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| "There will be no more smoking!" |
1916
Lucy Page Gaston of the Anti-Cigarette League launches the slogan 'A smokeless America by 1925'.
1984
Surgeon General Koop launches the slogan 'A smoke-free society by the year 2000'.
2015
The Lancet: 'Experts call for a tobacco-free world by 2040'
Prohibitionists are nothing if not ambitious. Maybe this time will be different. There are plenty of starry-eyed zealots goose-stepping out the universities who would like to make it so, but I doubt it. Something that has been smoked for thousands of years is not going to disappear in 25 years. It could only happen if everybody decided they didn't want to smoke but, as Dick Puddlecote illustrates with a graph that says a thousand words, that ain't the case.
It certainly isn't going to happen if the authors of the Lancet fantasy get their way. They think too much time has been spent trying to reduce demand when they should be reducing supply. Reducing supply without reducing demand, what could go wrong?
I think it's much more likely that everybody will have seen through the 'public health' scam by 2040. The very term 'public health' will be something akin to a swear word and the handful of 'public health professionals' who are not dead or in prison will have invented some new euphemism for authoritarian prodnosery. They will be treated with mixture of pity and contempt, but mainly contempt.
Now there's something to work towards.
The only thing standing in their way are longstanding cultural practices, pesky legal hurdles, black marketeers, millions who actually enjoy tobacco use and derive benefits from it, and a growing number of people who hate their guts for the priggish overbearing scolds they are.
ReplyDelete1916
ReplyDeleteLucy Page Gaston of the Anti-Cigarette League launches the slogan 'A smokeless America by 2025'.
Chris, correction required. Gaston was more ambitious than that :) She was hoping for a smokeless America by 1925.
D'oj! Thanks. Have corrected. Incidentally, she died in 1924 of throat cancer.
ReplyDeleteEndgame (prohibition)
ReplyDeleteTobacco-free Scotland 2034
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2013/03/3766/3
UK Could Be A 'No Smoking Nation' By 2032
http://news.sky.com/story/979382/uk-could-be-a-no-smoking-nation-by-2032
Royal College of Physicians: Ending tobacco smoking by 2025
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/royal-college-of-physicians/article/royal-college-of-physicians-ending-tobacco-smoking-by-2025
Health ministers want tobacco-free Pacific by 2025
http://matangitonga.to/2014/07/16/health-ministers-want-tobacco-free-pacific-2025
The prohibitionist blather just goes on, and on…… and on…..
A better idea would be a "tobacco control free" society. These moves toward total prohibition are a house of cards. The data supporting the risks of tobacco--especially the risk of second hand smoke--has significant flaws which need to be exposed.
ReplyDeleteDoes Ruth Malone know about this?
ReplyDelete"TOBACCO CONTROL FREE SOCIETY" Yes!
ReplyDeleteHow about "A society free of public health by 2016"?
ReplyDeleteI would normally laugh this off. BUT, TC has gotten its way with pretty much everything they have asked for (taxes, indoor and outdoor bans, plain packaging). They are very well funded by pharma and shitheads like Bloomberg, and this is their dream moment that they have been masturbating over for the past 20 years at least. Because of their zeal and resources at their disposal, they just might succeed where the drug warriors and booze prohibitionists have failed,
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that might stop them is governments not wanting to give up the taxes they collect from tobacco.
I wish you were right, but unfortunately these people seem to want to add tobacco to the drug war. Even though the latter has not eradicated drug use, those who use drugs are likely to end up without a job, in jail, or dead because of prohibtion. The same will happen to anyone who won't get with their program in 2040.
ReplyDeleteI will be 69 then and am already planning to start collecting seeds to grow my own. I suggest everyone here start doing the same.
The last time a non-smoking master race tried to rule,it failed.
ReplyDeleteMaybe these guys will help them achieve that goal:
ReplyDeletehttp://m.ibtimes.com/isis-beheads-cigarette-smokers-islamic-state-deems-smoking-slow-suicide-under-sharia-1815192
Lefties really don't believe in personal agency, do they. The myriad prohibitionist/anti-freedom groups and individuals do their best to baffle with bullshit but the crux of their argument is always the same. (Hence the copycat 'blueprints' for prohibition and the intellectual stasis of the Left in general).
ReplyDeleteAnd so right-thinking people shouldn't be drawn into their game and bat statistics back and forth with them: the response should always simply be, "It's a matter of personal choice. Now piss off."