Friday
Oct032008
There's no escape
Friday, October 3, 2008 I did an interview with CNN (about graphic health warnings) earlier this week. A friend has just emailed to say: "I'm in Hong Kong at the moment. Was watching CNN and whose angry face should pop on the screen in front of me? No matter how far away I go I just can't seem to get away from it!!"
Reader Comments (16)
I do not normally watch CNN, but whilst in Spain recently, I did watch it, while I was waiting for my wife to get ready in the evenings, and I was appalled at a terrible advert which appeared on there at least a couple of times.
The advert was an anti-smoking advert, showing children of various ages, with voice-overs (in children's voices) appealing to their parents not to smoke near them.
By far the worst of this appalling bunch, was a baby in a cot, who looks up, appealingly at the camera, and the voice over says "Please don't smoke near my cot daddy, or you could kill me".
Children should not be used in this manner, as even Gordon Brown said in his conference speech, "my children are people, not pawns".
I do not know who is responsible for this advert, as every time it came on my TV, I was out of the room, and only managed to see a part of it.
Does anyone know if these adverts, which are of course, in English, come under the jurisdiction of the British Advertising Standards, and does anyone know who is responsible for them?
As we all know, children are the most vulnerable people in our society, and they tend to believe what they see on TV or are told by "grown ups", and aiming propaganda like this at such innocents is a crime in my view, a crime which we must do something about.
Our friends at ASH UK provides a link to the CCN London video, where you see Simon's interview.
I looked for it on the ASH UK site but I couldn't find it. It's not a place I usually visit, however, I did find this interesting piece below :
The anti-smoking campaign to nationalise our bodies
A comment piece published today in The Times by Nick Hume:
It's not just the banks. Today marks the next stage in the campaign to nationalise our bodies. Not content with those big written warnings on packets - Smoking Kills/Causes Impotence/Destabilises the Financial System, etc - the authorities are replacing them from today with stark pictures of what smoking can do: a tar-blackened lung, a cancerous throat, rotten teeth, open-heart surgery and even a corpse.
Notwithstanding the other image of a “flaccid” cigarette, these pictures are really horror porn for prigs, who can get excited about how dirty smokers are. What effect they will have on Britain's beleaguered smokers remains to be seen. Being shown shocking pictures of black lungs at school 40 years ago did not stop many of us taking up the filthy-but-delicious habit in our teens. As an ex-heavyweight champion smoker (Player's No 6 division) who gave up long ago, I know that smoking is bad for you. And so, by now, does everybody else. Yet the lifestyle police cannot accept that any thinking individual could simply choose to ignore their lectures and carry on smoking. “Let's show them pictures - they must be too thick to read!”
There are bigger issues here than discoloured teeth. In his essay On Liberty, J.S.Mill took a stand not only for freedom of thought and speech, but also for “liberty of tastes and pursuits...of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow [ie, if you smoke don't sue tobacco companies] without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong”.
As their campaign around rotten organs makes clear, the anti-smokers' real aim is to get you to cleanse yourself by changing what they think is your foolish, perverse and wrong behaviour, regardless of any harm it may or may not do to others. They have banned smoking in public places; they are pushing to ban it in private homes. Ultimately they want to ban it in your body and soul.
Mill championed individuality over uniformity as “one of the leading essentials of well-being”. Today's uniformity is captured by the identical personal quotes about the new campaign put out by national and local health officials. The priests of the new conformism are singing from the same hymn sheet, and their public health information campaigns sound like exercises in abuse of the public. They apparently believe that personal freedom has turned us into disgustingly obese, drunken ignoramuses, riddled with self-inflicted sexually transmitted and smoking-related diseases. I ask you, is that a healthy attitude?
Source: The Times 1st October 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3qv3o2
Peter, and Pat, I too share the same concerns about gratuitous images of this kind being used in adverts or on tobacco product packaging.
With reference to cigarette packets for example, I have a couple of questions.
1. Are these images genuine, i.e. how do we know they haven’t been digitally enhanced in some way to make them more provocative?
2. Who decides what images are put on the packets?
3. Does the Government request these images, or is there a law that exists compelling tobacco companies to comply?
4. Why aren’t tobacco companies more robust in defence of their legal product?
5. Will we see similar images on bottles of wine, beer and spirits, what about graphic images of mangled bodies killed in car crashes, on the side of cars, lorries, buses ect.
6. What is the process, whereby the Government dictate to the tobacco industry how they should sell their product?
I think we should have some answers!
Pat
Go to ASH UK, then on right hand side click onto Daily News 3rd Oct. First item.
I have been looking at 'that' site, simply to find out what 'stories' they come out with.
"Are these images genuine"
A good question Chris. I can answer two of them.
The picture of a man with cancer of the throat is, if you will all pardon the term, 'taking the piss'. If a person is unfortunate enough to get this condition, and there is a possibility that ONE of the reasons they got it is because they smoke, it would be internal, cancer of the larynx. The picture on the packet is a large external tumour on the neck. It is untreated. You can see this because the man is obviously from another Country, and it will be a Country where only those with money (not many) can get regular treatment. Again, this is confirmed by the fact that he has hair on his face, (so no kemo and/or radiation).
So, they get a picture of a man from a poor Country with an untreated external neck tumour, and have the audacity to tell us that this is what we could get if we smoke!
The second example is the rotting teeth and gums. This would be caused by lack of dental hygiene, and when it is this bad, it is usually related to drug adiction. I believe that this picture has also been challenged because it is highly probable that it is not real, ie, it is a model with the kind of make up technique used in films. The answer to that criticism has been that this is what a smoker COULD look like........have you seen any?
I would also like to know who is responsible for these disgusting and abnormal adds and also if the culprits can be sued for damages, i.e. frightening and abusing children with horror graphics and using them in a sickening way that would turn children against their parents who smoke. How far down the road are we until our kids are reporting us to the smoke police. Seems to me with subtle and brainwashing graphics such as these its just smoothing the path for Big Brother control.
It would be far more civilised if cigarette manufacturers were to print on their cig packets that smoking is your own free choice so therefore no compensation will be paid, or words to that effect, god knows there must be enough unemployed spin doctors around that could conjur up the most user friendly weasle words to get the message accross. Then the tv ads could tell us to read your cig packets folks before you light up.. or words to that effect and save us all from puking up every time we see the current issue of cigarette porn.
I see that the squashing add for drink driving has emerged again for the autumn season. I always switch over while its on in the hope that it will register back at base.
I'm surprised that cigarette makers haven't put their own warnings on packets. 'SMOKER LIVE LONGER' with pictures of the oldest person to have lived (French woman), The oldest living man in Britain and the oldest living person in the world (Indian woman, cannibis).
The photos of rotten teeth look vagugely familiar as ones I've seen before and labelled as the teeth of a crack addict.
Perhaps those on cig packets belong to a crack addict that smoked tobacco as well and so the lifestyle police felt the smoking rather than crack must have been responsible... isn't that the sort of logic used..?
Thanks for the directions to the CNN broadcast, Chas, I'll have another look.
"I see that the squashing add for drink driving has emerged again for the autumn season. I always switch over while its on in the hope that it will register back at base."
(ann)
TV viewing figures are monitored from a survey called BARB which is carried out throughout the year and throughout the country. Respondents can participate by having a kind of box fitted which will monitor which channels are watched, for how long etc or by being asked questions about their viewing habits. Respondents are pre-selected (considered to be a more accurate method of sampling) within a geographical area and interviews are conducted in-home by market research interviewers 'cold-calling'.
Often, too, reaction to new advertising campaigns is tested by in-home interview either within an 'omnibus' survey or (if the client has lots of dosh to spend (and HMG does enjoy spending OUR money)) as a stand-alone study.
So, if you want to make your views known, do say yes to the interviewer at your door...
Timbone, I *knew* there was something not right with the ‘throat cancer’ picture but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Thanks for the explanation, you’re probably spot on!
It makes me wonder, why do they jeopardise their campaign by using this image? It strikes me as rather foolish. They would have done better to show someone with a tracheostomy. Looks just as gross and the link with smoking is much harder to dispute. Once people realise the ‘throat cancer’ pic is bogus, what will they think of the other images?
BTW, the Times article links to another one, which has an interesting post in the comments section.
Here’s the URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article4834145.ece
The poster thinks this campaign is implemented *precisely because* it won’t be effective (the surveys have already shown this). In that way, the UK government make it look as if they’re ‘discouraging smoking’, with no fear of it ever happening (and them losing out in taxes). This is pure window-dressing for the sake of it. The tobacco companies know this as well. So, perhaps this answers Chris’ question # 4.
The whole thing is appalling. In Thailand and other countries, they post extremely graphic pictures of traffic accident and fire victims in public places such as on lamp-posts, shop windows etc. All to 'warn' the public: "here's what could happen to you". It always struck me as in poor taste, over-the-top, and downright uncivilised. The widespread exposure of the population to such images only desensitizes them in the end.
Now, we're going the same way with this ridiculous graphic pictures on fag packets idea. How utterly uncivilised on one level, but worse, how utterly misleading. A blackened, diseased lung doesn't look pretty, but it's not a 'smoker's lung'; it's a 'diseased lung', which may or may not belong to a smoker. If a smoker does not succumb to a disease of the lung (and most don't), their lung, when cut up on the slab, looks pretty much identical to a non-smoker's lung.
They (the anti smoking obsessed campaigners) will do anything to try and eradicate smoking as a social pastime. It really is becoming ridiculous, and they can even put pictures on cigarette packs which in many cases are false information.
It is like the news item I have just been told about late last night on the radio. The only true bit is that dear Wendy Richards has cancer. Here it is:
"Wendy Richards has been a heavy smoker all her life. She has had breast cancer twice which has now gone to her kidneys".
See what I mean? I wonder what new pictures they will put on the packs when these don't work!
I have posted this comment on the Pro-choice Smoking Doctor blogspot, where he is showing the pictures:
Taking the pics and their words individually:
Smokers Die Younger - ok, tell half of my family who have all smoked and/or lived with smokers since childhood and who have lived into their late 80's and even seen their 100th birthday! Most of these had led a full, active and illness free life in the most part and died peacefully and naturally. Also, if it is true that smokers die younger, then surely the government should be encouraging more people to smoke so they won't have such a problem paying pensions in years to come!
Smoking Causes Fatal Lung Cancer - this, to my knowledge, is not proven, however other carcinogens and toxins from years ago have now been proven to be a greater cause of lung cancer, which is why strict legislation was brought in regarding safer working conditions. Of course, it is not only lung cancer that some older people suffer from due to their work in earlier years.
Smoking When Pregnant Harms Your Baby - ok, my mother smoked when she was expecting me and I weighed in at 10 pounds; she also smoked whilst expecting my brother who weighed in at just a few ounces less than me. This was in the days of much heavier smoker prevalence, much higher exposure to SHS, yet 10 pound babies were normal! 26 years later my own daughter weight in at an ounce under 8 pounds; she was very forward, never ill, until she returned from Canada (aged 13) having visited my brother's family, and caught Chicken Pox from his kids and their friends. My daughter grew up with both myself and her father smoking. Now she is out on her own, she doesn't smoke and is, of course, 'protected' from the evils of smoking and she always has a cold, a cough, stomach bug, or something!
Smoking May ???? the Blood Flow and Causes Impotence - how do they explain the baby boom back in the 50's and 60's when the majority of people smoked or lived with a smoker? Even today, many of the people with large families tend to be smokers!
Smoking Clogs the Arteries and Causes Heart Attacks and Strokes - possibly, but then heart attacks and strokes are also caused by stress, anxiety, depression, binge drinking, unhealthy eating, obesity and many other things, far more likely to harm you.
Smoking Causes Ageing of the Skin - so does the Sun - do the powers that be propose to ban that too? As with all the above, plenty of other things can also cause ageing of the skin and some people will be more susceptible than others.
It seems to me, as a complete novice where science is concerned, but being pretty good with regard to common sense, that there are far more causes for all of the above and there is also more proof that these other causes do play a part in these cases, far more so than smoking or SHS.
As the saying goes though, there is none so blind as those who will not see!
All very good and relevant points Lyn.
But, as I always say, IT'S ALL LIES
When I was a child both my parents smoked, I have been healthy all my life, I have not been to the doctor's for at least 40 years, in fact I do not even have one. And why am I so healthy? Because it's all lies.
Both my parents who smoked, lived to grand old ages. Why? Because it's all lies.
My grandparents, both smokers. Also lived to grand old ages. Why? Because it's all lies.
How come we all know so many people who are committed smokers, with no signs of illness? Because it's all lies.
My aunt died of lung cancer, although she had never smoked in her life and lived in a smoke free house. Why? Because it's all lies.
I used to be a chain smoker at the time my son was born, smoking something like 60 to 80 a day. I smoked around my son all his young life, and he is 100% healthy today. Why? Because it's all lies.
I used to own a bar in London, where everyone smoked, including myself. I still see many of the people that used to work for me there, and who used to socialise there, and they are all alive and well and in perfect health. Why? Because it's all lies.
We need to get it through to everyone. It's all lies. it's all lies. it's all lies. it's all lies. it's all lies. it's all lies. it's all lies. it's all lies.