Archive for May 9th, 2008
Mother Earth and smoke-filled rooms
May 9, 2008“Less tar, more taste,” proclaimed a United States cigarette company
ad a few years ago. Today, the US and Australia could claim this:
“Less smoking, more pollution.”
Americans send huge amounts of toxic stuff into the air and water and
Australians pollute more per person than any other nation, but while
we foul the atmosphere, we are breathing easier at ground level than
we otherwise would because of steady declines in tobacco smoking.
Phillip Adams, a prominent print and radio commentator here, recently
wrote about parallels between the indefensible tactics of tobacco
companies peddling their products over the decades and the way our
political leaders in both countries avoid taking effective action to
stop “giving the planet lung cancer.”
Propaganda and profit, he argues, are keeping us from cleaning up our
environmental act in the same way lies and deceptions allowed
companies to manufacture and sell billions of highly addictive
products that maim and kill.
These little white sticks that Adams labels weapons of mass
destruction (March 22-23, 2008, The Weekend Australian) are still
being manufactured and sold, of course, often addicting the poorest
and most vulnerable before they reach the legal age of consent. Adams
could have written about corporate child abuse, too.
Tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the US,
according to the Center for Disease Control, but the proportion of
adults smoking there is as low as it’s been since the 1930s. About
21% of adult Americans smoke.
A government report says 70% of Aussie men and 30% of Aussie women
smoked in the 1950s. About 17% of adult Australians smoke now.
In both countries, prohibitions against smoking in enclosed public
places Read the rest of this entry »