As an adult on the shady side of 60 I have had the opportunity to watch this whole Anti-Smoking campaign evolve over the past 40 years. It is a little scary.
Any person or organization that dares to object or voice opposing viewpoints is instantly attacked and silenced. The tobacco companies and tobacco farmers, engaged in legal commerce, have been labeled murderers and worse. Has this been an interesting experiment in social control? I hope not!
How can this happen? Smokers sit in disbelief as their legal choices are slowly brought to social criminalization. One possible answer may lie in a series of experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram, a Social Psychologist, at Yale University during 1961 and 1962, concerning obedience to authority.
According to The Stanley Milgram website "He found, surprisingly, that 65% of his subjects, ordinary residents of New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks-up to 450 volts-to a pitifully protesting victim, simply because a scientific authority commanded them to, and in spite of the fact that the victim did not do anything to deserve such punishment."
You don't suppose that a few hard core anti-nannies in the American Lung Association, The American Cancer Society and the National Health Institute, partnered with greedy lawyers, saw an opportunity to wed the "Weight of Authority" to a carefully crafted marketing campaign against smokers do you?
The reality is that in every generation a few members of the Professional Health industry along with "concerned professionals" carry the torch forward seeking control or elimination of the defective majority. Do they discuss this openly? Not any more, but listen carefully and the smug elitist attitude of superiority shines through.
Think not?
RIGHT THINKING people in todays society don't smoke; eat veggies; despise meat and fast foods; work to outlaw SUV's; believe pets should have the same rights as children. Is that a majority viewpoint? You decide.
Now, I'm not saying there is some kind of conspiracy going on. There have simply always been individuals who feel that they, and they alone are the only ones intelligent enough to understand the truth and, more importantly, they are the only ones who CARE. They often call themselves progressive as they try to re-establish a two class society, just like 300 years ago, Ruling Elites and the rest of us. Once all the rest of us have been properly educated I suspect they truly believe we will be grateful to them, for they are the saviors. Hummm. Think I'll pass.
After 30 years and billions in taxpayers cash and smokers taxes spent on propaganda and endless studies accompanied by little or suppressed research, what has been conclusively proven?
