This August 30th, it was reported that an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal was advocating that provincial drug plans should pay for smoking cessation drug therapies. Not a bad idea. If the official position is that smoking increases costs to public health and that cessation is an investment that would more than reduce […]
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Years ago at a conference I attended, we had a discussion going about how much misleading information was present in materials which were aimed at getting people to stop or not start smoking. One of the more persistent ideas was that nicotine was poisonous. But a doctor who worked at an addictions clinic said that […]
Yesterday’s posting generated the most hits so far of any posting on our blog to date. It was, as most of you discovered, an exploration of how tobacco is reported in the news in the form of a parody. I strove to create something as perfectly camouflaged as possible so as to pass for the […]
-The following inadvertently ended up in my inbox via a BCC re a starting writer at a major newspaper who probably was not aware that it was intended to be confidential. There is little need to comment on this since it pretty well speaks for itself.-PLB. United Press Association Guidelines for Tobacco Reporting As a […]
Recent articles on Washington’s smoking rate to the point of being the 3rd lowest in the US seem at first glance to be reports of good news (lower smoking means fewer health costs all round) yet reveal themselves to be little more than vehicles of the standard quit or die propaganda. In Wash. adult smoking […]
Canadian anti-smoking groups like to strut around crowing that they have consistently been at the forefront of tobacco control policy. This country pioneered graphic warning labels on cigarette packages, restricting tobacco advertising and adding onerous taxes onto tobacco. We were among the first to have no smoking areas in restaurants. But to out lasting shame, […]
Go over to Ep-ology and read Carl’s thoughts on UCLA voting to fire scientist Jim Enstrom, and be sure to follow the links for the details on the story. Enstrom is known for paying scant attention to staying politically correct (not that he has purposefully gone down that path but that his findings have not […]
Up to about a year ago the usual news report on electronic cigarettes was unabashedly positive. Here was this great new product that smokers were finding to be a pleasurable substitute for cigarettes. The stories would feature smokers and their reports of improved breathing and in just about every case they would also mention how […]
A couple of days ago, Elaine Keller wrote a great comment to the article Word Wars and Tobacco Control at the BMJ Group Blog. Excerpt from that posting: In too many places even today, tobacco use is still taken for granted and if problematised at all, is understood primarily as an individual ‘bad habit’ rather […]
When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California, they’re going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, and they’re going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture. –Doug Coupland The Coupland quote is not entirely perfect but it does go toward illustrating the absurdity of life in California, […]
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