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Funnily enough, last time I looked, the Colbert Report on the state of fatness in America was preceded by an advertisement for Pepsi.
And funnily enough, as I was doing work related things, I came across an internal video, put together for Wills hundredth anniversary of doing business in Australia, featuring Max Walker as the front man, and including any number of advertisements for cigarettes from the good old days.
It occurred to me watching that trip down memory lane that many of the young libertarians floating around these days frothing in righteous indignation about repression of liberty and blathering about the nanny state probably couldn't remember the good old days of television cigarette advertising.
After all, they got taken off the screens on 1st September 1976, and lordy, that's thirty four years ago.
And it wasn't just the Labor party wanting to do its nanny state thing. The Menzies government introduced a voluntary tobacco advertising code in 1966 and extended it to radio in 1971, and in 1972 the quivering Billy McMahon introduced mandatory health warnings. Sure the Whitlam government decided to phase out tobacco advertising in 1973, but thanks to maintain the rage day, it was that head prefect, Malcolm Fraser, acting on the advice of Ralph Hunt, who did the dirty deed in '76. (you can catch the time line here).
End result? In 1945 approximately 72% of Australian men smoked, while in 2007 only 18% of Australian males were daily smokers. It's young males (34% of the 18-24 age group) and women in the 25-34 age group (27%) that are the heaviest smokers. (here).
These days, except for a few addicts of the most desperate kind, few people have a problem with cigarette advertising being banned, smokers being taxed for their addiction, and treated like pariahs, or sent to the back of the store to pick up their brown covered packaged goods. Because cigarettes aren't banned - prohibition taught that lesson - but they are slipping down the totem pole as signs of sexuality, wealth and sophistication.
Now let me keep torturing those smokers: remember the good old days when spruikers could wear a jacket that would make a used car salesman blush, and Ardath cost 47 cents and you could lavish 54 cents on a pack of Capstan?
Hah! Those were the days, though not if you watched people around you die in wretched ways - I think I saw at least a half dozen male members of the close family die from painful cigarette- related diseases, from lung cancer to emphysema.
The brand that killed my father was pitched to the working class man. You'd have a hard time these days seeing an ash tray as a strong selling point:
Did I have a problem with cigarette advertising disappearing, and infringing on my liberty to endure a constant pounding from companies like Wills? Well I suppose if you like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, it might be an issue, so free to rage on in the name of liberty and defiance of the nanny state.
Of course there's a dilemma here. People say people are free to ignore advertising, and that advertising is only an information service. Which means a lot of sensible companies waste a heck of a lot of money on brand selling and image promotion and feel good drivel. Or perhaps in a caring way, they just want to make people feel good about themselves and their social status. Ah remember Waggers. By golly he could hook a female scientist with a fag, once she'd let her hair down:
But enough of this stroll down memory lane. It only came to mind when reading Jessica Brown's Nanny state can't save us from ourselves when she scribbled this:
That parents, teachers, doctors, priests, and other assorted experts claim to know best about the potential risks and dangers we face - both individually and as a community - is nothing new. But the expectation that government should legislate to protect us from these risks and dangers is.
Well I guess the notion that government should legislate to protect us from these risks is new if you count Bob Menzies in 1966 as new. But it happened before Jessica Brown came into the world, so I'm thinking she's more new than government interventions in society. (Well she's certainly younger than the food and therapeutic goods regulation that saw cocaine taken out of coke, and proprietary medicines brought to heel way back in 1939 - see A History of Therapuetic Goods Regulation in Australia in pdf form for the ways patent medicine snake oil salesmen were brought to heel, even the much loved Bex and the lesser loved Vincent's).
But then the poor possums at CIS are getting terribly agitated that governments might begin to take a view about taxing soda and dissing burgers. Perhaps they need a Bex or two - best in powder form with a cup of tea:
There are increasing calls for more regulation of junk food, and ideas such as a junk food tax are frequently floated in the media. The scientific evidence is pretty clear - a diet of ice-cream and chips will probably make you fat and in turn lead to problems like diabetes and heart disease. Your chances of living a long and healthy life diminish.
But what if you cherish the ability to sit down to a nightly Big Mac and Coke more than the prospect of living to 90? Sure, it's self-destructive and short-sighted, but a look around any shopping centre food court will confirm that it's a decision plenty of people make. So should it be the role of legislators to tell them not to?
But what if you cherish the ability to sit down to a nightly Big Mac and Coke more than the prospect of living to 90? Sure, it's self-destructive and short-sighted, but a look around any shopping centre food court will confirm that it's a decision plenty of people make. So should it be the role of legislators to tell them not to?
Well should it have been the role of legislators to ban cigarette advertising - and here we're not even considering the aesthetic benefits of a life without Stuart Wagstaff and Paul Hogan spruiking coffin nails? And is there evidence that junk food has in-built addictive qualities, similar to the joys of nicotine?
Not to worry. It seems nothing is safe from government these days, not even splashing warm beer on others, all a jolly jape amongst chums having a good time, or perhaps throwing a full can of beer at someone blocking your eyeline, or perhaps smashing them over the head with a bottle if they won't sit down. And spoilsports and do gooders want to ruin the fun of drunken yahoo yobboes:
The stern-faced, beach-ball popping fun police at the cricket have become the stuff of infamy. But the public reaction to their unbending rules suggests many people are willing to risk getting covered in warm beer if it means they get to enjoy the Mexican wave.
The stern-faced, beach-ball popping fun police at the cricket have become the stuff of infamy. But the public reaction to their unbending rules suggests many people are willing to risk getting covered in warm beer if it means they get to enjoy the Mexican wave.
Because you see, the law is an ass and government should only devise rules people want to follow:
Not all legislative efforts to protect us pose a problem. But for rules and regulations to be effective - and legitimate - they must be ones that people want to follow. They should reflect the community's values, not try to shape them. We happily submit to airport security measures, wear seatbelts, and drive on the left side of the road because there is a community consensus that following these rules is beneficial for us individually and as a group.
Happily submit to mindlessly stupid and ineffective airport security measures? Roll on a decent quick body scanner. Let the libertarians rage about the nanny state, and civil rights people get shocked about nude bodies, as if nudity is some kind of social crisis, as opposed to the way we're born.
Never mind. I look forward to new rules which are the kind I want to follow - like when I attend a bank and wave a pistol, a handsome pack of unmarked twenty dollar bills will be deposited in my purse. Nothing greedy. Just 10k a time. Oh and can we devise another rule I'd like to follow ... anybody I don't like in the street, I can throw warm beer over them, just to show them who's boss.
But risks to our safety, security and health involve trade-offs. While one person will gladly jump out of a plane with a parachute attached, another will decide it's just not worth the risk. When it comes to questions of health, safety and security, individuals will make widely differing decisions.
It's little wonder then that so many efforts to control the public's ''risky'' behaviour fail so miserably.
Yes, but is it all about individuals making widely differing decisions? Once again we get a discussion of risky behaviour without consideration of how that choice might be affected by addiction, or by compulsive behaviour egged on by social or by financial status and by advertising.
Because when steering the ship of state, which always resembles the Titanic, it takes a long time to turn things around, and banning the things themselves - the objects of desire - never works, but crude as they are, certain mechanisms, such as taxation and advertising regulation, can make a difference.
It's not a matter of stopping people from being fools or risk-takers, so much as reducing the willingness of some to make oodles of money selling poison into society, while claiming it's the responsibility always and only of the buyers to be beware.
Which is why you can argue for the end of the war on drugs, and the heavy regulation and taxation of drugs that are currently illegal, because heavy taxation and regulation make more sense than letting criminals make oodles of money from risk-takers:
Despite a long-standing prohibition on drugs, survey data show that nearly 40 per cent of people 14 years and over have tried illicit drugs at least once in their life, with about 15 per cent saying they have consumed them in the past year.
The alcopops tax was designed to curb binge drinking among teenagers. The actual effect was not to cut their alcohol intake but to increase their consumption of hard liquor such as vodka. And authorities' unsuccessful attempts to regulate away alcohol-fuelled violence suggest they haven't learnt anything since the days of the six o'clock swill.
Or perhaps it means that the alcohol industry has learned to box a lot more clever as it peddles its wares to the community, having learned the lesson from tobacco as to how to cut its cloth, lobby, and peddle its influence amongst politicians, and keep on making out like bandits? And Australians, who regularly seem to wake in fright, regularly hit the piss in binge drinking ways in grateful silence?
And so glamorous, often sports related, as with cigarettes, advertising of alcohol-related products continues apace. As if we didn't know they were there, or where to find them. Funny, go to any Muslim country where alcohol is banned, and you can find it quick without help from advertising,
When a law is widely ignored or deplored by enough members of the community, we have to ask whether the problem lies with the people ignoring the law or the law itself.
You mean like taxation fraud, or the great cigarette wars when cigarettes were smuggled between states to benefit from varying tax rates? Or perhaps growing marijuana in order to be able to build grass castles?
Well I look forward to relentless campaigning by the CIS to bring back cigarette advertising, and while they're at it, how about a war on the war on drugs? Because if ignoring the law is an indictment of the law, then laws governing speeding, other road regulation, parking, defamation, classified publications, and piracy should all take a hit.
But then if the CIS is telling me that the problem of piracy is all due to the law of intellectual property rights, and the Disney Mickey Mouse provisions, I'm with them.
But fair dibs. No articles to follow about how society is falling apart because people are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions, and might even have their actions thwarted by the clever addictiveness woven into the products flooding the marketplace. After all, I only download mp3's because the law is an ass, and other people make the stuff available, and there's nothing like a five finger discount.
Go on child, suck on that lead toy, your brain cells are your responsibility. And the next time you go into a Sydney restaurant and suck on a rat or a cockroach, don't blame the government for failing to regulate the food game. Just burn down the restaurant. Or throw warm beer on the waiter.
Arguments for or against the nanny state rarely get to the heart of the issue. When, if ever, is it appropriate for government to protect us from ourselves? And when trade-offs between, say, security and enjoyment need to be made, who should decide?
Indeed. When it comes to terrorism, it seems conservatives should decide. When it comes to screwing working stiffs by selling them shit, it seems conservatives should decide. When it comes to piracy, the Hollywood studios should decide.
When it comes to off loading risk, it seems that insurance companies - those bastions of private enterprise - should decide, by offloading risk to government, socialising their losses, and plumping up their bottom line.
Which is perhaps why I like this little story about government regulation:
A man walks up to a woman and asks, “Would you provide me with satisfactory government regulations for $1,000,000?”
She quickly replies, “Yes.”
So then he asks, “Would you provide me with satisfactory government regulations for $20?”
Astounded by the question she says, “Of course not. What kind of woman bureaucrat in a caring government do you think I am?”
He says, “Well we’ve already determined that. Now I’m just working on the price.”
She quickly replies, “Yes.”
So then he asks, “Would you provide me with satisfactory government regulations for $20?”
Astounded by the question she says, “Of course not. What kind of woman bureaucrat in a caring government do you think I am?”
He says, “Well we’ve already determined that. Now I’m just working on the price.”
I've always wondered if the woman in the joke worked for the NSW government, perhaps in Woollongong.
(Below: oh okay, the only good reason for banning cigarette advertising is that we no longer have to watch the likes of John Derum making geese of themselves. Now they can do it in soft drink ads. Hang on, hang on, suddenly I'm coming around to banning advertisements for soda).
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