Tag Archives: smoking

Changing Cultures Result In Changing Laws

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During the 1920’s and pretty much through the 1980’s smoking was portrayed as glamorous. From the 1920’s to the 1950’s Hollywood movies collaborated with film studios to place their products on screen, and they even paid movie stars to appear in cigarette advertising campaigns. Cigarette ads showed couples on exotic beaches or exotic tourist locations. The effort was made to associate cigarettes with travel, success, and glamor. In 1966, America began to require warning labels on cigarette packages. In 1970, cigarette advertising was banned from television and radio. In the 1980’s America began to ban smoking on airplanes. At first the ban only applied to smaller planes. In 1988, President Reagan signed a bill that banned smoking on airplanes. Beginning in the 1970’s, there was an effort to de-glamorize smoking. Anti-smoking ads appeared on television showing people in the hospital wasting away from cancer and lung disease. Restaurants set up non-smoking areas (later removed, sending smokers outside). Gradually smokers were deprived of their right to smoke and looked down upon. (I say this as an observer–I never smoked). Advertising and cultural pressure worked–in 1965, 45 percent of Americans were smokers. In 2015, that number was 15.2 percent. There is one small caveat though–in 1915, a nationwide survey  showed that the use of pot has surpassed cigarette smoking for the first time (article here). In 2020, 12.5 percent of Americans smoked. The culture changed, and gradually Americans changed their behavior. I would like to see the same thing happen with abortion now that Roe versus Wade has been overturned.

Because Roe versus Wade has been overturned, each state is allowed to make its own laws on abortion. It will be illegal in some states and abortion up until birth will be legal in other states. It’s time we tell the truth about abortion (just like it was a while before the tobacco companies told the truth about cigarettes). Just as the tobacco industry was a powerful lobby with lots of money to donate to political campaigns, Planned Parenthood (the leading abortion provider in the country), through related organizations donates large amounts of money to political campaigns and funds large amounts of political advertising and other advertising.

Planned Parenthood says that the child is simply a blob of tissue. Science has known for a long time that is not true. Planned Parenthood doesn’t mention the emotional scars many women experience after an abortion. Planned Parenthood doesn’t tell you about the increased risk of breast cancer in women who have had abortions. Planned Parenthood doesn’t tell you that an abortion is like any other medical procedure in that it carries risks. I personally know a number of women who were not able to have children after a legal abortion because of the scarring.

It’s time for the facts about abortion to be publicly shouted so that the culture surrounding abortion can change. I want abortion to be as socially unacceptable as smoking. Crisis Pregnancy Centers need to be supported, and pregnant women in a difficult situation need to get whatever help they need. There needs to be a reasonable alternative to getting an abortion, and the abortion industry needs to go bankrupt.

 

Science vs. Politics

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Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line Blog today about the ongoing politicization of science. The article raises the question of whether the horse or the cart is leading.

The article reports:

Vaping is an alternative to smoking. It’s a way in which nicotine addicts can access that drug without exposure to the harmful tars and chemicals in cigarettes that cause cancer, heart disease, and other maladies. It therefore presents the possibility of saving millions of lives.

However, much of the left hates vaping. So it’s not surprising that “science” has been marshaled against it.

Last year, the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study finding that vaping posed as great a heart risk as smoking does. According to Wesley Smith, that study fueled public policies that stifled the industry, damaging or destroying many small businesses and denying smokers the leading alternative to cigarettes.

But now, the study in question has been been retracted.

The article notes the problems with the study, then observes that the study was published despite concerns about its findings.

The article concludes:

Anyone can make a mistake. However, publishing an article even though the questions of reviewers have not been addressed seems like more than just a mistake.

And these kinds of “mistakes” always seem to cut in favor of the left’s agenda. Coincidence? Probably not. Smith points out:

. . .[S]cience journals have grown increasingly ideological. Nature has endorsed Joe Biden for president and promised to publish more political science — which isn’t “science” at all. The New England Journal of Medicine should change its name to the New Ideology Journal of Medicine. Science has endorsed “nature rights.” The list goes on and on.

It’s enough to make you wonder whether establishment science follows the data wherever it leads or, instead, is often influenced by political and social agendas. And once you wonder about that, you really shouldn’t blindly “follow the science” — or at least “science” produced after the left’s march through our institutions reached reached the scientific establishment.

Some of these scientists are the same people who are selling us the equivalent of chain link fences to block out mosquitoes when they praise homemade cloth masks.