Latin America Is Quitting Smoking, and Africa Is Taking It Up
fivethirtyeight.com
fivethirtyeight.com
There's no excuse for it being legal in indoor public places, it's like having peeing/no-peeing sections in the pool.
It is one reason I couldn't live in Europe despite how nice it is... I remember having dinner at a cafe in winter in Germany once. Freezing outside and four smokers, four! at the table next to us. Oh and then there was the smoking couple in the frozen section of the supermarket in Portugal... nowhere to hide. Fuck you people. I suppose I should bring tear-gas and a gas mask next time.
....similar to how it is done to marijuana right now.
Some will say "we tried this! and all the bars were smoking bars!" But they forget times have changed.
I can't see a reason not to allow at least 1 smoking bar in a given city. It would be really popular among the smokers.
However that directly impacts the health of staff who work there. In the UK that was one of the key factors in banning indoors smoking.
From the Lean Startup methodology point of view, this is a big win, because Big Tobacco panicking validates Uruguay's strategy against smoking. All it takes is for more countries to follow suit.
I don't smoke, and the warnings certainly scare me, but I always find myself in a foreign duty-free shop shoving myself through throngs of people carrying a tower of Malboro boxes - lung cancer seems to be the last thing on their mind.
BTW: We are 3.3 not 2.7 :S
The warnings on the packaging are mostly targeted at non-smokers who might become smokers. If they decide to buy some cigarettes, they can't avoid being reminded of the long-term effects. If they buy them regardless, every time they pull out a cigarette they're reminded of what might happen should they develop a full addiction.
After a decade or two of lowered rates of new smokers, the population achieves a sort of critical mass of non-smokers that change the public attitude toward smoking. At this point banning smoking in public places, or increasing tobacco taxes, become politically tolerable.
Whether packaging alone works, who knows. The combination of those policies is highly effective.
What kills smoking as a cultural norm and destroys the tobacco business isn't everyone stopping smoking overnight due to ugly packaging. That's an overly simplistic and unrealistic scenario. But if packaging changes can result in a persistent decline in the prevalence of smoking that sort of change is still enormous. Being able to cut the prevalence of smoking in half over, say, 50 years? Still a pretty big deal. But it looks like these programs are actually far more effective.
Seriously, I spent some days a few years ago on a hostel on Barcelona where I just couldn't possibly be at the common room (where they served free dinner to socialize all the guests, a great idea btw). I couldn't survive the combination of a LOT of smokers and a low ceiling.
Smoking regulations - one of the very few society decisions I am very proud of in my country
I visited Brazil in 1987. Back in those days international flights had a smoking section (usually at the back of the plane) and a non-smoking section. So of course the domestic carriers also did the same (TransBrasil in this case). But with a slight change: left side of plane was smoking, right side of plane was non-smoking. As Dave Barry would say: "I am not making this up!".
So it can't be cultural, so it could be ethnocentric and therefore was my question for you.
Europe, North America, and Latin America are all very different in all but a few superficial ways, but I do find that Europe and North America are more like each other than either is like Latin America.
"Latin America" is very big area and it overlaps with North America. In my experience the most European-like country in the Americas is by far Argentina.
Europe and North America are very big places too. Both have regions with differing cultures to various extents, as well.
It is just like when we say "The South" in the US we are usually referring to the historical and political south (i.e. the Confederate States or more generally the Southeast). You will rarely if ever hear someone refer to somewhere west of Texas as The South.
Where does Japan, NZ and Australia fit in that world view because they are in the east but aligned politically with the west...
I find extremely odd what passes in the concepts inside the minds of some readers here. "Broad definition of the west would include latin america", WTF! Most of the countries here are ex-colonies of European invaders. Most countries are dominated by capitalist interests with mostly democratic governments. What requirement countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, etc are missing?
I wish people paid more attention to whats has been going around the world the past 50 years and got rid of silly outdated concepts of the west, the east and other useless labels.
These labels are frequently debated in light of recent cultural changes and geopolitical events. You will notice that in my comment I mentioned that Latin America can be (and often is) considered to be part of the West, but it is also common to include it in another category.
The same goes for pretty much all of Latin America. Remember, the majority of South Americans are white and steeped in European culture. In my experience it's only Americans that don't consider them part of the west -- often trying to ignore that they have followed every similar development processes and have very similar culture.
This varies greatly between countries in South America, and often within regions of countries. Argentina is an example of a country where what you say is true, but it's somewhat unusual for the region, having killed or displaced most of the indigenous population, somewhat like happened in the United States. Many South American countries are a much a more complex mixture of ethnic and cultural descent. Often the upper classes are more white and more culturally European, while the lower classes are more indigenous and less culturally European. Many countries have active cultural and political conflicts between the these segments; for example Bolivia fairly recently elected its first non-white President (Evo Morales) after years of the minority white-European population forming the ruling class.
That's part of the point, really. It's not a question of regime, nor of geography; it's a definition based on an history of power and influence. See the countries where the IMF directors come from? That's the West. And it's very much not outdated.
It's a historical term, and one that hasn't been widely considered to be insensitive. You can argue that it is, but arguing that people using it are is just being ignorant of history.
Not sure how Australia fits in there. Geographically it's eastern but culturally it's western (though that pretty much came as a result of westerners kicking aboriginal people out of their home, so far as I'm aware).
I think that this map is a fairly accurate representation of what the typical American "world-view" is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#/media/File:Clash...
I don't mean to say that it is "correct" in any way, just that it fairly accurately encompasses how many Americans informally loosely categorize different nations/regions.
Australia is down -41%, although it may be an outlier because we have been a leader in making it hard to sell/market cigarettes, and they're very heavily taxed.
Part of living in a free society is learning some tolerance: tolerance for other viewpoints; for other races; for other religions; for other cuisines; for other modes of dress; and yes, for other lifestyles.
You are free to vacate the space; the smoke will not give you cancer anyway and 'disgusting' is pure prejudice.
> I see no reason why we should accommodate that as a society.
Because in a free society we tolerate different lifestyle choices.
Unreasonable smokers are exactly why laws are needed.
You're wrong about the smoke too. Look at the number of children who need medical treatment because their parents smoke around them.
Of course I do. I'm quite willing to do as a property owner or lessor requires. Note that smoking-banners are the intolerant ones, bringing in the force of law to compel behaviour they desire.
> Unreasonable smokers are exactly why laws are needed.
Likewise, unreasonable non-smokers are exactly why laws are needed.
It's not about "tolerance", it's about not forcing others to inhale the same carcinogens as you because they do not want to get lung cancer. "Your freedom ends where my nose begins."