn't LIKE it, and waiting for the next chance to do the same thing to any other liberties I may have kept to this point.
Until someone can prove conclusively that ETS (second hand smoke) causes irreparable harm to a non smoker, the government should keep their noses out of it.
If that makes me a conservative of the old school, fine.
If that makes me a libertarian, fine.
It also makes me someone, it seems, in the minority of government circles.
I have no problem with you disliking smoking. Just don't use the government to impose your morals on me for no reason other than your dislikes.
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