Let’s beat up smokers and feel good!

From  an obscure (to us in the UK) local rag called the Charleston Daily Fail Mail in the USA comes this piece from their columnist and blogger Don Surber. A piece which I cant fathom whether it is tongue in cheek, ironic (yeah, I know, the Americans can’t do irony) or just downright incitement to hatred and violence toward the much maligned and humble smoker. I cannot take the piece to seriously but for the fact that there is much that is truthful in it.

Well, 80 percent of the adult population in America does not smoke and that makes us feel better about ourselves.
Every society has a caste system of some sort. And there is always somebody at the bottom who the rest of us dump on.
We chose smokers.

Well he got that right, we smokers, as consumers who prop up the economy of every country in the world, can smell the stench of that dump on our heads. He goes on to say:

Television networks weaned themselves from tobacco ads over the next seven years, and eventually magazines did as well.
Gradually smokers became the most reviled group in America. We pushed them outdoors, in the rain, to smoke.
To be sure, the anti-smoking effort was the biggest and most successful public health initiative since the polio vaccine.
The population has doubled, but the number of smoking-related deaths continues to be around 450,000 people a year. (My emphasis.)

Besides, beating up smokers is fun sport.

Looking through the rest of Surbers text I’m slowly getting the idea that he is slating the anti smoker movement but he does like any other ‘journalist’ does when writing about this subject, he quotes from the anti smokers mantra about 450,000 smokers dying through smoking related diseases without querying those figures?

He says that the American population has doubled and the anti smoking fraternity say their anti smoking laws have seen a significant drop in smoking prevalence??? The last link is from 2007 but I have to assume that tobacco control advocates will say today that smoking prevalence is still dropping and their work is nearly done, now on to the next stage! Well they would say that, wouldn’t they!

That said Surber gets to the reason why he wrote the above, the imminent diktat from the Obama government that stronger fake pictures will be forced on the American smoker to ‘nudge’ them into the submission of tobacco control.

The Food and Drug Administration just ordered tobacco companies to put ghoulish images on their cigarette packs as a warning to smokers of the dire consequences that are possible if you smoke.

This seems to be more about humiliating a group of people than getting anyone to quit.

So why does the FDA not simply ban smoking? Smokers have had two generations to rid themselves of the habit. (My emphasis.)

That last paragraph says it all. One or two of F2C’rs on the forum have suggested that we demand that our government bans the sale of tobacco outright knowing full well that they, the government of the day, don’t have the balls and would rather take the easy route of demonising the smoker, even to the extent of violence against them. 

Watch the black and white, and silent,  CCTV footage of the latest shooting which left one smoker dead and another smoker in hospital with a 50/50 survival rate.

Besides, society needs smokers, because they pay hefty taxes to the government.
Smokers are cash cows.

Please also read page two of this article, it’s well worth reading.

H/T to jredheadgirl.

Google Tags: Lets beat up smokers, Denormalisation, Double standards, Hate crimes against smokers funded by anti smoking lobby