Imagine the following. A car company considers offering reinforced side panels as an additional safety component that customers can have for a price. An outside agency steps in and discourages them in part because the cars already have airbags and seat belts. But the overwhelming reason is “people won’t buy them”. Though in that example, […]
Monthly Archives: July 2010
This has only the slightest relationship to tobacco harm reduction issues but it is just too interesting not to mention. Just published in PLOS, the meta-review Social Relationships and Mortality Risks is bound to make the news for some time. And rightly so. While I can see many points of debate regarding the specifics within […]
Recently on DesignTaxi, there was a write up on Erik Askin’s idea on redesigning cigarette packs to make the act of getting a cigarette annoying enough to improve the chances of quitting. I think this is quite clever and a good option for those who think this might make the critical difference. I know that […]
At Sociological Images, they repeated a few of the recent comments about tobacco companies using color coding to distinguish their products and the idea that consumers would associate lighter colors with a safer cigarette. I think it is quite possible that smokers do associate lighter colors with a safer smoke. And it would be unfortunate […]
Every day a few more items pop up in the news about yet another company or campus sanctimoniously proclaiming that they will now be tobacco free. Typically this is accompanied with some sort of statement about it eventually resulting in lower health costs. First of all, unless the people actually quit smoking, and don’t just […]
“As perverse as it may seem, these many forms of creatively dodging the counterevidence represent a backhanded tribute to its importance. However much we ignore, deny, distort, or misconstrue it, evidence continues to matter to us, enormously. In fact, we ignore, deny, distort, and misconstrue evidence because it matters to us. We know that it […]
I really dislike both Paris and Perez Hilton. In fact, and though you may think I am being hyperbolic or fatuous, I really do think that culturally, they are corrosive elements, and personally, they diminish my quality of life. I would rather spend a day in a room blue with second hand smoke than a […]
