Never let it be said that public health campaigners attack smokers
Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 15:02 Girls with dreams don't smoke. Or vape, apparently.
According to Hellnanny (aka Virginia Hale):
The delightful Social Change UK have come up with a new campaign, one so hideously warped and imperious that one ponders the fact if it were a group of people other than vapers and smokers being singled out that it wouldn't somehow fall foul of our ridiculous "hate speech" laws, never mind the fact it is funded by the state.
It is essentially a hate campaign which tells girls they are worthless and will never amount to anything if they smoke or use an electronic cigarette. If these posters said the same of girls who have, for example, underage sex no doubt the left would be up in arms decrying the campaign as "slut shaming". It's double standards, not doubles, all round for these awful people.
I won't add to what Virginia has said other than point you in the direction of another anti-smoking message that was brought to my attention by Pat Nurse a couple of weeks ago. She sent me an email that read:
I had to go to a secondary school on a job and I was absolutely shocked to see a huge poster on the classroom wall that was really personally abusive to smokers. It was designed by the British Heart Foundation and had their logo on it.
By all means schools should warn that smoking [Pat's emphasis] can give you heart disease, cancer, COPD, other health related problems in a bid to put young people off smoking, but to do so by using bullying personal abuse against smokers, in my opinion, teaches kids how to hate, is wrong and would be illegal for any other minority social or consumer group.
The poster Pat was referring to has been around for several years. It's surprisingly hard to find online but I eventually tracked down a copy on this "health promotion" website.
Thankfully a letter in the New Statesman (dated May 28, 2009) offers a fitting retort:
"As I passed a well-known chemist in Bristol today, I was stunned and offended by a poster on the front door, declaring: 'Bad breath, stained teeth, clothes stink, bad skin, always broke. Conclusion = smoker'.
"I went in and made a complaint. An overweight staff member, with an overweight customer, defended the wording. So I put it to both these large ladies that if there was a poster declaring, 'Greedy, lazy, sweaty, smelly clothes, greasy skin, often depressed. Conclusion: Obese person', would they find those words appropriate to describe an overweight person such as they?
"Guess what? They told me they found 'my' words offensive."
Anyway, on the subject of "offensive" messages, I was mildly amused to see this tweet from ASH today:
`Smoking is ugly` face painting by @crazyarthouse pic.twitter.com/O7Jlai6SPv
— ASH (@ASH_LDN) September 23, 2014
This is the same organisation that insists, on its website, "We do not attack smokers or condemn smoking."
I believe them (cough). Millions don't.
Reader Comments (7)
Alleged charities ASH and BHF should lose their charitable status for hate campaigning. I don't think hard working people's tax or consumer tax should be used to promote abuse and pay these bullies' salaries.
So labour want to pay for more Doctors by taxing the tobacco companies.
Presumably this won't cost consumers a penny. Oh no my mistake it will all be paid for by consumers.
No change there then.
I wonder how long before they run out of money that they then go for Big Alcohol and Big Food taxes - for the sake of the children of course, the ones deemed too stupid at 16 to make informed decisions on .the use of legitimate consumer products, yet intellectual enough to understand the complexities of politics and the voting system because they might vote Labour.
The hypocrisy is astounding. Labour has gone completely insane. They'll take politics left of North Korea.
Reality government made it legal to bully smokers . Almost to the point of being criminals and now they are starting on vapers , using our own kids and a whole lot of lies . They don't even look at the safeness of vaping It is the number one thing to use to quit smoking that works . But in doing so ,it takes money away from big companies and to the government and them , that's the most important thing ,not people health . And that is REALITY !!
Maybe if you stopped trying to distinguish yourselves from smokers, and joined with us loud and proud to demand we all enjoy free choice, we might, together, get the bullies to back off whether vaping is "safer" than smoking or not and for some of us it isn't.
Yes, well said, Pat.
Cigarette smokers take the liberties of bystanders more often than not every day by the thousands, and destroy the environment with butt litter too.