Iro Cyr is the host of this Round Table with Gian Turci of FORCES Italy and Arminda Mota from the My Choice group in Montreal as guests. The topic is the hostility of the media against smoking and smokers. This hostility is meant to cater to political correctness, and to avoid being accused of promoting the only “epidemic” for which not even one death can be scientifically demonstrated: smoking.
How do we handle the mass media, that have taken on the job of making smokers look “bad,” “wrong,” “sick,” while promoting antismoking agenda? Bombarded with pharmaceutical advertisement themselves (and crucially dependent on that advertisement), the media have now implemented a total propaganda barrage, and themselves have become a tool of the Therapeutic State to form opinion and culture. Thus they have devolved from their time-honoured function of providing unbiased information from which the people may form their own opinions. Now opinion formation is called “information.” The diametrical opposition of the two concepts is being totally lost.
How can our side fight a multi-billion dollar industry of disinformation that has decided to treat everybody like children, and that continuously appeals to the ever-decreasing minimum intelligence denominator, rather than trying to elevate that intelligence? To complicate the issue, the media themselves are deeply ignorant of the tobacco issue and unwilling to educate themselves, while simplistically catering to — and relying on — “authoritative” opinions, performing no verification whatsoever. Are we expecting too much of them in current times? Are the media simply mindless parrots and amplifier machines? That seems to be about it today.
Arminda Mota brings forward interesting observations, and points out that smokers and other target victims have their share of fault, because they don’t speak out. In short, many have “bent over” and often prefer to believe the "authoritative" epidemiological fraud spoken by “health” ministers, and feel guilty in the process. Guilty of WHAT? … Smoking?! It really seems so, as hard as it may be for the intelligent person to comprehend, lots of folks have been convinced to loathe themselves for a natural liking for tobacco.
Is the game over with the media, then? Not necessarily — but the behaviour of our side must change, and we have to start showing that we respect ourselves, as Gian Turci points out. Smoking is a time-honoured, respectable choice in life, made by respectable people. They and their choices deserve respect. In today’s climate they must demand it.
Changing the opinion of people can be done by those who speak the truth forthrightly: for people understand your certainty far earlier than they understand your words.
Therefore, please, no more “smoking is bad but …”
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