[In the 1960s and 70s, mob-controlled cigarette smuggling seriously cut into tobacco taxes.] What the PTB should’ve done at that point, of course, was simply repealed the taxes, learned to live within their means, and stopped trying to nag their citizens into good behavior …
Ok, ok, is everyone done laughing yet? Go ahead, get it all out of your system; I’ll wait. Everyone back? Ok, moving on:
What the PTB actually did, of course, was a multi-level propaganda campaign. It was brilliant. It took a few years, of course, but the evidence is all around you. Quick: When’s the last time you saw anyone smoking in a mainstream movie? Even period films about the Forties, say — the ones where they take infinite pains to get just the right period-appropriate shade of Formica on the diner’s countertops — ignore the obvious historical reality of people puffing away like chimneys.
Indeed, it’s all but universal now, and has been for a long time, that characters who smoke are the bad guys.
Here again, look at college kids. I hate to keep beating this dead horse, but it’s really the best example I know of the phenomenon. Any time I taught the Early Modern period, I had to mention the massive economic and cultural effects of tobacco. So I encouraged kids to try it for themselves — everyone here is over 18, I said, so it’s perfectly legal. Want to know what all the hype was about? Just run down to the gas station, buy a pack, and light one up!
Around the turn of the century, I always had a few smokers in class, so I could say “bum one off So-and-So”. Even that would get me a few uneasy chuckles. A few years later, and not only were there no smokers in my classes, but the kids would be actively uncomfortable with the suggestion. By the end of my teaching career, when I couldn’t care less anymore, I was openly taunting them about it. You people have no problem with potheads, I’d say. I bet well over half of you are on Ritalin, Prozac, Xanax, Klonopin, shit that’s bad for you, in ways we don’t even understand yet, but you’re balking at one cigarette? It’s unsafe? Oh, come on, some of you are going to leave here and go light up a completely unfiltered ditch weed, and as for the rest of you, you know all about crazy sex fetishes I’ve never even heard of. You get blackout drunk at the football games every weekend, but oh no, you can’t have one cigarette, it’s so unhealthy.
Such is the power of propaganda, and it’s the only repression that works for the PTB when they’ve truly set their faces against a behavior …
Severian, “The Mob, Faux-tism, and the Ever-Rising Costs of Compliance”, Founding Questions, 2021-02-02.
September 17, 2023
QotD: One of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history
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I understand that the plural of anecdote is not data, but my family is a very good example of just how bad smoking can be. The average age of death for a non-smoking ancestor of mine gets up into the 90s; the average age of death for a smoker goes down by two or three decades at least. And lung cancer is not a death I would wish on anyone, having seen it up close and personal.
Of course, once they get into the complete demonization of vaping as “bad or worse than” smoking, they’re out of their minds. No, getting a nicotine fix through vaping isn’t great. There’s still a lot of potential damage. But it’s *less* damage than a standard cigarette, and smoking a joint also does damaging things. (I’ve grown up in fire country, and smoking the state isn’t fun either.) There’s no consistency of message, and kids SEE that. Lie to them about comparative risk and they’ll discount everything you say.
Comment by B. Durbin — September 18, 2023 @ 20:11
I’m intimately familiar with the lives of smokers, as I was the only non-smoker in my family, with my parents and my sister being pack-a-day or more smokers. My mother gave up smoking about 30 years ago, and today is her 93rd birthday. My father died in his early 60s and my sister died in her early 50s (neither was lung cancer, but both clearly died long before they should have and I attribute much of that to their smoking habits).
The anti-vaping thing I just don’t get. Are they trying to push youngster toward smoking instead?
Comment by Nicholas — September 19, 2023 @ 09:37