Stigmatising smokers
Friday, November 6, 2015 at 12:01 Forest's John Mallon is in Dublin this week asking the question, 'Are smokers second class citizens?'
Yesterday he was on Newstalk, Ireland's national independent talk radio station, in discussion with Professor Luke Clancy of the Tobacco Free Research Institute.
The item was introduced on the back of a study published this week that suggested public health policies targeted at smokers may stigmatise them and, in the process, make it harder for people to quit.
Interesting to hear Clancy admit that, "Stigmatisation might not be a good thing." Denormalisation, however, is OK, I assume.
To listen to the discussion in full click here. It ends with a text from a listener, aka 'Smokey Joe' who wrote, "It's about time someone started sticking up for smokers. Thank you, Newstalk."
I think he means Forest, unless he's thanking Newstalk for broadcasting the item.
Next week John will move on to some of Ireland's regional towns and cities. His pitch includes this heartfelt plea:
“I have loved, cared for and supported my children all my life. Now they're being encouraged to think of me as someone like a drunk driver - someone to be ostracised and despised - simply because I'm a smoker. My children are encouraged to see me as weak, addicted, costly and inconsiderate. I am none of those things and I resent the fact that my own government sees me as such.
"We have complied with every regulation, restriction and limitation, but we are no longer willing to accept that, as a group, we are bad people responsible for all the problems of society. It's time the government started treating us as citizens with rights, just like everyone else."
See Smokers: Ireland's second class citizens? (Forest Eireann)
Reader Comments (5)
John Mallon makes some very good points and offers some pointers on how to confront Tobacco Control (TC) measures. He suggests it is the government that is doing these things to smokers. The government introduces policies, many proposed by TC, but they are enforced by ordinary people. Hopefully appealing to ordinary people will have more effect.
Has Appeal to 'fair play' worked in the past? So far the majority of people have just let the smokerphobics carry on. Tackling each issue one by one has, as John illustrates, lead to a situation where, even though smokers have complied, more and more anti-smoking restrictions have been applied. People have just allowed this drift, reminding them how far may have an effect.
Has scientific evidence helped? Not so far. The exaggerations have continued. Complaints to the press complaints commission are not upheld because anything is fair game in the race to become 'smokefree'.
Tobacco Control has called for and enabled governments to implement smoking restrictions. TC is not a political ideology, it uses any government to peruse it's agenda. It draws from puritanism yet seems rooted in some sort of smokerphobism. TC is a worldview or Weltanschauung using control and incremental steps to move towards a 'smokefree' society.
If we accept 'smokefree' as the 'endgame' and that the TC worldview is determining where we are heading, it will happen and many will suffer. It would be better to get it over and done with to reduce this suffering.
All the arguments based on freedom, adult choice, economics etc have and will be brushed aside. Laws have been made to stop the glamourising of tobacco, treaties (FCTC) signed that stop anyone arguing for alternatives.
Smoking has been banned outside, with only moralising used as an excuse, Smoking has been banned in psychiatric hospitals causing suffering yet to 'help' people. Smoking will be banned in prisons but who cares about prisoners. Grandchildren are denied access to grandparents who smoke creating family divisions.
Working within the framework set by the TC worldview will not change anything. TC has morphed from a few smokerphobics to something beyond an ideology, it is now a Weltanschauung that has undermined science, economics, ethics, relationships and more
John Mallon is trying a more direct approach. In addition, maybe a new vocabulary is needed?
I don't agree that stigmatising us makes it harder to quit but the bullying behind it makes us more rebellious and determined to keep on smoking as it is now the only choice we have because the choice to quit is no longer ours to make.
As Christiano Ronaldo said : "Your love makes me stronger. Your hate makes me unstoppable" and let's face it, those of us at the end of this public health thuggery know it's clearly about hate. People don't socially exclude nor create discriminatory laws for people they like.
It isn't true that quitting is hard or else millions would not have quit. Many did it overnight because they made the choice to quit and no longer wanted to smoke.
It only becomes hard to quit smoking if the choice is someone else's that is forced upon the smoker.
We must stop pandering to and accepting this promotion of legitimate consumers as "pathetic addicts" and John is right - we are none of the derogatory things that Big Tobacco Control says we are.
'Are smokers second class citizens?'
It’s antismokers that depict those who smoke as second-class citizens, as “deviants”. The point that should be made is that antismokers view themselves as “superior”. It’s the overriding antismoker delusion.
Antismoking isn’t new. It has a long, sordid, at times very violent, 400+ year history. There were antismoking crusades long before the large tobacco companies came on the scene. There were antismoking crusades long before the mass-produced cigarette. There were antismoking crusades long before movies and mass media. There were antismoking crusades long before attempts, however bastardized, at scientific investigation of smoking. There were antismoking crusades long before the recent concoction of secondhand smoke “danger” [The term “passive smoking”, without basis, was coined during the N#zi era].
The common theme over those 400+ years is the extent to which rabid antismokers will lie to rationalize their incoherent hatred of smoke/smokers/smoking. Hostility, violence, cruelty, bigotry, neuroses, megalomania, pathological lying, a “god complex” – antismoking has it all. There’s more than ample evidence over the last few centuries that the rabid antismoking mentality (misocapny) is a significant mental disorder. Yet here we are again.
My kids all see me as a fighter. They are all well educated and can see through the ridiculous lies of SHS.
Isn't it such a shame that all parties follow the money rather than common sense. It's costing the taxpayer millions.
Smokers certainly are not secondhand citizens nor should they be libeled, stigmatized or persecuted. The extreme hate fostered by tobacco control against citizens pursuing a legal activity is wrong. The fact that it is sanctioned and funded by governments that are obliged to protect all citizens is an atrocity.