Von, between you and me (
) I'm not particularly interested in SHS and the degree to which it's problematic. What IS interesting to me is how tobacco control manipulated the literature to achieve their ultimate goal - to remove smoking from public places. It's not even about whether the eradication of smoking in public places was right or wrong - rather, it's instructive because it demonstrates precisely how tobacco control operates.
This extends beyond SHS and into areas in which I AM interested, such as the demonisation of nicotine, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes and the direct harm to the health of smokers who are consequently denied options which could be lifesaving.
And that's precisely the point, Oliver. Things like SHS had nothing to do with facts or progress. SHS just happened to fit a tactic that they wanted to employ to achieve their desired end.
SHS danger claims were just a way to demonize the smoker in a way that convinced the non-concerned parties that the smoker was causing them direct harm, thereby using them as a force-multiplier and excuse to further marginalize smoking.
But it's a lie, so it took some serious work on their part to get it to "take"- using the "tell a lie enough times and it becomes the truth" principle.
Imagine the first time the SHS lie was told:
Three dudes sitting at a bar, one of them smoking. The third one tells the second one "you know, the dude sitting next to you smoking is causing you just as much harm as he is himself".
The second guy, the one sitting next to the smoker, looks over, sees him take a big puff and a bunch of smoke come out and drift away. In just the half a second that it takes his brain to sort it out, he thinks "if that much came out, imagine how much went in. Most of what came out went 'that' way, and I can only smell it."
Then he looks over his shoulder, out the window, and sees a car stopped at the intersection, with smoke billowing out of its tail-pipe, and realizes he's going to be stuck behind that car on his way home...driving a car of his own."
He promptly dismisses what the third guy said, goes back to drinking his beer, and decides to live and let live the smoker next to him.
To get any traction, that lie had to be told thousands/millions of times. They had to fund junk studies and pay off government shills to get them to parrot it, and deliver tear-wrenching testimonies on the senate floor, passing bills to convince the people this is all done in their interest.
We can't afford that tactic. We don't have the numbers to go toe-to-toe with the liars, we don't have the money to buy the junk studies or politicians, and we don't have the horsepower to push the entrenched interest out of the way.
Fortunately, we have the 'truth'. We don't need any of those other things, if we employ the truth that we do have, the right way.
The old saying about telling a lie enough times for it to become the truth, is very telling. It implies that the lie is at a disadvantage, from the start, because people generally know what BS smells like, and are capable of dismissing it the first several times it is told to them.
The truth, though, if it's told with all due sincerity, only needs to be said once for it to take root. Even against an entrenched lie, the truth always smells better than the lie.
Pedaling our truth against their lies is an asymmetric warfare. We need to say the truth as often as we can, but only because we are working against a deeply entrenched lie, and we have A LOT of people we need to deliver it to.
Each lie we tell would only mitigate the impact of every round of truth that we fire.
