Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma:
Hug me, honey, snuggle bunny;
Love's as good as soma (a little ditty from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World)
How does a smoking ban benefit Big Nicotine and inhibit free speech?
I found out through some very interesting research after having a look at the local anti-smoking site, which piqued my interest due to the fact that it appeared more of an advertisement for an assortment of nicotine products and prescription anti-depressants, rather than a place of encouragement for those desiring to quit using tobacco products.
Those who truly desire to help others do not spew hatred or segregationist laws against certain groups. They attempt to help them through programs that offer strength and tools that aid the individual's will power to overcome weaknesses.
The local anti-smoking site offered no help, but rather a defeatist message on each and every page that advised the tobacco user that they could never quit unless they took more nicotine along with anti-depressants, all of which were referred to by their brand names and proffered by the state run "quit" line. Amongst heroin addicts the replacement of the favored delivery technique with another is called "chasing the dragon." Of course, we call it "therapy."
One does not tell an alcoholic or drug addict that the only way to quit is to keep drinking alcohol or keep shooting up with the same drug but in a patented form. It doesn't work because it defeats the purpose. There is no such thing as a step-down method. There is only quitting and overcoming the initial discomfort, then never ever using again no matter how much time passes. This method also requires love, patience, and strength from the quitter's immediate community.
And so, due to this lack of love for their fellow humankind and community members, and because of the appearance of propaganda and advertising I went looking to see what I could see.
What I found is that The New Big Tobacco, or as I call it Big Nicotine, is bigger than the old Big Tobacco and has adopted the very policies that they accuse the tobacco companies of employing. Big Nicotine is the new frontier of the giant multi national pharmaceutical companies. If you have a problem of any kind, anything you can think of, they have a nicotine for that.
The pharmaceutical companies back nearly every anti-smoking campaign not because they give a damn about any one's health, but because they want everyone hooked on their patented nicotine products. Unpatented tobacco, such as is used in pipes, cigars, and cigarettes is a far cheaper and effective, not to mention a more pleasurable and sociable delivery device for nicotine. Until unpatented tobacco is banned it will not be possible for the pharmaceutical companies to monopolize the market and have every man, woman, and child who walks through the doors of their doctor's office or even the local gas station hooked on one form of nicotine or other.
Every person who lights up a cigarette in a public place is a walking advertisement for the competition. They nearly have a sign on them that says, "I patronise from another non patented, non monopoly source." Money is speech, and a person who smokes cigarettes in public is actually exercising their free speech and freedom to spend their money with whom they choose.
Pharmaceutical patented nicotine cannot make its customers into walking advertisements. When one is wearing a patch, pouching a piece of "gum," or "sucking" on a 30-minute long tooth-rotting lozenge, or inhaling from a medical inhaler or whatever other odd delivery device that Pharmaceutical Big Nicotine has invented; the user looks as if they're either sickly or a kid with strange, mouth deforming candy.
There is a patented nicotine for Alzheimer's, weight loss, Attention Deficit Disorder, Parkinson's, West Nile, depression and countless other commonly diagnosed problems.
And now the TobaccoFree groups are petitioning the states for higher visibility and easier access to Pharmaceutical Big Nicotine. They want it in "daily use" packs (like a pack of cigarettes) and down where the kiddies can see it and get it. They want it in every location that public displays of cigarettes have been banned from. In a step-by-step fashion the Pharmaceutical Big Nicotine is jostling for wider availability. And the anti-smoking groups are the pushers of this agenda. Perhaps, they mean well, but it looks as if they are corrupt and angry that there is competition with their product.
Why do supposedly health oriented movements such as the anti-tobacco campaigns righteously support addiction to patented nicotine and lobby for availability of Pharmaceutical Nicotine where children can easily get to it? Why do they support nicotine products at all? Why do they support the use of dangerous and numbing anti-depressants? Greed disguised as righteousness.
I'd rather see a happy person enjoying a cigarette than an unhappy person on anti-depressants and getting oral cancer from sucking on a nicotine lozenge or candy, thinking it was safe. These products are as dangerous, probably more dangerous than cigarettes or smoke in the air.
As in former days, when the tobacco companies advertised that their products were safe and recommended by doctors, so we are seeing an even worse repeat with Pharmaceutical Big Nicotine. The medical and health community is again saying that these nicotine products are safe and using that overly employed phrase of our times: The benefits outweigh the risks.
To who do the benefits of patented nicotine apply? Not to most of us unless one owns shares in a pharmaceutical company. In fact the risks outweigh the benefits for most of us. The risk of walking past a bit of cigarette smoke is far better for the overall freedom of a community than the billions in benefits to the Big Nicotine companies, and gradual encroachment upon our privacy and liberty from such invasive Big Nicotine backed bills as forced health care which seeks to monitor every part of a person's life, even to invade one's home and create citizen snoop groups, and designate all women as mentally ill if they have ever been pregnant (I read it in one of the bills). I'm sure there is a patented nicotine for women who have suffered the disease of pregnancy.
I'll pay that nearly $2 billion in health costs that smoker's supposedly cost us if it means keeping everyone else free from Pharmaceutical tyranny and ensures freedom of speech, and freedom from a new corporate state. We spend $1 billion in Afghanistan every ten days. A few cases of lung cancer are far cheaper and don't blow children to death. A child can survive cigarette smoke, but they can't run from bombs, rapists, landmines, or adult prescribed drugs.
It is far safer to accept those who choose to smoke cigarettes than to ban them, erasing the stigma around the addictive properties of nicotine. If the pharmaceutical companies are successful in banning their competition, people who don't know any better will no longer associate nicotine (the addictive element in tobacco) with tobacco, but rather as a safe and doctor-recommended addiction.
Eventually, children will be hooked on Big Nicotine, and the person sitting next to you in church will be on Big Nicotine, and the western world will be like those in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World hooked on Soma.
At least, a person who smokes cigarettes must exercise restraint and refrain from lighting up wherever and whenever they want. A person addicted to a smoke free, patented, Big Nicotine product will not have to exercise restraint and may chew, suck, or wear a patch nearly anywhere at anytime. This will create addicts who will have a more difficult time quitting nicotine than a person who smokes cigarettes.
Already, a person who smokes cigarettes experiences much of life without having to smoke. This is a benefit that Big Nicotine does not offer the consumer. The consumer will be constantly on the nicotine and dependent, but never receive the same pleasure that a person who smokes does.
The pharmaceutical monopoly is far larger and far more insidious than the old tobacco companies. They have succeeded in creating fear and hatred of those who choose to shop the competition. Imagine if every corporation could accomplish such a feat! What if the patented artificial sweetener companies were able to create hatred of those who used real sugar? Or if Walmart launched a campaign against those who shop in non corporate stores?
Why did the German anti-Semites led by Hitler so hate the Jews? Because quite a few of them were successful business owners, competition with the state, competition with ideas. And what did the corporate Socialists of Germany do when they banned Jews? They confiscated their property, even their gold tooth fillings to fund the state's war upon them and others.
This is what the pharmaceutical corporations are doing to the tobacco companies and to those who smoke tobacco. They are using the Tobacco Settlement money to fund the anti-smoking campaigns which push patented nicotine and hatred. Those who use tobacco are labelled as murderers, sub human, and dangerous to DNA. The anti-smoking campaigns pay deformed people to show up and preach the dangers of tobacco, while everyone gets to ogle them and transfer the image of a monster, a less human onto all tobacco users.
And we neglect to remember that most of us descend from tobacco users. Are we ruined, maimed, less human because of it? No. There was a time when nearly half the U.S. population used tobacco. This peak in tobacco use also coincided with a time we often laugh about because of its wholesomeness. We also admire the bravery of these past people who defeated Hitler's corporatism, while using tobacco products.
A patent is a monopoly and harms competition, which in turn harms freedom. Freedom from second-hand smoke is not freedom. Smoke is only a universal symbol of what we fear -- that angry smoke issuing from the nostrils of God, the fire of wrath upon a hypocritical and arrogant land, the Lake of Fire.
"Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears--that's what soma is" (Brave New World)
"According to the non partisan Center For Responsive Politics, pharmaceutical companies spent $900 million on lobbying between 1998 and 2005, more than any other industry. During the same period, they donated $89.9 million to federal candidates and political parties...." (Wikipedia)
"61 percent of Medicare spending on prescription drugs is direct profit for pharmaceutical companies" (Wikipedia)
The Pharmaceutical industry is the number one largest political lobby, while the Tobacco industry doesn't even rank in the top 50 of the major political lobbies.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" (Ben Franklin)
image: Rembrandt, The Prodigal Son Returns
No comments:
Post a Comment