I'm smoking mad!

From the 'old news is good news so long as it's ridiculous' department ...

Those who know better than you are gaining ground the world over.

Following Canada's customarily laughable lead, Australia will now require cigarette manufacturers to display images of cancerous and diseased limbs and organs, a step the EU had agreed to take lat last year. (Similar legislation failed to make it through the House last year, despite the efforts of the AMA.)

It's considered a success by fanatics in Canada who've recorded a 3% decrease in smoking, though Australian tobacconists are surely correct in calling the measure "a desperate tactic" that "will not alter smoking patterns."

It's not that I favor smoking or have ever even considered smoking (it never appealed to me, and I never tried).

It's the notion that the central government of any nation should be wasting its time with this kind of legislation, and that there are evidently legions of crusaders fighting the good fight against this most evil of threats against humanity.

Does it strike anyone as odd that support for the war on cigarettes seems easier to obtain than support for the war on terrorism?

I'm reminded of those obnoxious "Compliance Alliance" ads we're bombarded with on a daily basis in Pennsylvania.

Apparently it is a real organization that recruits kids to entrap retailers who sell cigarettes by using any means necessary to convince them to sell without seeing ID (if their ads are at all accurate).

Yet while they claim to be fighting Big Tobacco's manipulation of kids (their tag line is "Elimination of Manipulation"), they target $7 an hour cashiers, manipulating them into breaking the law. Their most insidious and distasteful ad is heard daily on the radio:

A girl asks a male cashier for cigarettes, and he tells her that he needs to see ID. She of course gives him some old line about forgetting it, but she always buys her cigarettes here or something. He sounds a bit awkward and uncomfortable at being pressured, but still unwilling to sell. Her friend pipes up claiming to recognize him from a party, and they giggle and say that they thought he was cute.

After flirtation and flattery he relents, but says that next time they need to remember their IDs.

They turn on him instantly, laughing at him and telling him that what he did was "not cool" and that he'd just broken the law. And then there's the ominous warning that "the law is real and there will be consequences." If this had been a "real" compliance check, they inform him, he would have been "busted" (incidentally, "Busted" is the group's official name). He of course sounds embarrased and upset.

This is obviosuly just a commercial, and all are surely just actors playing parts, but instilling the fear that big brother might come at any time in the guise of a teenage girl was intentional, as was the threat of legal action and subtle use of sexual humiliation.

The state of PA has done a masterful job of manipulation itself in hiding the fact that "Busted!" is their operation even in this press release. The only indication is the blurb that they work in conjunction with the PA Dept. of Health. Throughout the site they claim that the organization is run by kids, for kids. This farce is maintained in part by the intentionally amateurish look of the site, though the site was registered by (hence probably designed by)a professional tech company with a competent design department that has produced many professional looking sites.

There's no real information anywhere about how and when the group was formed, exactly how children organized and funded themselves, and why they cared enough to harrass minimum wage earners. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that the state has been behind the whole thing and has been trying to lend an air of "grass roots" legitimacy to it.

Things like this power point document
, or better yet this PDF of the Annual Report of the fiscal year july '02-june '03 which shows that the state spent well over $1 million on the program and "trained" the kids who "lead" the initiative.

I'm just wondering why they go to such lengths to hide state involvement and the fact that the state created the organization.

posted by Dennis on 06.25.04 at 04:38 PM





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I don't smoke, never have, and I'm glad I don't. But there's one thing deadlier than cigarettes: the totalitarian state. These kids, so eager to entrap violators of the Big Brother's prohibitions, remind me of the Little Octobrists or Komsomol of Soviet Russia, the Red Guards of Maoist China, the Hitler Jugend of Nazi Germany, the Junior Spies and Junior Anti-Sex League of Orewell's "1984". The parallels are indeed ominous. No, America today is not (yet) the Third Reich. But we are the Weimar Republic.

I must mention also that such entrapment methods were used against homosexuals in the days when "sodomy" laws were in force. Never forget. Never forgive, NEVER AGAIN.

Words go in and out of style. Here are some that we need to bring back:

Nosy Parker

Paul and Pauline Pry

Also the phrase: "Maybe you should spend more time building your life, and less time sticking your nose into mine."

A good bit of this kind of insidious nonsense would be socially frowned on if we still had some old-fashioned manners about not prying into other people's personal business.

If you want to make yourself angry, try reading some of the literature put out for kids. At a children's museum, the fire department exhibit had little pamphlets oriented towards kids. It said things like: 'Tell your parents they need to check their smoke alarms once a year.'

No wonder there's so much child abuse. Just what you need at the end a long, hard day of working at a job you hate so you feed your kid - the same kid (who probably hasn't even made his bed and done his homework) talks down to you like a smarmy nag.

Persnickety   ·  June 28, 2004 09:59 AM

Here is a copy of the email I just sent these Compliance Alliance idiots:

I think its disgraceful the way your radio ads manipulate people. The most common one where a teenage girls prostitutes herself to manipulate a young male cashier and ENTRAP him into selling her cigarettes is absolutlely disgraceful.. Big Tobacco is not manipulating anyone, but apparently the State of Pennsylvania is manipulating you..

These ads cross the line nearly as much as the TRUTH ads on national television.

Its time to take PERSONAL responsibility for your actions and stop blaming the tobacco companies.

I don't smoke, never have, never will, but I grew up in a house with smokers, married a smoker, and our daughter has been taught since her earliest days that smoking is bad for your health and that we prefer that she does not smoke.. We educated her and still do that its a choice we hope she does not make and that she is better off not smoking.. We do the same with alcohol, and she is learning to make responsible decisions that later in life will affect her.

It is time to stop pointing the finger at a legitimate LEGAL business and start pointing inward.. Its a matter of personal responsibility..

No one FORCES you to smoke, they advertise, and very limited advertising at that.. When was the last time YOU saw an ad for cigarettes on TV or heard an ad on the radio.. Fact is, the Government has done all it could to hamstring a legitimate industry, and then at the same time , climb into bed with that same industry when the money starts flowing..

Time to grow up people and realize that we have the luxury of free will and the responsibility of our own actions..

Stop looking for scapegoats and look within...

David McDonnell   ·  July 7, 2004 07:57 AM


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