Following The Template For Fast Food

Would this quote surprise you?

"They (tobacco companies) have so many billions of dollars at stake in their profits that they'll do everything they can to fight the changes that are really necessary to help address the world's smoking problem."

Well, no of course not. It's standard rhetoric designed to demonise the opposition and reframe debate into one where input from manufacturers of a certain product is ignored. We see it on a daily basis.

Except the academic making the statement - Kelly Brownell of Yale University - didn't refer to tobacco companies or smoking. Instead he (for it is a he, a rather fat one too) was talking of food companies and obesity, and it isn't a coincidence either, as we can see from the rest of what he has to say.

"You might despair at this and say, 'Well, what can we do about it because these companies are so powerful?' That's what was said about the tobacco companies 30 and 40 years ago and look what happened to them. … So if the tobacco industry can be taken on successfully by the public health world, then I don't see any reason why the food industry can't be the same."

In the same article, fellow food-hater Thomas Frieden of the CDC is ploughing the same well-worn furrow.

"We are seeing changes. They're not gonna be overnight, they're not quick, but they're happening. And they are going to help control the weight of the nation. 

"Fifty years ago, tobacco was ubiquitous. And I think in 50 years we'll see the ubiquity of unhealthy foods today in a similar light."

Now, you may point to freedom of choice and the inability of campaigners to argue against it, but they've already been working to fix that problem by deeming unhealthy food as addictive ... as anti-tobacco did with tabs. Once they have that principle entrenched, it frees up our oh-so-benevolent maternal government to move in and act to save you all from yourselves.

I hate keep coming back to that farcical myth currently being peddled in the plain packs charade (see previous here, here, here, here and here), but these almost daily examples of other bansturbators following in tobacco control's footsteps make a mockery of the claim that "plain packs for tobacco will not set a precedent for other consumer products".

Indeed, on the very ASH Scotland page peddling this so-called 'myth', there's even a link to the summit last year where ASH taught temperance campaigners exactly how to go about exploiting previous precedents, brought about courtesy of the same tactics now being employed by the likes of Brownell and Frieden against food.

Only a fool would believe that measures implemented against tobacco will not be similarly rolled out in other areas over time. Unfortunately, we have around 600 of them in Westminster who believe just about anything they're fed by vested interest prohibitionists.

Sigh.

H/T CCF