Saturday 6 March 2010

The slippery slope in action


John Banzhaf in 1991, on the 'slippery slope' argument that the war on tobacco would be followed by a war on food:

"They use the 'slippery slope' argument. 'My God, if they can do this to smokers today they can do this to people who eat Haagen-Dazs ice cream or whatever.'"

Ridiculous, yes?

Tackling obesity may require anti-smoking style approach: Canada's top doctor

Canadians need to do more to reduce their growing waistlines, but the country may not be ready for tough measures and legislation to help shrink the nation, according to the chief public health officer.

First comes the scare-mongering...

"The concern with the increasing rates of obesity is that this may in fact, be the first generation of children to not live as long and healthy as their parents," said Butler-Jones in an interview.

If that's true then why does life expectancy go up year after year?

Then the velvet glove is taken off to expose the iron fist...

Governments over the years, have passed various pieces of legislation designed to reduce smoking, including increased taxation and packaging requirements, and some health experts have been pushing for similar initiatives to combat obesity.

Proposals include banning the advertising of unhealthy foods, increasing taxes on food that isn't nutritious, subsidizing fruits and vegetables to make them more affordable for Canadians and forcing the food industry to change its labelling, packaging and ingredients.

Does anyone seriously dispute that the slippery slope is real, or that this was not always the next 'logical step'?



5 comments:

Dick Puddlecote said...

Nope.

Been saying it for years, and it seems CAMRA are starting to wake up to that fact now, according to the Curmudgeon.

I told them over a year ago on their own forum but they wouldn't have it. F2C told them three years ago and they wouldn't have it.

I'll just keep saying it ... you can't pick and choose which liberties you are prepared to defend. It's all or nothing.

Anonymous said...

Just a note on life expectancy.

Life expectancy reports are usually obtained via the UN and the WHO. So, we're led to believe that people in communist Cuba have a longer lifespan than people in the US or UK.

Communist nations have a nasty tendency to lie a lot.

Filmmaker Michael Moore made a movie a couple of years ago where he sold the idea that health care delivery is better in Cuba.

Well, here's a site from Cuban refugees that paints a very different picture.

http://www.therealcuba.com/

Most people die when they are either very young or very old. On the young end of spectrum, even Western nations have different standards for applying infant mortality. This factors into the life expectancy discrepancies between nations.

Anonymous said...

Camra are another group who may be waking up and smelling the coffee.
United we stand divided we fall.

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