All that has changed over the last couple of decades. We’ve been swamped by anti-smoking propaganda, anti-smoking legislation, and dire health warnings on everything to do with smoking. I’ve even seen at least two publishers’ submission guidelines require that a health warning be given on every page of a manuscript in which a character smokes! Smoking has become socially unacceptable in mainstream society, and anyone who still indulges is viewed as a fool at best, and a pariah at worst.
Now, maybe that isn’t entirely a bad thing since I’m not claiming that smoking is conducive to a long and healthy life, but that isn’t the point of this post. The point is this.
It occurred to me while this process was going on that adolescents would react very differently to it than adults would. Most adults want to belong to mainstream society, and are easily swayed in their habits by propaganda aimed at that section. Adolescents, on the other hand, are naturally inclined to rebel against the mainstream – especially since youth culture has become entrenched as a separate social group in its own right. Consequently, it doesn’t surprise me in the least when I read that the smoking of cigarettes is actually increasing among young people.
At first I thought this was just another example of the establishment – in this case represented by the government and the NHS – misunderstanding the workings of society and missing the boat as usual. But then I began to wonder.
The duty on tobacco is a major source of revenue to the exchequer. I heard a government minister only a few years ago speak out against smuggling by saying that the revenue from legal sales of cigarettes and tobacco virtually paid for the NHS. It seems apparent to me that no government would want to see it disappear; it simply isn’t in the national economic interest. So then I began to wonder whether the aiming of anti-smoking propaganda at the social mainstream was actually quite a clever ploy, maybe cooked up by the bright boys in the tobacco industry. It would work nicely in their favour by ensuring the next generation of tobacco sales, wouldn’t it? No doubt it will be claimed that the anti-smoking message is also being pushed at children in schools, but I would expect the effect of that to be at least limited, if not counter-productive, once the kids reach ‘break off point’ in adolescence.
So am I just being overly imaginative and inventing another wild conspiracy theory here? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.
4 comments:
Very interesting. I wouldn't be suprised. I know that when i was in school we were taught the dangers of smoking, but a lot of the dangers and side effects of long term smoking weren't talked about, and i never hear about them now as an adult. I worked for a durable medical equipment company and almost all our patients were on oxygen for COPD. I once attended a meeting with our respiratory therapist and a couple of drs about COPD and i learned so many things about what smoking does to your body that i'd never heard of before. Like causing the spine to curve and the ribs and chest to curve and "barrel" out, among other things. I always wondered why these symptoms were never discussed in school, on tv, etc. etc.
I think this is a huge subject that you could talk about all day. One of the ironies that strikes me is that we live in a culture determined to fill the body with man-made chemicals by one means or another, but we hear little about it. I once heard a scientist express the view, for example, that some of the chemicals in junk food might prove to be more harmful than smoking. Aspartame is routinely used as an artificial sweetener despite having been originally refused a licence by the American FDA because of the wide number of adverse medical conditions associated with it. Why only target tobacco?
Well, i know that tobacco is one of, if not the, number one cash crops in the US. The gross from tobacco is very important in some states, like North Carolina. I live there in Winston-Salem for a few years... where the RJ Reynolds Tobacco company is head-quartered. That is Where Winston cigs and Salem cigs and Camels and maybe a few other cigarettes are made. One of the high schools there was even named RJ Reynolds High. I thought that was just terrible.
When you get into learning about all the things in our food it gets really scary. Oh, and our medications, too. My fiance and i recently watched a documentary called Food Matters. It discussed what is in food and medicines and how so many illnesses can be treated by proper nutrition rather than medicines... about how MDs aren't educated about nutrition, that it is all really MEDICAL science... a lot in there about organic foods and vitamins and minerals... definitely worth checking out, unless you have a tendency toward paranoia.
I've been there, Andrea. I've been disturbed for years by the readiness with which doctors throw cocktails of medications at people, and I've noticed how many people complain these days days about the side effects. It seems the rule is that you go to the doctor with one complaint and simply replace it with three more. Even in Britain, which isn't quite as totally free market as America yet, NHS doctors still make some of their income from commissions on drug dispensing. I'm fortunate in having an old style doctor who sees through this. But here's the stupid thing. His wife also works in the practice and is an expert on herbal remedies, but she isn't alllowed to prescribe them because it breaches NHS guidelines. The pharmaceutical industry is one of my pet hates.
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