[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by Allan on July 28, 2007, 12:20 am, in reply to "Re: Graphic Warning Labels" I agree w/ya, and hope that we never see the day when graphic warnings are required on cig packages, either. But in the back of my mind, I also do fear that antis will probably succeed in requiring those on cig packs, at some point, but I also think it won't happen until Pres. Bush leaves office(only possible presidential candidates that I can think of that may oppose the FDA tobacco regulation bill, are possibly Ron Paul and Fred Thompson). And like another poster said on the Boardhost Smoking Ladies board(which I more often post at, than here), I share his sentiment and fears that 2009 could possibly be a dark year of reckoning for smokers, especially if Hilary, Obama, Romney, Giuliani, or McCain wins the presidency in '08. And I can smell right away that Hilary and McCain, from what I've heard of them, are definate hard-core antis. Not to mention, I suspect Michelle Obama, Obama's wife, is probably a major anti, due to the fact that she's both been trying to pressure Obama to quit smoking, and that she served for awhile in some form(I forget what position she did, dumb me for always forgetting what she did!) on the University of Chicago Hospital system. And I don't think I need to mention how easily I can read through the lines, obviously how she'd likely pressure Obama to sign the FDA regulation bill, if he wins the presidency next year. Sorry if that political part of that post was slightly long, and/or a little much for anyone. To get closer back to the subject I wanted to talk about, it's scary that in addition to all the tobacco advertising bans that've passed in the last 4-8 years(including the ban on billboard advertising), how much of an anti-smoking climate we live in, where bans on outdoor smoking have become TOO OVERBOARD and ridiculous(i.e. beach smoking bans, park smoking bans, hell even one local outdoor music festival(Ravinia) in the Chicagoland area, where I live, decided to restrict smoking to areas just outside of gates about 2-3 years ago, but does allow smokers to freely exit Ravinia to smoke and reenter back inside). That alone about Ravinia, that I sadly discovered upon my 1st trip there this year, makes me almost wanna BOYCOTT that place, and never return. I seriously wish they had followed Six Flags Great America(a great amusement park near Chicago), and instead, had only restricted smoking to several designated areas within their grounds, instead of an OUTRIGHT smoking ban anywhere within Ravinia's grounds, and requiring smokers to go outside their gates to smoke. Ugggh, I so LONG for the day when finally, anti-smokers get shamed so much for how they've been blackmailing and trying to 'denormalize' people who choose to smoke, that the vast majority of smoking bans, including also indoor bans, FINALLY get repealed, once and for all. It's sad that I don't see such a scenario occuring for at least 5-8 years, when I imagine a lot of today's anti-smoking hysteria will start to die down a lot, and maybe we'll even see a repeat of what occurred in the 30s, when alcohol Prohibition was repealed(though I do realize that it took some states a few decades after Prohibiton's repeal to finally re-legalize alcohol sales, so maybe the end of 'tobacco prohibition' won't all occur as soon as I'd like to see it happen). Not to mention, if graphic warnings are ever required on cigs, good effing luck(to antis) in ever succeeding in getting the same number of smokers to quit at the rate that some are quitting at in America, today. And hey, I already see the newly-required graphic warnings that now grace Canadian cigarettes starting to backfire in encouraging smokers there to quit, since I recently saw a study that showed Canada's smoking rate actually did minimally increase during the 2nd half of 2006, and that data also confirmed that the smoking rate was starting to plateau, instead of the quicker decline that occurred to Canada's smoking rate during the late '90s/early 2000s.
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