Ban movies that glamorise smoking?

halkar

BeQuiet wrote: »

...... Watching someone like Leonardo DiCaprio dragging on a ciggie looking cool does exactly that. Watching him shoot someone just does not have that effect. Not on most people anyway!
Its a matter of human psychology - the tobacco industry know what works... thats why they spend so much on this....

Watching Tom Cruise jumping off an high rise was veeeeery cool but I do not see many trying to do the same
What's next? Drug barons and pimps spending on movies to promote drugs and sex?
I can not wait for the next WW2 or Vietnam movie after cigs banned. Soldiers with lolies

Liam Byrne

BeQuiet wrote: »

Sure - we should look into banning films that glamorise things that are actually illegal - but why "FIRST" ...

BECAUSE they're illegal.

I'm not suggesting that we ban films, btw; just saying that if we're going to have a nanny state that doesn't let anyone do or see anything "wrong", then the obvious targets are the illegal stuff.

Would you propose banning Heineken's sponsorship of the top rugby competition too ?

There are loads of films that I'd ban simply because they're ****e and a waste of space, but some people watch them - it's called choice.

And I'd prefer to be around the 100 people who took up smoking as a result of some film star making it glamourous than be around the 1 scumbag who took up robbery, violence and murder - or even brian-dead celeb culture and Jackass style pranks.....

Mario007

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

Smoking costs the HSE more money than the tax brings in, and that's not even including productivity lost due to ill health.

i would disagree, that argument is used mostly by people who are strongly anti smoking. many countries have smaller taxes on cigarettes and still dont show signs of being in minus figures in respect to the cost of curing smoking associated illnesses. in fact some countries have even allocate some of this tax money for cancer research...

zing zong

Liam Byrne wrote: »

There are loads of films that I'd ban simply because they're ****e and a waste of space, but some people watch them - it's called choice.

And I'd prefer to be around the 100 people who took up smoking as a result of some film star making it glamourous than be around the 1 scumbag who took up robbery, violence and murder - or even brian-dead celeb culture and Jackass style pranks.....

HERE HERE!! :pac:

Boskowski

The ideas people come up with regards to smoking become more ridiculous every day. Why don't we ban films were people are drinking or eat fatty foods.

In another post you say you don't like the nanny state idea either, but yet you propose something that could only be regarded as a nazi nanny idea.

Can we please just get a grip on ourselves, because if this sh1t continues, in - say - a hundred years we might just propose to cocoon ourselves into some sort of manmade matrix where everybody is like Ned Flanders times ten.

Nodin

BeQuiet wrote: »

Today the BBC report that a guy jumped on to the new "plinth" in London city centre (......)level ...

Waste of time and effort which could have been used to highlight a decent cause or goal.

Nodin

BeQuiet wrote: »

Sure - we should look into banning films that glamorise things that are actually illegal - but why "FIRST" ...

emmmm....no.

nesf

This is more suited to AH. Seriously. Heaven forbid that art should imitate life.

nesf

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

Smoking costs the HSE more money than the tax brings in, and that's not even including productivity lost due to ill health.

Doubtful actually. Smokers generally die younger from nasty but short lived diseases like lung cancer. Non-smokers live much longer and tend to die in a more drawn out fashion, essentially costing the State far more than smokers who tend not to live long into retirement. From a cynical statistical point of view, smokers do cost less in the long run than non-smokers, but that's only if you can bring yourself to view early death costing the Government less money as a good thing and this is before considering the tax revenue from cigarettes!

TriceMarie

If there's a character that would smoke,then to not be able to because of a ban would be stupid and jeopardise the reality of a scene.
Because the reality is,people do smoke...&all the other things we mightened like our kids doing.
Film reflects reality.
It's almost like saying also a scene with an alcholic shoudn't be having a drink.

If people wanna smoke,they're gonna!
And I think (hope) there is very few people out there that would stupid enough and so easily led as to take up smoking because they see people doing it in films...

Daftendirekt

It saddens me to see that there are people in this country so lacking in personal responsibility, that they'd actually call for a crackdown on something as fundamental as freedom of expression, in a misguided, pathetic, and futile attempt to 'save' people from their own decisions.




Utter bollocks.

FTA69

darcy.jonny wrote: »

they only way to stop kids smoking is ban them completly

Yeah. The way people stopped taking drugs when they were made illegal... :rolleyes:

BeQuiet

StopTheDrugWar! wrote: »

With a little harm reduction you could dramatically reduce the ill effects of smoking without treading all over people's freedom.

Censorship is never the way forward.
Tell me, does the word slippery slope mean anything to you?

Censorship is fine with me ... in fact we all live with it every day.

And "slippery slope" - that implies to me that you want to talk about something else, rather than the issue at hand. The proposal is banning / restricting movies that glamorise smoking - not anything else.
And restricting what can be shown in movies - I dont really see that as "treading all over people's freedom"- that reaction is just a little bit hysterical !

The FACTs are
-the tobacco industry uses films to promote their addictive habit.
- tobacco usage INCREASES every year (most usage increases are in 3rd world countries)

So - how do you think tobacco usage should be reduced ... the same old solutions .. that have not worked, and will continue to fail ?
.... thats what the tobacco biz wants to happen !

BeQuiet

Daftendirekt wrote: »

It saddens me to see that there are people in this country so lacking in personal responsibility, that they'd actually call for a crackdown on something as fundamental as freedom of expression, in a misguided, pathetic, and futile attempt to 'save' people from their own decisions.

Utter bollocks.

Nice phrasing !! Classy !


And a logic flaw - you think its "lacking in personal responsibility" to call for a discussion on banning / restricting what can be shown in movies to protect people from smoking ... can you see your error ?

BeQuiet

TriceMarie wrote: »

If people wanna smoke,they're gonna!
And I think (hope) there is very few people out there that would stupid enough and so easily led as to take up smoking because they see people doing it in films...

Yes there are - large numbers of them... they just dont realise the reasons they started smoking .... but subliminal advertising methods like showing glamorous attractive people smoking in movies is one of the main ways this is done.

BeQuiet

halkar wrote: »

1 Watching Tom Cruise jumping off an high rise was veeeeery cool but I do not see many trying to do the same
2 What's next? Drug barons and pimps spending on movies to promote drugs and sex?
3 I can not wait for the next WW2 or Vietnam movie after cigs banned. Soldiers with lolies

1 No - most people are sane - they dont commit suicide... although smoking is a form of (very slow) suicide i suppose

2 No - they cant as thats illegal ... duh

3 .. or why not just soldiers not smoking ? .... may not be 100% factual as most did smoke, but movies are very rarely completely true to life.

StopTheDrugWar!

BeQuiet wrote: »

So - how do you think tobacco usage should be reduced ... the same old solutions .. that have not worked, and will continue to fail ?
.... thats what the tobacco biz wants to happen !

Allow regular shops to sell smokeless nicotine products alongside tobacco. Do not give them a sin tax and strongly encourage people to switch to them, educating them on the massive health benifits such a switch would have.

The government seem to be scared of nicotine containing products, i don't see why. Atm you can only get them in a pharmacy, you are only allowed take them if you are trying to give up tobacco and some products are only available on prescription.

Some die-hards will keep up tobacco, but i get the impression that most smokers would eventually make the switch to a product that suits them as these products increase in popularity (more research needs to be done into providing a greater range of products). It would feel a bit weird not smoking at first, but after a day or two most people would get used to it.

humanji

BeQuiet wrote: »

3 .. or why not just soldiers not smoking ? .... may not be 100% factual as most did smoke, but movies are very rarely completely true to life.

That's one of the problems. You're sacrificing reality because of stupidity. I can't imagine many people smoking because they saw it in a movie. Hell, there's not many movies that have people smoking in them these days (continuity is a nightmare when filming people smoke). As was said above, those smoking are generally bad guys, or people who are not looked up to.

You shrug off the "slippery slope" that was mentioned, but you don't like cigarettes and want them banned. Others don't like alcohol. What's to stop them campaigning against that being in films? What about people who don't want violence to be shown? You start banning movies for silly little reasons like someoen smoking, and you're setting a precedent that anyone can jump on in order to get anything they've something against, banned.

Proper education about smoking is what should be done. Not limiting peoples freedom because others are too stupid to think for themselves.

PeakOutput

educate dont regulate its a simple idea that politicians and pro removal of freedom protesters seem to have a really hard time understanding

big b

BeQuiet wrote: »

The FACTs are
-the tobacco industry uses films to promote their addictive habit.
- tobacco usage INCREASES every year (most usage increases are in 3rd world countries)

So Hollywood's pretty big in 3rd world countries then?
How are the figures in Ireland/USA/UK etc. Number of smokers on the increase?
I'd be interested to see some proof of that.

BeQuiet

big b wrote: »

So Hollywood's pretty big in 3rd world countries then?
How are the figures in Ireland/USA/UK etc. Number of smokers on the increase?
I'd be interested to see some proof of that.

Yes - Hollywood's very big in 3rd world countries ! Are you surprised ?


re smokers in USA - "After declining for seven years, national smoking rates have remained steady at nearly 21% from 2004 to 2006", and another page i saw states that there was small percent increase since then, so the idea that tobacco business is on the back foot is totally wrong.

Its a concept that the tobacco biz likes to encourage of course as its leads to the kind of complacency that you can see in a lot of the posts here.
(as said in an earlier post - total global tobacco consumption increases EVERY year)

To divide peoples negative reactions into 2 sets:
1 smokers - get annoyed when any mention is made of more regulation / discouraging of smoking
2 non-smokers - its not my problem , and i dont want any infringement on my "freedoms" .

BeQuiet

humanji wrote: »

I can't imagine many people smoking because they saw it in a movie.

Yes there are large numbers of them... they just dont realise the reasons they started smoking .... but subliminal advertising methods like showing glamorous attractive people smoking in movies is one of the main ways this is done.

BeQuiet

PeakOutput wrote: »

educate dont regulate its a simple idea that politicians and pro removal of freedom protesters seem to have a really hard time understanding

"Educate, don't regulate" is a nice concept, but has not worked in reducing tobacco usage or resulting lung cancer rates. So a nice concept, and all nice and cosy sounding, but people getting chemo may have preferred if there had been a tad more regulation and less education that went over their heads.

Overheal

Daftendirekt wrote: »

It saddens me to see that there are people in this country so lacking in personal responsibility, that they'd actually call for a crackdown on something as fundamental as freedom of expression, in a misguided, pathetic, and futile attempt to 'save' people from their own decisions.




Utter bollocks.

Pretty much. I don't like getting up in the morning either. Its a self discipline thing. So what does a superlefty do in that situation? Petition the government to make getting out of bed a Law. That will offer the right incentive to get up for your morning joey.

:rolleyes:

I wish I were kidding.

PeakOutput

BeQuiet wrote: »

Yes there are large numbers of them... they just dont realise the reasons they started smoking

right now this is YOUR OPINION which clearly alot of people here disagree with so you need to PROVE what you are saying

i dont want any infringement on my "freedoms"

damn right i should be allowed to watch any film i want

BeQuiet

StopTheDrugWar! wrote: »

Allow regular shops to sell smokeless nicotine products alongside tobacco. Do not give them a sin tax and strongly encourage people to switch to them, educating them on the massive health benifits such a switch would have.

The government seem to be scared of nicotine containing products, i don't see why. Atm you can only get them in a pharmacy, you are only allowed take them if you are trying to give up tobacco and some products are only available on prescription.

Some die-hards will keep up tobacco, but i get the impression that most smokers would eventually make the switch to a product that suits them as these products increase in popularity (more research needs to be done into providing a greater range of products). It would feel a bit weird not smoking at first, but after a day or two most people would get used to it.

With you on all of this ....

And why not make ciggies etc ONLY available in pharmacies ... make it harder and harder to get your hands on them.
Really theres an argument that they should only be available to registered nicotine addicts (like methadone) !

PeakOutput

BeQuiet wrote: »

"Educate, don't regulate" is a nice concept, but has not worked in reducing tobacco usage or resulting lung cancer rates. So a nice concept, and all nice and cosy sounding, but people getting chemo may have preferred if there had been a tad more regulation and less education that went over their heads.

teenagers still have sex does that mean we should ban sex or anything hinting at sex or kissing in movies? or should we increase the quality of sex ed in schools so they choose the safe option?

there are always going to be people who choose to smoke so it sounds to me like we have reached that minimum level after years of decreasing numbers of smokers.

after a certain point in time(say the early 90s at the latest) people have no excuse for not knowing the consequences of smoking cigarretes so while i feel sorry for them if they have gotten cancer resulting from smoking and dont wish it on anyone they chose to do something that causes cancer and they have to deal with it

PeakOutput

BeQuiet wrote: »

Really theres an argument that they should only be available to registered nicotine addicts (like methadone) !

in your opinion there is an argument for it

in my opinion its a ridicolous idea prohibition does not reduce use in anyway

people still drank in huge numbers during prohibition in the states

people still do illegal drugs (tens of thousands of people in this country alone)

making them harder to get will only create yet another black market

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

StopTheDrugWar!

BeQuiet wrote: »

With you on all of this ....

And why not make ciggies etc ONLY available in pharmacies ... make it harder and harder to get your hands on them.
Really theres an argument that they should only be available to registered nicotine addicts (like methadone) !

Because i happen to believe in freedom. No human being should ever have the right to "protect" another adult them "from themselves".

What makes you think you deserve sovereignty over my body?

In fact, anyone wise enough to qualify for such a position would have long realised that taking away people's freedom is not an effective way of going about things.

Let people live their own lives, you've enough to do worrying about your own.