The Real Issue: Not Health But FREEDOM

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What do you think? Anti-smoking about Health or Social Control?

they're trying to improve health

[ 0 ] 0%

they just want more control over our lives

[ 19 ] 100%

Total Votes : 19

by Tsujiban on Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:25 am

More smoking restrictions pass. The average response? "Yeah well, that's good for everybody right?" Even some smokers may find themselves thinking "Ah well I've been meaning to quit anyways. It's really FOR MY OWN GOOD."

Oh noes, cars are polluting the world, global warming, ah! Ahhhh! Next comes new legislation saying all cars have to be under 500 pounds made out of aluminum foil running on lawnmower engines. The average response? "Well you know, it's good for the environment, and gas prices are so high... IT'S GOOD FOR EVERYBODY, RIGHT?"

And the busybodies start wringing their hands and keening in a pitch only dogs can hear "We're using too much electricity! Carbon footprint! Economic Imperialism!" and then the government in it's wisdom makes it a law that you have to have a "Smart Thermostat" in your home, which the power company can use to shut off your air conditioner at will during peak megawatt usage times. "You won't even notice it's there!" is an actual PR line I read in the brochure. And the average response? "Well IT'S FOR THE GENERAL GOOD and it's nice to have my electric bill $0.37 lower every month!"

The guns! They're killing people everywhere! More gun restrictions. "Hey I don't own a gun, and they're dangerous anyways. IT'S GOOD FOR SOCIETY."

There's haters out there! It's not just their actions, their hate is polluting the social environment! It's not just the crime, it's *what they are thinking*!" Thoughtcrime! So, more hatecrime legislation. "Ah well, I'm not a hater, that doesn't have anything to do with me. IT'S FOR THE GENERAL GOOD."

All of these things are about establishing social control. These are not separate, isolated efforts. They are, and all the other things that you are going to see over the next few years are a coordinated attempt to get people used to having the government come in to any aspect of our lives they want and dictate every little detail of our lives. The health issue and global warming and the environment and on and on are just strawman arguments they are using to get their way.

Maybe there are valid merits to some of those arguments, but that is not the point here. The point is that the ends justify the means. "For our own good" they are going to use any means necessary to establish control over every little bit of our lives, until we don't mind pervasive surveillance, we don't mind the reeducation, we're happy to attend the community lifestyle meetings and report weekly to our neighborhood apparatchik. And remember: It's for your own good!

To paraphrase Jeannine Garofolo, "This is about Orwellian Totalitarianism, straight up."

Ah well. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid. After all I don't want to hurt the planet, and we really should have more social equality and be better geopolitical neighbors. And I really have been meaning to quit smoking anyways...

LET PEOPLE DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES WHAT IS FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.

Isn't that what America is all about?

Quote:

"In Germany, they first came for the gypsies, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a gypsy. Then they came for the Bolsheviks, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Bolshevik. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up." - Martin Niemoller, A Lutheran Pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937

Tsujiban

Newbie Joined: Jun 17, 2009 Posts: 24

by activist0000 on Thu Jun 18, 2009 2:22 pm

It's all being perpetrated by the same group of people who were tattletales in grade school.

activist0000 Toker

Toker Joined: May 26, 2009 Posts: 86

by garhkal on Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:26 pm

Agreed. And what gets me, is even when you show those who are lobbying it is NOT about what they say, they decry you as being loony.

garhkal

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: Apr 24, 2009 Posts: 278

by JoshNJ on Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:28 pm

Tsujiban wrote:

Quote:

Not sure if he was ever arrested by the Gestapo, but the quote is traced to 1946, not 1939. Also, the quote has extra revised lines...just so you know. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller

JoshNJ

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: Apr 12, 2006 Posts: 312

by libertarian99 on Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:23 am

JoshNJ wrote:

Tsujiban wrote:

Quote:

You're slipping, Josh. Who said anything about 1939? Oh, how I am savoring this moment.

libertarian99 Enthusiastic Smoker

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: May 01, 2009 Posts: 453

by GaryTheSmoker on Sat Jun 20, 2009 1:15 pm

Well, it seems "Fire Safe" cigarettes have finally reached my market here in Colorado. What a useless product.

I read the other day that "Light" cigarettes cause a type of lung cancer because smokers draw harder on their cigarettes. Now it will also affect all Fire Safe cigarette smokers because those stupid things are almost impossible to keep burning. You have to draw on them 2 or 3 times harder than a normal cigarette. The NFPA has created a more dangerous cigarette and smokers will pay with their health so the the fire insurance companies can save more money on the few accidental fires caused by smoking.

This is a "control your life" issue, not an "improve your health" one. The National Fire Protection Association is an insurance LOBBY group. Their codes and standards are not designed to save lives or increase health; they are meant to reduce fire insurance claims and payouts. Sure, there is a safety side-effect of their codes, but the NFPA is not driven by safety or health issues. Their goal is to save money for the insurance companies they represent. They couldn't care less about the increased health risks to millions of smokers.

NFPA codes and guidelines are Law in most States. How is that possible? Its because our legislators, whose job is to make laws, don't make laws. Our states BUY (yes, it costs money to get copies of NFPA copyrighted codes and guidelines. Try to find Fire Safe Cigarette standards online sometime.) the code from the NFPA and adopt them as laws. The NFPA is part of the insurance and control your life scams designed to make corporate profits at your expense. Our know-nothing, do-nothing elected representatives jump at the chance to adopt laws instead of actually considering the legislation and doing the job they are paid to do.

From now on, smokers should sue the NFPA and their client insurance companies for the increased adverse health effects of Fire Safe cigarettes. The NFPA knows, or should have known, that increased draw will cause additional harm to smokers. The insurance companies have a LOT more cash than the tobacco companies. A few billion in damages may get the NFPA to pull it's nose out of where it has no business being in the first place; in every aspect of a citizen's life.

Respectfully,

Gary

GaryTheSmoker Newbie

Newbie Joined: Jun 20, 2009 Posts: 1

by activist0000 on Sat Jun 20, 2009 2:27 pm

GaryTheSmoker wrote:

This is a "control your life" issue, not an "improve your health" one. The National Fire Protection Association is an insurance LOBBY group. Their codes and standards are not designed to save lives or increase health; they are meant to reduce fire insurance claims and payouts. Sure, there is a safety side-effect of their codes, but the NFPA is not driven by safety or health issues. Their goal is to save money for the insurance companies they represent. They couldn't care less about the increased health risks to millions of smokers.

What chaps me the worst is that the FDA doesn't have to allow any harm reduction products, like SNUs or a reduced-risk cigarette, if they feel like some smokers would just switch to that product instead of quitting, or if they think a non-smoker might actually take up the safer product. So a real current smoker who wants to buy a reduced-harm cig cannot do so. They must continue to buy more hazardous cigs in order to protect some imaginary smoker who was thinking about quitting, or some imaginary non-smoker who might be attracted to the reduced-harm cig.

If there was a shred of real concern for smokers, then anyone with the technology to produce a safer cigarette or SNU should be required by law to do so, and anyone standing in the way of doing that should be prosecuted. But apparently the antis feel that current smokers are so evil, their best interests should never be considered, only the interests of potential quitters who might be "saved," or non-smokers who might be "saved" from the evils of smoking.

These are hypothetical people so there is no way to tell for sure whether or not they would behave in any certain way, only that there is the potential for the imaginary people to behave in a way that must be prevented by throwing current, actual smokers to the wolves.

activist0000 Toker

Toker Joined: May 26, 2009 Posts: 86

by Asmoker2 on Sat Jun 20, 2009 3:26 pm

Which goes to prove once and for all that the antis message is "To save lives" is a bunch of bull.

And as far as FSCs being fire-safe...lmao... Phillip Morris states that the cigarettes may cause fires. *shaking my head in disbelief*

Asmoker2

Smoker Joined: Mar 24, 2009 Posts: 143

by Smoker Sympathizer on Sat Jul 25, 2009 3:25 am

Every time I hear the phrase "it's about saving lives" I cringe. It's never about that or "the children" or "those poor employees who have to breathe in all that smoke" or "insert faceless sympathy generating group here". It's always about control, always. Maybe not at the bottom where people whose goal in life it was "to make a difference". They really think they're doing something good. But at the top, the wizard behind the puppet, it's about controling every aspect of people's lives. The question is, how do we stop it?

Also, on a side note, I know people are praised up and down for saying they want to "make a difference", but why is that taken at face value and not explored? Not all differences are good. But these days it seems to be enough to say you want to make one.

Smoker Sympathizer Toker

Toker Joined: Jul 19, 2009 Posts: 86

by garhkal on Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:44 pm

The biggest thing that peeves me off about that line, is since EVERYONE dies anyway, how are we saving them from being killed?

garhkal

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: Apr 24, 2009 Posts: 278

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