Stop this nanny state - video

Imperial Tobacco has now released a video to support its No Nanny State campaign in Australia.

Click here.

See also: Wizards of Oz - Big Tobacco fights back

Comments

[Misty]

First Philip Morris with their "ideservetobeheard" site, and now Imperial Tobacco, too. So there really is still some life left in Big Tobacco. It's good to see, but I can't help but think that Oz is really too far gone to be saved - an Aussie friend of mine says that people are far more brainwashed by all the anti-smoking rhetoric there than they are here.

C'mon PM, Imperial, and BAT - let's have some of yer action here in the UK, too!

[Junican]

Well, 'yes' and 'no', Misty. The reality is that the Aussie hysteria regarding smoking must be allowed to run its course and be allowed to collapse under its own weight and that is what is happening. If there is one really important thing that Tobacco Compamies could do, in order to stop being slowly eradicated, it would be to to 'bring it on'. That is, to decide to cease trading in Australia.
Do these organisations have the courage to do so?
It would be simple to say: "No, they do not have the courage", but that idea is too simple.

The reality is that the policitians are playing a game. Tobacco Companies know this. Politicians do not actually give a damn, regardless of what they might say. Here today and gone tomorrow,

Is it not wonderful, from a politician's point of view, to have a super distraction from the really, really important things in the 'body politic'?

What a mess!

[Misty]

I see what you’re saying, Junican. I guess I’m just a bit cynical about the tobacco companies in the light of their deafening silence in the run-up to the ban in the UK and countless other countries, and the cynic in me wonders whether they’ve chosen Australia as a guaranteed dead duck, knowing that the number of smokers who still have enough gumption to protest is tiny and that the brainwashing and hostility amongst non-smokers is pretty much impregnable, in order to try and say to the rest of the world “look at us – we are still capable of putting up at least a bit of a fight for our customers” whilst knowing that, having chosen Oz, it won’t actually amount to any real change – thus keeping the politicians happy that they are still the good, compliant little companies that they’ve always been in the past. A game, as you say.

But then I accept that I am almost as cynical about Big Tobacco as I am about the many organisations who have aligned themselves to the anti-smoking cause – successive Governments, the pub companies, the independent pub trade, Big Pharma, the NHS etc. And no-one would be more delighted than me if I were to be proved wrong ….!

[Jesper Sorensen]

When drinking a beer starts producing a chemical toxic plume to be inhaled by the person standing next to you (or 8 meters away) your comparitive nanny state arguement will hold water.

[Lyn]

Jesper Sorensen

I take it then that you do not dirve a vehicle or, indeed, advocate vehicles being around at all then. After all, they actually do produce toxic fumes and the slower they are driven the greater the toxicity produced as the fuel is not being burned efficiently.

Any indoor space is subject to harboring these fumes as they enter through open doors and windows and are far more deadly than any amount of cigarette smoke.

Apart from this, drinking beer, or any other alcoholic drink has been seen to be more deadly than smoking as those who over imbibe have caused the deaths of innocent people due to the affects of alcohol; no matter how much a person smokes, no amount of smoking causes a person to start a fight or be impaired whilst driving and thereby killing innocent people. The instances of deaths proven to be related to drink are far greater than those related to smoking. In fact, there are no cases recorded where smoking is the actual cause of death to any innocent party, or even to the smoker themselves.