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Tony, read it and understand it first. I did publish a
series of feature stories in the paper here a couple of
years ago and some researchers actually went off and did
a bit of hard research that backs up precisely what I am
pointing to. Much more research needs to be done yet. There
is nothing wrong with the existing research. Those statistics
about the number of deaths from lung cancer etc., etc. are
entirely reliable and I have no dispute with them. What
I am drawing attention to is what has been left out. They
have not told us the other side of the statistics ‚ and
for understandable reasons. Everywhere around the world
a massive proportion of the budget for health research is
now forcibly extracted from "the tobacco giants" and ultimately
that comes from those who can still afford (or not afford!!!)
to smoke. Demographically today they do tend to be the lower
socio-economic sectors in society (echoes of who is funding
the Poker Machine industry in Victoria, Tattersalls Charities
and another great swathe of the health budget as shown on
Four Corners tonight eh?). There are a few notable exceptions
to that general rule ... like John Elliott, Maggie, Amanda,
myself, Briggsie, Fr Mick Kelly ‚ all eminent capitalists
the lot of them ‚ and I think there are quite a few other
lurking or closest smokers in this community as well (LOL).
Compounding the problem is that you may remember all those
years ago when the governments started to ban tobacco advertising
that left an enormous hole in the advertising revenue brought
in by all the big media chains and television networks.
How that was redressed is that the politicians did a "trade
off" with the likes of Packer, Murdoch, and Fairfax where
they promised to invest equivalent amounts of money into
media advertising and so the QUIT campaign was born ‚ and
road safety and all manner of other government advertising
campaigns. When the Tobacco multinationals were allowed
to advertise there was no significant government advertising
in the media, except perhaps for classified job advertising.
The commercial media everywhere around the world today is
as beholden to governments for a major proportion of their
advertising revenue as much as in the past they were beholden
to the likes of Phillip Morris, Rothmans, British American
Tobacco, WD&HO Wills, RJ Reynolds, etc etc. It is not some
"conspiracy theory" Tony. It is the stark economic realities
of how the media makes its money but they are not likely
to be blabbing that from the rooftops are they given what
happened to their previous major sponsors. The government
raised the funds to do it by the escalating taxes that they
placed on the sale of tobacco products. The media, the health
care profession, the cancer research profession, not to
mention the anti-smoking industry (organisations like QUIT
that are funded by government) have an enormous vested interest
today in only publishing the statistics of the harm done
by tobacco and in suppressing all statistics about the benefits
that some people ‚ and in the past ‚ many people derived
from tobacco. Those pictures we used to see of soldiers
injured in battle during the war being given a cigarette
were not a fiction. It was one of the fastest ways to calm
a man down from severe shock and save him from further damage.
It "settled" his whole psyche.
I am sorry to have to shatter one of your own dearly loved
"conspiracy theories" about the terrible things that these
tobacco giants have been doing all these decades. (By the
way I am not paid by the Tobacco multi-nationals to write
this. Neither am I paid by the government or the health
industry side to write it. My only "vested interest" is
that I do enjoy a cigarette and over the years I have thought
about this alot and I think on balance the risks are worth
taking. The penny really dropped for me though when at one
stage I literally could not afford cigarettes for a period
and that was one of the worst periods of my own personal
instability where I was suicidal. I have also had quite
a number of relations who did live into very old age and
smoked quite happily right up until their deaths and didn't
die of lung cancer or a stroke. I have also had some who
have. As I said there are risks. I don't doubt that. I think,
on balance, they are worth taking in my case. I do object
to it costing me about ten bucks a day now though.)
I've got a bet on that in fifty years time the whole scene
will have turned again and tobacco will be back on the agenda
as being beneficial to life in enough cases that the risks
are tolerable. Just look at the situation where Thalidomide
was put back on the approved list by the Federal Government
today! Everybody would have said that's a "conspiracy theory
is up there with ëHarold Holt was abducted by aliensí."
had I put forward a suggestion like that even two years
ago.
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