No, we do not link to the famous movie by Federico Fellini, but to an episode from one of the most popular TV shows in Italy, with an estimated 3 million viewers. Once again, Gian Turci, president of FORCES Italy, clashes on-screen with the Italian antitobacco cartel.
This time the opposition is represented by two doctrinaire medicos well-known in Italy. Our side is represented by Gian, and by a famous libertarian journalist (Filippo Facci, the blond guy beside the anti), an honorary member of FORCES Italiana.
The famous host, by the name of Giuliano Ferrara, is also a future victim of another persecution — that against the obese. As such he is easy to recognise next to a co-host who plays opposition. Beside being large, and a smoker, Ferrara is an intellectual heavyweight in Italy, with libertarian sympathies.
This time the debate articulates not only along the lines of the epidemiological trash science, but also and especially on matters of principle, on whether the state has the right and the duty to establish what is “good” for us, and whether the “good” is reliably established by for-hire “experts” who dare not contradict the international health cartel of the World Health Organization. The eternal issue of the rights of non-smokers, that seem to extend universally, is also debated.
The year is 2003, the month is May. Italy is still free from the antismoking law, but the cancerous ideology and the propaganda are progressing, although the then-current Health Minister Veronesi will fail to pass the antismoking law before the government expires. The oppression will start 19 months later, under the Berlusconi government and its Health Minister Sirchia.
A few months after the implementation of the law, Sirchia will resign because of charges concerning pharmaceutically-related corruption, but will nevertheless remain a “hero” in the bulging eyes of morally inverted antitobacco fanatics.
It must be said that the antismoker law in Italy is more Fascist than it is Nazi. That is, smoking sections still legally exist in Italian restaurants and also in many offices – but the lead coat weighs down Italian shoulders as it has before. Great popular anger is stewing. You can smell it in the air.
Since figures on economic loss by the hospitality industry are simply not available the prohibitionists baldly proclaim there has been no loss. The rate of smoking has not decreased because of the ban. Figures on this are available. Tons of tobacco sold fluctuated slightly after imposition, then stabilized, above pre-ban levels. At the same time the trade in black market cigarettes is expanding. You can get them on any street corner now.
Comically, the Italian antismoking bastards proclaim that 500,000 Italians have quit because of the bans. How do they reconcile that with the tobacco sales? Like this: the smokers who have not quit started smoking more!
Black market cigarettes and ban evasion are everywhere in Italy. Angry and flagrant defiance of smoking prohibition flourishes particularly in many regions outside the capital. Go south of Rome to see what kind of “success” the Italian ban really is!
Click the link below to view the video in the original language.
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