Those are not exactly the words used in Denmark, but they amount to the same thing. Several Danish parties want the “health warning” removed from cigarette packs. Why? The reason is simple: they do not work – actually, they seem to have the opposite effect.
”Warnings on cigarette packets such as ‘Smoking can kill’ or ‘Smoking is very harmful to you and your surroundings’ were supposed to get people to stop smoking. But according to new marketing research, they have precisely the opposite effect, according to dr.dk. In fact according to research, the warnings give consumers more of a wish to smoke. A Danish marketing guru, Martin Lindstrøm, has tested the brains of several thousand consumers and found that the warnings are associated with pleasure – because the smoker associates the warning with something pleasant that is about to happen – smoking.”
That is correct – at least for many. Unfortunately, we strongly suspect that the removal of the trashy warnings is not going to happen – and that is for another simple reason: as we indicated at the beginning of these comments, they are a ideological statements. They cannot be anything else, given the total lack of hard science demonstrating that ”smoking kills”.
The ”health” warnings represent the ideology of the ”health authorities” – their quasi-religious faith in the indemonstrable; and, as it was for the Soviet Lisenkoism, science is to bend to ideology – especially that of the fanatical kind. The warnings may also represent the triumph of another garbage principle, the Precautionary Principle — but they certainly do not represent the truth as defined by science. The only truth that they demonstrate is the foam-at-the-mouth corruption of the health authorities that have imposed them.
That is why they will not go. The state intends to show its “progressive concern” for “health”, but it only manages to show its pinheaded stupidity. That is why, in the last analysis, the “warnings” are having the opposite effect.
Public health is not just a bunch of Nazis; it’s a bunch of stupid Nazis, who may have inherited the fanaticism of their historical predecessors – but certainly not the intelligence.
Keep on smoking – right in their faces.
0 Comments