But there was more to this shindig that promoting pharmaceutical nicotine products. There was turning the screw on smokers, for example, including this...
Smokefree play parks: Changing the cultural normResearch and evidence show that parental and peer smoking are the biggest contributors to children initiating smoking [I thought it was 'glitzy' packs? - CJS]. Some studies show that children are twice as likely to start smoking before the age of 13 if one of their parents smokes. Smokefree Play Parks is just the first step in introducing outdoor smokefree environments where families can enjoy fresh air and reduce the exposure of negative role models to their children.
Smokefree South West is working with partners to introduce voluntary smoking bans in play parks.
Even within the twisted logic of tobacco control, this is a non-sequitur. Children of smokers are more likely to become smokers, but this cannot be solely, or even largely, attributed to them seeing their parents smoke (they both self-evidently come from the same socio-economic group, for example). Even if it was the result of them witnessing parental smoking, forcing parents to refrain from smoking in play parks is not going to make a jot of difference. But then, as they say, this is "just the first step".
More fundamentally, these state-funded* bigots believe that the very existence of smoking is intolerable and that smokers must be kept out of sight of respectable people whenever possible. This is the 'logical next step' after removing smoking from TV and the movies. It is an Orwellian as the phrase "voluntary ban".
Meanwhile, tobacco control is desperately trying to get around the fact that half a million people have signed the petition against plain packaging. Somebody has claimed that he witnessed one of the agency workers who collected the signatures for Hands Off Our Packs writing out fake names and addresses. Who was this concerned citizen? Step forward Andrew Black, head of tobacco control at the Department of Health. What a small world! Dick Puddlecote, Nannying Tyrants and Taking Liberties have more on that.
* This presentation was made by a representative of the Department of Health's über-sockpuppet Smokefree Southwest.
Godber, 1975: “…but we ought to have reached a position where a relatively few addicts still use cigarettes, but only in private at most in the company of consenting adults.” (see Godber Blueprint)
ReplyDeleteDaube, 2012: “Extending restrictions on smoking in any environment so that it essentially becomes a practice only for consenting adults in private.”
http://theconversation.edu.au/bring-on-the-end-of-tobacco-use-but-not-a-total-ban-tomorrow-8881
Godber, 1975: “Godber referred to the nonsmoker issue, saying that atmospheric tobacco smoke can be harmful to those who are compromised, i .e ., asthmatics . According to Godber, only a few suffer real physical harm but no one should be allowed to do something that "inconveniences others ." Nor should people be allowed to lead children astray by smoking in their presence .” (See Godber Blueprint)
Conference, 2012: “…. reduce the exposure of negative role models to their children.”
These are all [fake] moralizing statements. Smoking is viewed as “immoral” and should be removed from public view with the ultimate goal of eradicating the habit altogether due, particularly, to social pressure [produced by inflammatory propaganda].
It should be noted that the current crusade, just like the bulk of previous crusades, has been a moralizing, social engineering, eradication-of-the-habit/prohibitionist crusade from the outset. But there were very few takers for the zealotry in the 1970s. People still had some sensibility about what fanaticism/zealotry/extremism sounds like and a distaste for social-engineering crusades a là eugenics. So the fanatics concocted secondhand smoke “danger”, claiming that attempts to curb smoking were ONLY to “protect” nonsmokers from secondhand smoke “danger”. It has all been a lie, a contorted means to a contorted end.
Do we remember the Mass Debater, Rollo of Nincompoop Land, declaring, “What’s the problem? All smokers have to do is go outside to have a cigarette”. Well, we ain’t seen anything of the Mass Debater since the fanatics also started pressing for outdoor bans that obviously have nothing to do with secondhand smoke “danger”. There was an example just last week from Australia where smoking has also been banned at public BBQ sites.
It has always been a [fake] moralist crusade, masqueraded for a time as protecting nonsmokers from SHS “danger”. With just a few decades of State/Pharma-sponsored brainwashing, whatever sensibility people may have had in the 1970s is gone. The fanatics can now openly moralize with the same sanctimony as in the 1970s, but this time without question, that smoking bans are to “protect” children from having the “undesirable” (immoral) behavior of smoking reinforced as “normal”….. lest The Children™ be “led astray” and possibly become one of those “abhorrent, terrible role model” smokers.
What should be apparent is that the fanatics hold a perverse, shallow world view, a perverse definition of health (physicalism, biological reductionism), a perverse “science” (statisticalism), a perverse methodology (propaganda/denormalization), and a perverse obsession with control. The fanatics are pathological liars. They are really not in a position to be moralizing about anything. Yet here we are being “morally” directed by well-paid miscreants.
Only more dangerous than zealots/extremists is their partnering with vested financial interests. There are a number of players raking in the loot…. Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching – Big Government with extortionate taxes on tobacco, the fanatics who want their cut of the loot to further “educate” the public, and Gigantic Pharma with its useless/dangerous “smoking cessation” wares.
These sanctimonious buffoons should be hit over the head with the Godber/WHO Blueprint. With outdoor smoking bans and denial of housing and medical treatment for [non-comforming] smokers, it’s now impossible to lie about the intent of Tobacco Control. The fanatics are now OBVIOUSLY doing what they set out to do back in the 70s and have been lying about throughout.
For some further insight into the Pharma-dominated “conferences”, here’s a recent one from the USA. Check out some of the themes – e.g., university campus bans, apartment bans, more effective “targeting” and tactics. It’s all quite sickening. But it’s all just grand…. dandy… with the Public Health™ cocktail-sipping, conference-hopping, social-engineering clique better known as the Tobacco Control Industry or, more appropriately, the Tobacco Control Unintelligentsia:
ReplyDeletehttps://nctoh.confex.com/nctoh/2012/webprogrampreliminary/meeting.html
http://www.cvent.com/events/2012-national-conference-on-tobacco-or-health/custom-129-2cc35f5581774ad78c86ea1b9b467c5d.aspx
I'll reduce the "exposure of negative role models for children" if they let me smoke in a child free environment...a pub perhaps?
ReplyDeleteFurther to Peter's comment. Before the smoking ban and the demonisation of smokers we would not have reports and photographs of Wayne Rooney, Bradley Wiggins, Cheryl Cole, Simon Cowell, Barrack Obama, Nick Clegg, David Cameron, Prince Charles' wife and, in Saturday's Times, the Duchess of Cambridge - all smoking. How much is that advertising worth?
ReplyDelete