Tonight TV3 broadcast an Inside New Zealand documentary: Dying for a Smoke, highlighting some of the health issues and the political debate around suggested moves to increase controls on the sale of tobacco products — and even suggestions to eliminate tobacco products from the country by 2020 … which strikes me as a pipe dream, if you’ll forgive the pun.
The documentary is available to view online for the next 15 days — surrounded by Quitline ads! — at TV3 on demand.
A few points I picked up: According to the programme, NZ Maori suffer the worst lung cancer rate in the world, a lot of them having become addicted at a young age. Tobacco, used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions, is killing a lot of them.
The guy ‘fronting’ for the tobacco industry at the recent Maori Affairs Select Committee inquiry was asked, ‘Do you smoke yourself?’
His answer: ‘No, I don’t. Because it’s harmful and I don’t like it.’
Spokesman on behalf of the tobacco industry admits he doesn't smoke 'Because it's harmful and I don't like it.' That doesn't stop him seeking to protect the interests of those selling the deadly addictive toxin as a consumer item.
Another industry spokesman predicted a future for tobacco as a consumer product and trotted out the justification:
‘Tobacco is a legal product for which there is a legitimate demand.’
Q: Is it ethical?
Awkward pause (dodge the question) then: ‘Let’s not forget it’s a legal product.’ [Comment: FAIL]
I wondered what my ex Twitter follower, tobacco industry apologist and Mark Hotchin’s spin doctor Carrick Graham might be making of it. Well! I should’ve guessed. Demonstrating his (pro?am?) fixation … and busier than a one-armed paperhanger, by the look of his tweet stream during the programme (below) … live-blogging as if he was at an iPhone launch!
Tobacco spin doctor Carrick Graham seems to think slandering anyone anti-smoking is the path to influence. Sad.
It’s one thing to rationally argue your case, laying out evidence and gathering the testimony of those affected …. and it’s another to use the tactics I feel are demonstrated in Carrick Graham’s tweet stream: running around smearing your ‘opponents’ as liars corruptly bilking the taxpayer, scaremongering and being intellectually dishonest and portraying the inconvenient news media as intentionally unfair, unbalanced, and biased.
What a dinosaur that industry is, along with those acolytes and spin merchants propping it up.
– P
Interesting reading at law firm Minter Ellison’s website, released today. There’s a ‘Policy Update’ which focuses on Australia’s tobacco plain packaging legislation, the Philip Morris lawsuit and the possible NZ moves to follow Australia.
Described as a ‘Public Affairs expert’ Carrick Graham features as a guest what? columnist? apologist? propagandist? … with the vaguest of explanations of his role:
Unaddressed, as seems usual practice to me, is the question of WHAT Carrick Graham’s current connection or otherwise is with the Tobacco industry, or an explanation as to why he is so active for the pro-tobacco lobby. (Lobbying as a hobby? It’s almost poetry!)
Anyway, Carrick’s spin is instructive in the dark arts and worth a read, if you’re interested in such things in my opinion, not least for this perspective, delivered with what I’ve come to recognise as Carrick’s typically truculent tone:
His argument boils down to:
Please give the tobacco industry more time to use its best marketing efforts to hook more New Zealand teenagers into a deadly addiction to our poisonous product, and please let the industry make money out of their existing addicts, feeding their cravings until they die … because, well, let’s just say ‘Questions are being asked that need answering’ … about whether the health bureaucrats and based their suggested regulatory intervention on sound evidence and ‘best legislative practice’ and anyway, once you’ve banned smoking, what’s next? Fatty food?
Please slow down and ‘examine the issues’ again’.
Oh and did I mention the World Trade Organization and EU and intellectual property rights? And our genuine (ahem) concerns about illicit goods and counterfeit smokes? Does all that sound intimidating?
Carrick’s ‘analysis’ is followed by a perspective from Dr Prudence Stone of the Smokefree Coalition and Michael Colhoun of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
Read it and see what you think:
http://www.minterellison.co.nz/publications/PolicyUpdate7July11.pdf
[…] You may also be interested in: It’s only ‘propaganda’ if you’re talking about the other side, right, Carrick? and Smoke gets in your eyes, Carrick? […]