Friday 25 June 2010

Anti-Smokers On The Couch

I'm seriously beginning to believe that fanatical anti-smokers suffer from some kind of severe mental imbalance.

Earlier this year they were sent into a clucking and flapping frenzy at the sight of a barcode on a Ferrari F1 car.

John Britton, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and director of its tobacco advisory group, said: “The bar code looks like the bottom half of a packet of Marlboro cigarettes.
Odd, that. The bottom of the Marlboro packets I've seen look a bit like "SMOKING KILLS".

"I was stunned when I saw it. This is pushing at the limits.”
Pushing at the limits of our credulity, John. Or pushing at the limits of your quite stunningly authority-obsessed mind. But whichever way you cut it, there is no possible way that a barcode is going to somehow induce an irresistible urge to smoke in the minds of thousands of 14 year olds.

As Anna Raccoon ventured at the time.

Does the prancing Ferrari black horse make you want to rush out and put all your money into Lloyd’s TSB?

The same silly charade is now being played out over the pond after Obama's administration oversaw a ban on the words 'light', 'mild', and 'low'.

WASHINGTON — A US law banning the selling of so-called "light" or "mild" cigarettes took effect Tuesday, but some anti-tobacco groups say the makers are sidestepping the rules by using color-coding packaging.

Some say that color-coding packs and switching to terms such as "gold" and "silver" instead of "light" and "ultra-light" are efforts to continue misleading consumers.

"With a wink and a nod, the tobacco industry has found new ways to continue their deceptive marketing practices to circumvent the new regulations," said Charles Connor, president of the American Lung Association.

"For example, they must drop the word 'light' in their packaging, but have already made it clear to their customers that if they want lights, they just need to look for a package in a specific color, such as gold.
That's right. Anti-smoking nutters now want colours banned.

They have had their heads buried in so many self-congratulatory reports and studies; read so many articles on the evils of the tobacco industry; allowed confirmation bias to erase their grip on reality; that they are simply unable to grasp the idea that different cigarettes can offer a different flavour.

In their seriously deluded brains, smokers only smoke lighter cigarettes because they believe they won't die if they do.

Let's apply the same crackpot reasoning to Doritos.

There are packets with the words "super hot" or some such on them, and others bearing the tagline "cool". Doritos, in our analogical world, have been banned from using these words (on the daft premise that all Doritos are unhealthy and some purchasers may believe that the cooler ones are less so) but their customers - who are quite happy to accept the 'health risk' - would still like to know which flavour is gentle on their tongue, and which will require them to pre-load the fridge with bog roll. So the spicy ones are marketed with a red bag, the mild ones in a blue one.

Oh no, say the bansturbators, this is scandalous! Doritos are still telling their customers which is the flavour they enjoy. The evil bastards.

The FDA asked for documentation from the cigarette maker to determine if it was deliberately circumventing the law.

"We applaud the FDA's action," said Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

"We call on Philip Morris to go beyond the actions called for by the FDA and immediately stop" using these materials, Myers said.
Materials? Isn't this torturing linguistics by some considerable degree? They are colours. Colours which are all around us. Everywhere. Every day.

With this kind of thinking (I use that word loosely), we may as well ban Barclaycard from producing credit cards in pastel shades as it implies less danger of fucking your life up by hitting Harrods with only £12.37 in your bank account.

Put these people on the Freudian couch and I'm sure we'd discover that a fair percentage are certifiably bonkers.**

**Talking of which, check out an example of such a person over at F2C's comments, starting here.


17 comments:

Captain Haddock said...

Anti-smokers are mentally unbalanced .. they cannot be reasoned with & refuse all attempts to persuade them to see anyone else's viewpoint ..

They will twist any argument or data .. or anything else which they fear, to coincide with and to reinforce their own belief system ..

To that extent, they're very much like radical Moose-limbs ...

Bucko said...

Ciggy companies would do well to just join forces into one big company, Produce all their cigs in a plain white packet with the word "Fags" on them and split their profits evenly.

They could advertise everywhere by just using a big white square with the words "Nice" or "Cool" in black letters.

There surely would be nothing else for the bollox charities to complain about, and if they did it right it could be a huge marketing coup.

Just a drunken thought....

Ian R Thorpe said...

We should start a campaign Dick to export Black Pudding to Obama's America. That would wind him up.

As for domestic issues such as smoking, surely if cigarettes are so toxic in all the ways they're said to be the government should encourage smoking. It can only lower the birth rate and reduce unemployment by causing early death.

Bucko said...

Sorry to drone on but I've just read the Captains comment and It's quite right.

Moose limbs (snigger. Liked that one) exert their influence and we get ID cards, 28 day detention and rampant CCTV. Anti smokers exert theirs and we get all the rubbish you have just talked about, DP.

Who is really to blame? The spineless bloody government for bending over to all this shite.

Captain Haddock said...

Bloody hell fire Bucko ..

You couldn't possibly call 'em "Fags" .. You'd have the righteous all over you, like a cheap suit ..

Though I think Packets or in my case, Pouches (I'm a Pipe smoker) with the words "LEGAL SUBSTANCE" in bold black print might be quite novel ..

Unknown said...

The barcode and colours scenarios really are astounding to the extreme, aren't they. Everytime I read their [the anti smoker] rantings I envisage a rabid dog foaming at the mouth as they write such drivel.

BTW the traffic from this blog to the F2C one (Jane DeVille)has increased inexpediently since you put the link in, according to Feedjit Live :¬)

Bucko said...

Sod off Captain. You made me spill my beer!
Ok, maybe not fags. How about "Puffs"?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Yeah, but have you ever set fire to a Dorrito?

TBH, I haven't yet, but I will do soon and work out whether they go into second or third place on the following list of 'food I have set fire to this week':

Poppadom (burn like f***ing tinder)
McCoy's crisps
Walker's crisps

PS, usually safety rules apply, do it outside, beware of boiling oil drips, don't return to a crisp once lit etc etc.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Ian: "We should start a campaign Dick to export Black Pudding to Obama's America. That would wind him up."

He's working on stopping things like that already. One of my link tank articles tomorrow morning will give more detail.

Bucko: "Who is really to blame? The spineless bloody government for bending over to all this shite."

Yep. The buck stops there, err, Bucko. ;-)

Haddock: Love the 'legal substance' idea. A lot.

TBY: I hope she keeps coming back as it's great fun. Yes, I know it's shooting fish in a barrel and all that but ...

Mark: We want video. :)

Captain Haddock said...

Mark ..

I can testify as to the flammability of Sharwood's Poppadums ..

Once accidentally set fire to one, in the microwave ..

The smoke & smell caused me to evacuate the kitchen PDQ .. Lol

Captain Haddock said...

Ian R Thorpe said...

"We should start a campaign Dick to export Black Pudding to Obama's America. That would wind him up" ..


Ian ..

If you really want to wind-up Obummerbollocks, just send him loads of stuff pertaining to the "Mau-Mau Emergency" of 1952-1960 ..

Apparently he's now claiming that his Kenyan father was "tortured by the British" during the Mau Mau conflict in 1947 ...

We weren't even in fucking Kenya in 1947 ... What a twat ..

Smoking Hot said...

l'm colour blind ... now what? :)

SadButMadLad said...

There will come a time in the future when smoking will be seen in the same light as someone taking crack cocaine and crystal meth.

What's that?

It's 2010 already?

Bloody hell doesn't time fly by. I though it was still 2000. I'm hoping that it's not happened yet then.

What's that?

It's already happened?

Bloody hell. They want to ban everything even when it's been shown to not work.

Frank Davis said...

I'm seriously beginning to believe that fanatical anti-smokers suffer from some kind of severe mental imbalance.

Beginning? You're just beginning?

I've known for over 40 years that these people are totally bananas. I lived in the house of one of them for several years in the 1960s.

In my blog I call him Dr W, but I could spell out his name if I wanted to. He's dead now anyway.

And he was stark, staring, raving mad.

And this was back in the 1960s! He was the very first antismoker I ever encountered (I was about 17 at the time). And I thought he was insane. And I still think he was insane. And I'll always think he was insane.

In fact, I only took up smoking because I thought he was so completely insane that there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with smoking.

I've never had any doubt that these pillocks are totally bonkers.

JuliaM said...

"There surely would be nothing else for the bollox charities to complain about..."

No, that kjust sets them a challenge. One I'm sure they'd rise to...

Captain Haddock said...

SadButMadLad said...

"There will come a time in the future when smoking will be seen in the same light as someone taking crack cocaine and crystal meth" ...


Absolutely brilliant ...

That'll mean we no longer have to pay tax for our pleasure ..

We'll be able to buy it on any street corner, without the hassle of finding a supermarket or newsagents shop ..

And .. best of all .. when we're really fucked-up, because of our own vicious habit .. we can register as "Disabled" & have hordes of do-gooders breaking their necks to treat us as poor, poor "victims" ...

Fucking roll-on the day I say ...

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