Yo! Nanny Staters: Fuck Off

I am a smoker. Over the years, I've been vilified, demonized, ostracized, pitied, hectored, shunned, and shamed.

OK. Sure. I'm an addict. All addicts deserve this treatment, I guess.

But what I -- and most other addicts I'd wager -- most object to is being treated like idiots.

We know.

We know smoking is bad.

It's expensive. It stinks. It burns holes in our clothes. It stains our teeth.

It makes us sick and if it doesn't kill us, will probably contribute to our deaths or long-term ill-health.

It may harm people around us, hence self-ostracization.

We know all that.

But we are addicted to nicotine.

We try to quit. Alternate nicotine delivery systems -- patches, gum -- have deficiencies of two main types.

1. They are not like smoking: no warmth, no fiddle-factor, no-"I'm having a break"-factor.

2. The nicotine dose is not adjustable to the user's mood and need.

The fiddle-factor is surmountable. The dosage problem is not so easy.

If I light a cigarette and decide I don't really want one now, I put it out.

If I put a patch on and immediately want to puke (which is what patches do to me), I rip it off.

If I light a cigarette and get involved in reading something and forget about the cigarette, it burns away.

If I chomp down on a piece of nicotine gum, get involved in reading something, forget about the gum and chomp down a few more times absent-mindedly, I want to puke (see above).

Enter e-cigs. Dosage is variable. With added fiddle-factor fun.

They're not perfect, but they are definitely a huge advance.

But guess who doesn't like e-cigs?

Big Pharma who wants to sell us patches and gum -- outrageously over-priced patches and gum.

And Big Tobacco who doesn't want us to quit smoking.

And Nanny Staters. Who, according to Sweetie, have an addiction problem of their own. They are addicted to telling others what to do.

Viz.

The optics of the e-cig concept: a controlled nicotine delivery system. Why would anyone expect that to be well received in the gen public?
— Dr. Brian Goldman (@NightShiftMD) August 26, 2014

I don't watch much telly any more. But I remember ads with people smugly patting their upper arms: "I've got the patch." Did people go insane over that "optic"?

.@NightShiftMD Why not? It's way better than the nicotine patch that Big Pharma makes a ton of $. I can't use patch because of indigestion.
— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) August 26, 2014

Oh but wait. Maybe patting the upper arm sends the "right message" whereas Nanny Staters worry about the "wrong message."

@AureliaCotta @fernhilldammit I don't disagree. But do billboards of famous people inhaling nic vapour send the right message?
— Dr. Brian Goldman (@NightShiftMD) August 26, 2014

You mean like this?



From the same source, a succinct summary of the issue.

No matter how you feel about the product or the industry, electronic cigarettes do not contain tobacco and lack virtually all of harmful chemicals found in cigarettes. THEY SHOULD NOT BE CLASSIFIED AS SUCH or be limited by the same harsh restrictions. So far, no adverse health effects have been associated with electronic cigarettes, yet the alcohol industry is responsible for at least 80,000 deaths each year and the media seems unconcerned about their marketing techniques. Most people acknowledge that kids should not have access to these devices, but comparing electronic cigarette companies to the tobacco industry of the past is not only unfair – it’s inaccurate. Electronic cigarettes help smokers quit and expose them to significantly less health risks. For now, consumers have a wide array of choices and full access to these products, but if the government, pharmaceutical and big tobacco companies have their way, that may be a thing of the past.

My succinct summary: Fuck right off, Nanny Staters.

ADDED: from Anonymous in the comments: UN doing Big Pharma's bidding. Again.

Study of second-hand effects of vapours. No apparent risk.

Added: deBeauxOs' response as a non-smoker:

No reply from Dr Goldman yet.

THEM

It's the title of an early Joyce Carol Oates novel, possibly her best and deserving a place in the US literary canon.

_THEM_ depicts the chaotic lives of a family living in poverty in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 riots.  Oates draws a vivid portrait of a matriarch, from self-awakening as a naive young mother nagged by regrets at the age of sixteen, to a mature woman whose aspirations and struggles encompass the destinies of her children battling to survive in a perilous world fraught with violence. Poor white trash folks, before that epithet became a thing.

US against THEM is also a binary construct that imposes constraints and limits possibilities.

This imperative to separate people into opposite camps, assigned to one side or the other of an arbitrarily determined divide, is a facile reflex.  Though some sociobiologists would claim that every human brain is instinctually wired to respond in this manner because: survival strategy! I find their arguments oozing with smarminess and confirmation bias.

This polarizing framework is certainly omnipresent throughout history, across varied and numerous ideological and cultural settings.



Demonize, other-wize, isolate, target. 

Blue dot.

And thus, with regard to this ill-advised model that the Liberal Party of Canada is heavily promoting, today's JT speech announces what awaits Canadians in the 2015 election campaign, if THE MIDDLE-CLASS becomes its strategic meme (though it could morph into a much abused trope).

As someone who grew up in a rough-and-tumble mostly francophone area with many immigrants, working class (and working poor) in a town that's now part of Ottawa, I find this ploy repellent.

Though I may seem to be a member of this elusive and more likely, illusive demographic that the Liberal brain-trust is desperately trying to seduce into its camp, it does NOT speak to me. 

When I hear the expression "upward mobility" deployed in JT's speech as though it were an exalted entitlement, I retch.  Meaningful work, a decent salary, a social safety net: those are important elements that should not be available only to those who buy into the "upward mobility" scam, or more accurately, a form of fancy-schmancy Ponzi economic scheme beatified by the likes of Larry Summers and his sycophants.

I think of my daughter, who by virtue of her hard work and personal sacrifices, is now an accomplished physician who gives back to the communities she has pledged to serve and respect.  I really don't think this marketing gimmick will speak to her.

As I do, she may find it repugnant and exclusionary.

THEM is the group that I historically and emotionally identify with, that demographically disregarded and invalidated class that JT and his team discount when the focus becomes exclusively *THE MIDDLE-CLASS*.

THEM includes many many many people, and not only those who have fallen on hard times. We may not be the potential rich donors the PLC is wooing, but we can smell a deliberate shun.  And when we are angered, we vote.

You can't take that to the bank but you can count on it.

As an aside, is the NDP's best shot at challenging the credibility of JT's speech really this? 

Mulcair's communications flaks would do much better to query how much Summers charged the LPC for his tired dog-and-pony show at the convention.  Was the party billed his preferential Wall Street rate - for "friends"?

LOL cuz U R bay-beez haz bay-beez!

"becuz the dad’s name on the birth certificate is going to be I live in a house with four guys. It could have been any one of them."

When I first saw this site, words failed me. What is the purpose of whythefuckdoyouhaveakid.com?

Was it created in a moment of spite, a vile opportunity for adolescents to post pix of their peers ? Do these teens loathe and mock other teens for reasons beyond the fact they are kids having kids? Are they using this website to settle a score?

Though it's certainly been demonstrated that the failure of abstinence-only programs in the US was spectacular, it would seem unlikely that advocates for comprehensive Sex-Ed would use this tactic to promote their own programs. Fear and hate-mongering is not known to be an approach they advocate.

There's something deeply nasty and contemptuous, misogynist, classist and racist about this website, in spite of the disclaimer that all photos were obtained from public image hosting. For example, the jeering caption under that photo at the top of the post - does this young woman deserve to be tagged this way? No, she doesn't.

When I started paying attention to the background - generic birth control pills and Durex condoms - something clicked. Of course. The advertising consultants who designed this website are hoping that it goes viral. Because misery, tragedy and mean-spirited laughs are powerful tools for attracting people and selling them your product.

This website is not the new LOL CATZ. It's just a despicable advertising gimmick.