light up, light up, as if you have a chance
Thankfully I’ve never had to give up smoking because, and this’ll make you smile, I never took it up as I was worried it’d stunt my growth. Consequently, I’ll never say never! Of one thing I am certain though, and that is that there are no upsides to the evil weed and nasty habit. The vast majority of my family have been life-long smokers and virtually none of them are still alive to prove me wrong.
The only people who can claim to derive any benefit from cigarette smoking are the ones who grow, produce, manufacture, market and sell tobacco. And the universal argument used is freedom of choice. Puffing away is the most blatant example of a consumer economy, a free-market that habitually pretends to prize and preserve an individual’s freedom to make informed and knowledgeable choices, when in reality it does no more than protect a corporation’s ability to make its profits. You need more examples? Our right to gorge ourselves on sugar until we all keel over from type 2 diabetes? Our right to fast-food on demand until our hearts explode? Our right to booze ourselves into blitzed oblivion? All are valiantly defended and protected. Is it any surprise these all sound vaguely American and could perhaps be enshrined in some such constitution?
Of course our seemingly libertarian government and society tinker at the edges; witness changes to packaging and pricing policies, but nothing to truly change the status quo and upset the cosy balance of power. And profit. In today’s western society the vast majority of us support, through either purchase or legislation, unencumbered corporate power. The idea that liberty is wholly about individual commercial choice is one of the great rock & roll swindles of all time. It’s simply a brilliant marketing strategy to strengthen the ability of those who have the advantage to take even further advantage!
It’s pure and complete nonsense to view these industries – booze, smoking, fast-food – as crippled and restricted by legislation as all are hugely supported by the public sector, which spends countless millions (billions?) on both ‘education’ for their customers and picking up the pieces of those decisions. The sooner they are fully and completely restricted the better for all of us and there can’t be many who would disagree with this…except perhaps right-wing libertarians and tobacco companies. Often, of course, they are one and the same.
