The new pornography
I found a new site last night.
No 2 Gruesome.
I have a shrewd idea as to who is behind it, and I wish him the best. I would be very tempted to order myself a set of labels for my baccy, but it would probably spoil the leather.
Now that site led me to another site set up by our good and benevolent friends in the EU.
The site has probably been around for quite a while, but I confess I hadn’t seen that page before, I tend not to visit EU sites for the sake of my health.
So now we have the new pornography lined up on the printing presses and ready to roll. Sadly they seem to have dropped my favourite one – the hypodemic nerdle – but have replaced it with a fine selection which I shall happily collect and dutifully paste into a scrapbook which I shall then sell on eBay – “Tobacco Porn – The Complete Edition”.
The one thing that stood out for me was their confidence. Smoking will cause all these diseases. There is no “maybe”, “may cause” or “be a contributory factor”. No, these are definitive, unambiguous statements of fact. Smoking will cause each and every one whether we like it or not.
Mind you, I’m a little confused over one point – if smoking causes impotence and infertility, how can a baby be conceived to later die in the womb? And once this dead baby is born surely it can’t be affected by smokers around it? And once it has somehow not survived all those hurdles it grows up to be a smoker? It really is a fucking miracle that any of us survived the last century?
Maybe they are right to be so definite in their prognosis? They are experts after all? Maybe we will all die of their predicted and gruesome diseases? This is of course the stuff of dreams in Tobacco Control? There is one thing they omit to mention…..
When?
It would be interesting to find out:
i) How many of those images were photoshopped.
ii) Of the ones that weren’t photoshopped (if any) how many of the subjects were actually smokers.
and iii) How many of those diseases pictured (again, if not photoshopped or done with make-up) were actually directly related to smoking.
Obviously the hospital scenes will have been posed by models / actors.
I’d wager that very few, if any, could definitively be linked to smoking.
I’m afraid I’ve become so inured to the lies and deceit that pours out of the mouths of those in Tobacco Control that I regard everything they say and do with the utmost cynicism. And probably rightly so.
Have you, GD, ever come across any smoker who suffered from any of the diseases depicted? I certainly haven’t, and I’m 67 and have known a lot of smokers in my life, not least myself (and I’ve been smoking since I was twelve), and I never get sick, not even colds. In fact, I am in positively rude health.
It’s all so very tiresome…
I imagine they were all probably photoshopped [and definitely a few of them].
Regarding smokers who suffered any of them, yes I do know one who died of cancer which possibly could have been linked to smoking [60+ a day!]. I might add that he was in his 70s. I know a few others who were a lot younger when they died who never smoked. Make what you like of that.
The Anti smokers will argue that passive smoking is the reason for non smokers to get cancer
Well, if smoking and second hand smoke does factually kill, then there can be no survivors from the Twentieth Century?
My understanding of the gory images slated for cigarette boxes is that they are taken directly from medical textbooks. They are photos of real conditions and diseases alright but they do not state clearly that they are a result of tobacco consumption because they can’t. Rather, it is an inferenence that says this is what the disease looks like and smoking “can/could” cause this. That is the sleight of hand with visual warnings on the box.
Some of those photographs are blatantly staged or modified. Most of the kids ones hardly came out of a textbook! [obvious example – the baby with a soother/cigarette, though that is a brilliant idea! I wonder if it’s patented?]. But as you say. it’s easy to come across a photograph of an amputee or a cadaver and claim it’s as a result of smoking.
It’s just that they have lied so hard and so often that I treat all their proclamations with complete cynicism.
Is there some way of getting the people from Tobacco Control into court under oath to prove that every smoker will get all of these diseases? Are there not regulations against false advertising? If someone smokes and doesn’t get these diseases isn’t that false advertising.? By using the word will rather than may could T.C.be open to attack?
As for the labels covering the medical porn it will be interesting to see how TC in the EU handle this one. Here in Aus similar labels were available and the Busy-body State very quickly passed legislation making it an offense to cover medical porn on tobacco packs. Even after purchase and the pack is now your private property you can be fined for covering the “health message”.
The root claim that “smoking causes cancer” is a blatant lie. If they even said “may cause” they could be excused, but they have never proved causation, nor have they been able to cause a cancer in a laboratory. The fact is that they are still unsure what causes most cancers, so to make a factual statement is false. So they are indeed guilty of false advertising, for claiming an attribute that is false.
As for covering their porn – I would love to see how the law could enforce that one!