How’s the war against smoking going?
Like any war, Becky sees the war against smoking as having its foot soldiers (the activists) and its generals (members of WHO, the American Cancer Society, Heart Foundation and Lung Foundation); an enemy (Big Tobacco) and the enemy’s foot soldiers (the hapless smokers); a battleground (the media, workplaces, schools, public spaces, etc); and an aim – to legislate to make smoking history.
“Most of the battles in the war against smoking were between activists and smokers,” says Becky. “The fanatic useful idiot activists did a magnificent job attracting media attention to their cause – but it was the more skilled activists who actually did the smooth talking that influenced legislators to adopt the WHO’s directives.”
“These skilled activists were garnered from the professions - teachers, doctors and health professionals,” explains Becky. “With the opportunity to join the WHO gravy train – and undoubtedly a better job than they had already – they were easily persuaded to join the cause as political lobbyists.”
“Private companies were also targeted to implement anti-smoking policy irrespective of legislation and became ‘models’ for more and more private companies for follow,” says Becky. “At that time, before smoker discrimination became sanctioned by government, banning employment to smokers was illegal (but, like all discrimination, it was never written down as policy and many smokers suffered illegal discrimination).”
“Support was also drawn from other activist issues - environmental groups had a natural affiliation with anti-smoking because of their interest in air pollution,” says Becky, “and citizen groups, motivated by the secondhand smoke propaganda, were also a fertile area for support - militant anti-smoking citizen groups such as New Jersey’s GASP started appearing as early as 1974.”
“Newsletters linked local groups to international groups and were used effectively to network and initiate ideas such as special days and events for smoke-free occasions which invariably made the news,” says Becky, “but the most effective tactic, by far, was promoting law suits.”
“Once individual citizens initiated law suits against tobacco companies seeking to prove product liability for sickness and death – and won – the avoidance of similar law suits by private companies and governments became obvious because they had a duty of care to protect employees and the public at large from tobacco smoke.”
“It helped, too, that ‘duty of care’ and ‘occupational safety and health’ hearings were heard by authorities stacked with anti-smoking stooges,” says Becky. “ASH founder John Banzhaf’s lawsuit of 1994 against OSHA was withdrawn in 2001 due to ‘perceived high-jacking of due process’, but Richard Daynard - a professor of public health and a staunch anti-smoker - managed to wangle a new ASHRAE standard relating to indoor ETS in 1999 while he was a member of that organization!”
“By referring to smoking as a ‘pandemic’ or a ‘scourge’ and inflating the harm done by it, especially to non-smokers, people were easily swayed to the anti-smoking cause,” says Becky. “And, by shifting the emphasis - from the harm smokers do to themselves to the harm they do to others - the vast majority of non-smokers who were not bothered by smell or irritated by ETS suddenly became concerned about their health and their right to clean air.”
“This shift in emphasis was a brilliant move because up until then non-smokers and smokers alike saw the anti-smokers as crazy fanatics – now all non-smokers became one force against smokers.”
“Another good shift was to counter the anti-freedom argument used by Big Tobacco with the argument that society has the freedom to implement public health measures,” says Becky. “By cunningly promoting Big Tobacco as an evil profit seeker, the anti-smokers looked like innocent defenders of their freedom to breathe clean air and live a healthy life.”
“One of the biggest hurdles governments had to overcome in order to implement tobacco controls was the economic fallout - jobs will be lost, and tobacco revenue will diminish,” says Becky. “The anti-smokers had to agree to a phasing out agenda in order to allow farmers alternatives to tobacco growing, and governments time to find another revenue source (which they never really did).”
“Finally, the anti-smokers believed they had won the war on the basis of their claim that no civilized society hesitates in stopping the spread of an addictive killer like tobacco,” says Becky. “There was never any direct cause-and-effect relationship between tobacco, addiction and death, but by making the tobacco companies look evil it was pretty easy to convince society that tobacco control was a civilized thing to do.”
“As the old anti-smoking generals grow infirm and die off, the newer ones taking their places really don’t have much public support any more – the world has moved on to more important concerns,” says Becky. “And, because no government in a world heading for financial meltdown can exist without revenue from smokers, the war against smoking is definitely losing momentum – except, of course, for those hoping to crown their anti-smoking careers with a WHO appointment.”
Read more by Becky on this issue:
Labels: anti-smoking, Big Tobacco, ETS, gasp, John Banzhaf, Richard Daynard, smoking, war against smoking
<< Home