Re: Smoking Propaganda
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pony99CA
Quote:
Originally Posted by hollis_f
Yes, it's a horrible habit. But trying to scare people with obvious untruths (everybody my age will have known elderly relatives that smoked) will just dilute the real facts.
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I understand your point -- smoking won't necessarily kill somebody, so the claim that it would was a bit overblown.
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Phew! Thank the gods that somebody understood what I was saying.
I believe that such exaggeration of risk is actually detrimental.
It's like the anti-cannabis propaganda of the 1960s and 1970s. We were all told that cannabis was just as terrible as other 'hard' drugs like heroin. When observation or experience showed us that it wasn't that harmful at all, we naturally assumed that all the drug warnings were equally bogus and that heroin (only as bad as cannabis - the man said so) might be worth a try.
You've got to realise that the addicted smoker, in many cases, will grasp at any excuse not to give up. When they read things about smoking that they know are untrue - "smoking will definitely kill you" - they can (perhaps subconciously) lump all the anti-smoking warnings into the same 'garbage' category.
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