h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Doctors can change their collective minds too - a brief history
On October 15, 1492, Christopher Columbus was offered dried tobacco leaves as a gift from the American Indians that he encountered.

Soon after, sailors brought tobacco back to Europe, and the plant was being grown all over Europe.

The major reason for tobacco's growing popularity in Europe was its supposed healing properties. Europeans believed that tobacco could cure almost anything, from bad breath to cancer!

In 1571, A Spanish doctor named Nicolas Monardes wrote a book about the history of medicinal plants of the new world. In this he claimed that tobacco could cure 36 health problems.


& a government example too
In 1632, 12 years after the Mayflower arrived on Plymouth Rock, it was illegal to smoke publicly in Massachusetts.

;^)#

Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. This discussion could go round and round for ever without resolution if we're not careful. Allow me to summarise so far:-
None of us smoke, or actually approve of smoking. We pretty much accept the detrimental health benefits as a given. The negative effects of smoking upon Society, either through passive smoking or through the increased health care burden, are also accepted as a given. OK, so what are we debating? I think we need to distinguish between the morality and legality of the issue. Morally, it is wrong for a smoker to inflict his/her smoke onto others. Morally, it is wrong for tobacco companies to promote their wares to children. Legally, however, smoking in public is allowed, and Freedom of Expression is a Fundamental Human Right. If the activity is legal, consistency dictates that promoting that activity is a Fundamental Human Right. If the Electorate decides, through its Government, to oulaw the activity, then promotion becomes illegal. To outlaw the promotion without outlawing the activity is a breach of Freedom of Expression.
Personally I'd love to see smoking banned in public places, as my wife and son both have asthma. But until such time as it is banned, I have to defend the tobacco companies' RIGHT to advertise.

BTY, how can I get those little smiley faces to appear on my entries?

They started it. They invaded Poland.

Nobody is stopping the tobacco companies from promoting their wares. But mass-media advertising, i.e. advertising aimed at those who do not already smoke, is (rightly) banned or heavily curtailed, on the grounds that increasing the number of smokers is highly undesirable (xcept to the tobacco firms)

Smoking in many public places is now also banned, also rightly, on the grounds that no other drug can be administered without consent, so nicotine should not be an exception. And the cancer thing, of course.

But nobody is stopping smokers form buying their coffin nails, smoking them in private or in the open air, or preventing tobacco firms from trying to pinch each others customers through targeted mailings and so on. Which, in my view, is exactly as it should be.

Oh,. and if you type : - ) without the spaces, you'll get a smiley , 8 - ) gets and ; - ) gets . : - ( gets

Who's morality? Yours or mine or someone sitting in government? I think half the laws in these modern days are highly immoral. I also think it's completely immoral for someone to say, "Since society deems it 'bad' you must not do it, even if it hurts no one." ... Put it bluntly, I don't give a rat's @$$.

Smoke kills.. yeah.

My great-grandfather smoked all his life, and sure enough it killed him... at 98.

His daughter, however, never smoked at -all- in her life. She lived in a smoke-free house for most of it (she lived with her non-smoking mother). She died of cancer (the third round of it) at age 56.

I say again. Research causes cancer in lab rats.

Oh I can tell the difference & you can tell the difference - the point is that the frenzied mob (including politicians looking for votes) that constituted the 'public outcry' couldn't & that proves that a 'public outcry' for whatever has no credibility in the argument.

Bowel cancer? - lets see - I'm sure that bowel cancer must be related to stuff we eat so we'd better ban food advertising for the public good - we shouldn't ban it coz the government derives far too much income from it.


;^)#

Well actually, I thought the argument was about the validity of banning tobacco advertising. My view is that if its legal to sell it should be legal to advertise. Just zis Guy disagrees due to tobacco being bad for you (to summarise) & those around you. - The second hand smoke issue was a bit of a sideline.


;^)#
progress encourages thread drift

That's exactly what I've been looking for. You mean they really make TVs like that? I've been annoyed by this whole phenomenon for quite some time now and I mean, a simple compressor/limiter would do the job. I've considered building one into the set myself but the producer wouldn't send me the needed schema's. You know of any brands+types that have this functionality?

Oh, that old chestnut. "My uncle smoked 3,000 fags a day and lived to be 720" - yes there are a few people who can survive smoke. There are people who can survive the ingestion of cyanide in quite large quantities, but I wouldn't advise tryibg it to see if you are one.

The fact remains: take the population and split it into two groups, one which smokes (S) and one which doesn't (NS).

On average NS will have a life expectancy around ten years greater, will be less likely to suffer heart disease and greatly less likely to suffer lung cancer. Which is why health insurance costs more if you smoke. But rehashing this argument is futile, as it has now been accepted by just about every government in the world, and also by the tobacco firms, which is why they are not suing the asses off the governments which make them print health warnings on the packets.

Not quite that simple. It's much rarer in Japan, so it would seem to have something to do with the difference in diets. No proof yet of exactly what - salt, fats, read meat - but people are working on it.

Anyway, I'm against frenzied mobs. A frenzied mob insisted on handguns being banned after dunblane, when Lord Cullen recommended that one key compnenet be kept by a trusted third party off-range.

The ban on cigarette advertising ios not the work of a frenzied mob. It's the culmination of years of work by public health officials and doctors, against the massive corporate FUD machine of the tobacco firms. The idea of tobacco firms as some kind of virtuous oppressed minority is slightly less credible than the Freedom to Innovate Network, which is itself so credulity-stretching that anybody who believes in it is probably waiting right now for that nice man to deliver the Brooklyn Bridge they bought for $12,000 cash last week.

It's legal to sell tobacco. It's legal to promote it in a number of ways. It's not legal to try and persuade more people to smoke, because the tobacco firms are fundamentally better at persuading kids it's cool to smoke than governments are at informing them that it's also dangerous.

- Smoking kills. It shortens life. There is no doubt about this: the statistical evidence is overwhelming, to the point where it is the first lifestyle question an actuary wants answered when underwiting a personal policy. Actuaries are not in the business of persuasion, they are in the business of quantifing risk. No matter how many people insist their granny smoked like a chimney all her life and died at the age of 98 falling off her unicycle crossing the Niagara Falls, the hard fact is that the more you smoke, the sooner you are likely to die.

- Smoking is undesirable. It is undesirable because it causes damage to health, not limited to the person who smokes. This is pretty much common ground: even the pro-smoking organisations now seem to agree that non-smokers have a right not to have smoke forced on them. If it wasn't undesirable, how come so many people try and fail to give up?

- Young people are attracted to glamorous images. That includes, for example, Formula 1 racing cars.

And the crucial bit:

- The tobacco firms know this. They are big businesses. They know their products kill their customers, and they need a steady stream of new smokers to keep making money. That's why they are expanding rapidly in the Third World, where the heat is not yet on, and why they advertise. If you are a big firm you do not burn millions sponsoring a motor racing team unless there is some gain in it for you. Neither do you make charitable donations to advertising agencies and poster site companies.

Tobacco firms tell you it's all about persuading people to switch brands, "like soap powder." Bollocks. Everybody uses soap powder, so the only way to expand your market is to nick someone elses customers. Not everybody smokes. Unless new smokers come along, the industry is as dead as a lung cancer victim. That's why they don't tell you how many ways they are still allowed to promote their product. They are still allowed mailshots, point-of-sale promotion and so on. Some brands still print the Royal Warrant on their packaging. The only thing they are bitching about is that they are no longer allowed to egage in mass-market advertising aimed at attracting new smokers.

They know their product is addictive, and that if you can just give peer pressure a helping hand and get kids to start smoking, they'll be hooked, probably for life. Giving up smoking is so hard that there's a whole industry in products devoted to helping you stop.

How about if it does hurt other people?

Thanks for the smiley face advice. As for the great debate, I'm not sure I'm reading anything new. How about this:- are roll-ups, cigarettes, cigars and pipes equally vile, or are there grades to these things? How about chewing tobacco? How about smoking some other substance. Now there's a thought. Wouldn't the entire smoking issue be less contentious if there was a benign alternative? Any ideas, anyone?

Smoked tobacco is all lumped together, pretty much, and chewing tobacco and its derivitives have been pretty much out in the cold since the Skoal Bandits thing. Now those suckers were *really* nasty.

I know they were advertising them some time back. Not sure of the details, but I would imagine Philips has one.

I've done my share of watching adverts over the years and have formed a healthy antagonism toward them (actually, there's an annual festival of the world's best commercials that comes to a neighbourhood cinema that I actually PAY to watch...though I rarely see those ads...) anyway:

I use the mute button on those rare occasions that I watch telly. There's been a dramatic increase in the number of ads placed in "60" minute shows (that's in quotes because the actual running time of the shows used to be 52 minutes and is currently 47 minutes, and I've just read that producers are now looking at maintaining their revenue as the cost of shows rises, so they now want to chop more show-time out and put more commercials in) so we have an average of 3-4 minutes of commercials to wade through during breaks: that's usually 5 commercials.

The intensity of the commercials differs according to locality, too. About 10 years ago, I went with holidaying with a friend to California. On the outskirts of Hollywood, we turned on t.v. to find out what American in America was like. It was like a mugging; hard-selling at its best. The ads were far stronger than what I was used to in Vancouver.

Of course, the best part of watching ads with the mute on is seeing how effective or sensible the ad is without sound. I've seen some unintentionally hilarious ads because of this.

Fruitbat

"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason." --unknown, I got it from someone's sig.

Its taken me ages to find this post in the middle of the thread.