We take good news where we find it. In this era of media laziness and special interest shilling we sometimes find it in the strangest places.
Last week the Marin Independent Journal regurgitated a press release from anti-tobacco that essentially proved that anti-tobacco education is counterproductive. The story was another cry for censorship in films, but in an inept attempt to bolster tying the "R" rating to all movies that contain tobacco smoking, a great case was made to discontinue California’s absurd anti-smoking education.
Marin is the most affluent county in California. It is home to limousine liberals who worship at the altar of environmentalism, health hysteria, and social engineering. Parents there typically would rather their school age children engage in alcohol, marijuana, and ecstasy-fueled sex, than smoke a pack of Marlboros.
Prissy anti-smoking lectures have been a staple of public and private school indoctrination for decades. Smoking bans in this county predate the statewide ban that has been in effect for 11 years. Despite doing "all the right things" the kids there enjoy tobacco at a rate that matches the smoking rate for the rest of the country. Yes, the Marin teenagers are ignoring and discarding anti-tobacco just as are their contemporaries throughout the far and wide United States.
Tobacco Control, of course, never points its bony finger at itself despite its failure, documented in the story to which we link. Having achieved every one of its goals — sky-high cigarette taxes, smoking bans, advertising bans, hateful anti-tobacco "education" — the kids are still smoking. Why? It’s the movies’ fault, of course, and something must be done!
The clueless anti-tobacco operative quoted in this story makes the ludicrous point that all the movies up for best picture have smoking in them. That’s why the kids smoke. Forget for the nonce that all five pictures attracted very sparse audiences, especially among the late teen set. Forget also that four of the five already carry an "R" rating, so anti-tobacco’s goal of imposing this rating on all movies with smoking is essentially irrelevant to the point made in the opening paragraph of this "news" story.
Remember instead that Tobacco Control is an industry: an industry, in fact, that would be bankrupt if it operated on the lines that all legitimate industries operate. Of course Tobacco Control survives only because it receives massive subsidies from the pharmaceutical industry supplemented by taxes stolen from smokers. In a time when health care dollars are supposedly running out, the health funds thrown away by Tobacco Control should be given an "X" rating, as in X’d out of all state and federal budgets.
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