Monday 23 January 2012

South Korea Rolls Out The Red Carpet For Big Pharma

You may have read - in a place not very far away from here - that moves are afoot in South Korea to "ban production and circulation of tobacco products".

Now, via SteveVape, we find the Korea Herald reporting that they're not very keen on e-cigs, either.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced Thursday that e-cigarettes contain carcinogens, or cancer causing substances, just as cigarettes with tobacco do. They also contain environmental hormones that could damage the endocrine system.

A bill is pending at the National Assembly to include e-cigarettes under the cigarette management law.

Health authorities said the ministry will study the harm of vapors from e-cigarettes to humans. They also plan to examine the effects of secondhand smoke from the product later this year.
This kind of behaviour is uncannily similar to the demented gushings of some of the more extremist elements of tobacco control. You know, wild fantasies of imminent tobacco prohibition, hysterical scaremongery, and pursuit of junk science in the pursuit of removing any obstruction to pharmaceutical nicotine replacement therapy profits blinkered, and dangerously irresponsible, 'quit or die' policies.

That's an awful lot of prohibitive activity for such a freedom-embracing country, isn't it?

Do you suppose it has anything to do with this?
In accordance with decision FCTC/COP4(25) the fifth session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP5) will be held from 12 to 17 November 2012 at COEX Convention Centre in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Well, there's no point in hosting some of the world's most obsessed and spiteful finger-waggers for best part of a week, only for them to abuse the hospitality by turning their self-righteous hectoring on the Korean government, is there?

No. Best get the prohibitionist cards on the table early, and make everything ship shape and embarrassment free before their arrival. Slicing away at the liberties of ordinary Koreans is well worthwhile if it means a pat on the head from world-leading tax leeches and their pharma paymasters.


8 comments:

Thomas said...

I watch quite a bit of KBS Korean TV, which is produced in Seoul, and up till now, it's been pretty much silent about smoking. It doesn't show up in any of the contemporary new dramas, comedies, serials, music shows or historical sagas - though in some of the historical dramas set in feudal times, it had been common they were showing some female characters with a big long highly decorative and elaborate smoking pipe across the back of their heads, holding their bun-like hair-style in place (inferring that in feudal times, people smoked, either tobacco, opium or both - though in Japanese programming set in feudal times, tobacco smoking by female characters using the same type of pipe, I have seen shown). Contemporary dramas have been recently gone from no-smoking ever shown to themes where having as backdrop, something healthist shows up in prominence - such a lot of gym/exercise activity or running/owning of a organic-health-food store/company by some of the central characters. So up until now, it was neither smoking nor anti-smoking, just neutral. However, this last weekend, on their Korean equivalent of what would be Saturday Night Live from NY, here in the US, they did for the first time ever, in one of their skits, feature an issue where one character, young girl, is found to have smoked because her fingers "stink" - then they all sing this childish sing-songy piece about not smoking, using a sculpture, which is a bunch of cigs all sticking out haphazard and ugly looking - then ending with a stern lecture that people should not smoke, that nicotine will "blacken your lungs", that it "stinks" - a number of things along those lines. So I would say most definitely - yes - there is a sudden uptick on Korean TV out of Seoul where before they were at least smoking-neutral - they've suddenly begun showing increasing signs of being infected by health-fascism and possibly being pressured into actively incorporating anti-smoking hate propaganda into their mainstream shows. If they do - if I see this once more, a second time - a mainstreaming of hate-propaganda put into one of their popular and highly rated mainstream shows - I will probably begin weening myself back off KBS - and they can shove it where the sun don't shine - same as BBC, which I will no longer watch - nor will I watch Eastenders, not with Dot turned into a "criminal" because the character smoked (and quite happily).

Junican said...

Makes you wonder which is the dictatorship - North or South.

nisakiman said...

Wasn't that nutter the Reverend Moon from SK? As I remember, he was really big, despite some unsavoury rumours about him. Says it all, really.

moonrakin said...

I can see anti smoking as quite a useful political tool in the divide and rule side of things plus all the backhanders/sponsorship the pharma folk will inevitably hand out to the footsoldiers.

 I was there for a while (SK) - and I thought the Koreans were about as heavy a smoking nation as the Japanese - and they smoke

Cultism is something that people in the far east seem to really get into - I expect that anti smoking will indeed become a cult...

Mind you - Turkmenistan is the place where anti-smoking is really OTT - smoking in public was banned by their  late Dear Leader Turkmenbashi  It's still like North Korea won the lottery though - weird place.

The Apiarist said...

When I used to travel to South Korea about 20 years ago EVERYBODY smoked.  So, unless there's been a huge change in the habits of the Korean in the street, the bansters have got a big job on their hands.

moonrakin said...

Never mind SK = Big Pharma drooling over the latest piece of f-wittery dreamt up the the sorry chimps at DoH ably assisted by the gits impersonating a gubmint - they're going to give your local council..... a bottomless pit of health hectoring money - look and be v. afraid.Newspaper ads and promotionsFatty wardensBillboardsLots of lavishly catered conferencesAwareness training courses for penpushersRoadshowsI can't wait /sarcLife in the land of the NorK mightn't be too bad by comparison with what's coming down the tracks. 

Sam Duncan said...

Right. Because it's not as if the government's short of cash or anything.

moonrakin said...

Well, the civil servants and politicians cronies in the large "consultancy / accountancy outfits (Accenture, PWC and Crapita I suppose) that orchestrate all this guff must be getting short of cash.

Having your cake and eating it - it's what they do.