Missing the point

It is tragic but true the US, in an attempt to liberate it citizens of a very mundane and costly habit, have completely missed the point. I think this is yet another example of legislation without vision. Rather than looking at why people smoke, why people take up smoking and finding ways to intervene and to encourage the nation to take up different habits like papercrafts and cycling they will try to intervene and tell people what they cannot enjoy.

It is the same as the approach to North Korea. NK says that signing sanctions against the NK will be seen as an act of war. And will respond accordingly. (Partly I just think they are looking for something to rally their citizens against and so incited the pending sanction response) But if we just ignored the NK they would have nothing to say. If rather than making laws that we can't trade with them, we just said "no thank you" every time they tried to buy from us or sell to us...what could they do. It is how we should act globally, if we don't agree with a countries activities then just ignore and silently boycott that country. It works with dogs it works with children, i know it works with adults too.

I find when I engage my friends and keep them doing other things they don't think about smoking and go for hours without a cigarette. But once we sit down and stop moving stopping cooking singing dancing etc then out come the ciggies and lighters. We should take note of this behaviour because it is endemic. Rather than spending billions trying to stop a negative behaviour why not spend millions encourage good behaviours sponsor sports and art invest and interest based community activities...

Or...i guess put scarier pictures on the products, put heavier taxes on the users, increase the medical costs...penalize penalize penalize....i think this business of negative reinforcement completely misses the point of why we want to change to role of smoking in our society. And without taking a good look at the role we want tobacco to play we cannot hope to find ways to end the negative roles it currently fills.