Tobacco control campaigners complain of hate campaign

Let's remember in part what we are talking about here. Hate campaigns. The opening of this film includes snippets from an anti-smoking advertising feature (withdrawn by the NHS after protest from Freedom2Choose), which showed a young man's smoking habit compared to him being viciously and wantonly assaulted:


THE ANTI by wes_hrv

The Guardian reports a personalised hate campaign against personnel from Action on Smoking and Health by bloggers and campaigners. One such report, on the blog affiliated with the UK Freedom2Choose, was removed shortly after publication. It was a direct retaliation to the story linked above in Simon Clark's blog, which jokingly speculated that if smokers faced the threat of being randomly shot down by a sniper, they might be keener to give up. I don't remember anyone taking seriously the idea that smokers might feel under threat from crazed members of the general public as a result of either this, or pictures of a smoker being hammered to a pulp (metaphorically) by his smoking habit.

The denormalisation agenda has a lot to answer for. While blithely condemning smokers to social ostracism they say: 'An obvious escape from this negativity is to quit smoking'.

While I don't personally agree with threatening people in the course of their work, the authority that tobacco control has assumed, on a global scale, to reshape social attitudes against smokers, ostensibly in order to save their lives, is quite despicable. Seeking to marginalise anyone who has even a passing interest in tobacco-associated trades is profoundly anti-democratic. If tobacco control advocates agree that this kind of behaviour towards not just smokers but people at all degrees of separation from tobacco interests is objectionable, they should distance themselves from it publicly. To paraphrase a summary of the tobacco control position in the BMJ, an obvious escape from the negativity of the denormalisation campaign and the anger it engenders is to condemn that agenda.

As far as I'm concerned, the gloves are off.