really just boils down to “get it out of my face you asshat” combined with the math of where the most people are going to be. go stand in your damn field with lots of wind defusing it. XD
Indeed. I guess not everyone :-). (And a pleasure to meet you as well.)
My belief is based on my personal experience: when Toronto was having the battles about banning smoking in restaurants a few decades ago, I have to say that the nominal reason (protecting employees, customers could go elsewhere) was about number 5 on the argument list below the smell customers had to endure, causing people to quit because it was inconvenient, etc., etc.
It was one of my first introduction to the concept of “there are the “reasons” and then there are the reasons.”
It was illustrative to my younger self in six foot letters. As I mentioned, the only clearer example I’ve seen is US Federal environment regulation which to my great surprise wasn’t nominally about protecting people from all pollution. (I’m not an American, so I was slow on the uptake.)
Excellent find! Thanks for looking it up.
The report is interesting, although the “summary” is 22 pages! I certainly agree that there are lots of reasons why youth start smoking. But in terms of direct actions that can be taken to prevent, I notice that they basically go with “everything”.
To me, this is never a good sign, in that it signals a report that has too many inputs to risk actually alienating potential allies by pointing out that effectiveness of different measures can vary greatly. (Agreed, there is a chance that perhaps they just all happen to be equally effective, or it’s just too hard to measure effectiveness, but I’m highly suspicious.)
My take on preventing youth smoking is from people and articles on an Ontario campaign from about 30 years ago. Thus my info is way more local and thus prone to individual biases, but also unfiltered. It pretty much came down to nothing they could do in the short term outside of persuading the provincial government to increase taxes had a significant effect on youth smoking rates.
Now, this predated non-smoking basically everywhere, and I would imagine that probably had a major effect, but I remember her observations on PSAs and education. Basically, it stopped people who weren’t going to smoke from smoking. (Note, this doesn’t mean it prevented no-one, but she was strongly against the “it can’t hurt” camp.
Her comments about public health campaigns taught me about warning overload. You only get 5 minutes of people’s attention. If you are going to save dozens of people’s lives, don’t bother with warnings, because it means warnings that can save thousands will be ignored.
I remember it well because it went against everything I believed at the time (information is power!). She, on the other hand, had to deal with real people.
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That’s like saying “only a small percent of deaths are caused by murder, so we shouldn’t be focusing on stopping murderers.”
I smoke.
I pay tax twice.
That road you drive on? I paid for that.
Your child’s school. Same thing. You’re welcome.
Smokers are nobly self-sacrificing for the common good. Their final health bill isn’t close to the amount they pay in taxes.
This is all about passing a law that allows corporations to begin to tell you what to do in your own home. They use smoking as the initial excuse. Then ‘function creep’ starts and we face a nightmare future. One where crazy scenarios are possible; Blood tests indicate you’re more likely to get cancer or health issues than potential new employee B.
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