by Carl V Phillips
Audrey Silk, via her CLASH organization in New York, recently launched a “Smoking is Normal” campaign (CLASH Facebook page, campaign Facebook page, press release). All the talk we hear about e-cigarettes “renormalizing” smoking is premised on a claim that something that about a fifth of the U.S. population does (and a larger portion in most rich countries) is not normal. In terms of prevalence, it is much more normal than being gay or being an American muslim. But think of the outcry — from very people who tend to be anti-smoker — that results when someone so much as points out those statistics, let alone suggests anything is abnormal about being in one of these minorities. Smoking is more normal than marrying outside one’s race or even marrying someone whose height percentile differs markedly from one’s own.
Of course, “denormalization” rhetoric is not an empirical claim about prevalence. It is a political tactic, an attempt to denigrate some people as being abnormal, in a sense that means abhorrent or deviant. In that sense, it is every bit as anti-THR as the most visited topic of this blog, attempts to convince people that a low-risk alternative to smoking is more harmful than it really is. No one who supports “denormalization” of smokers can be said to genuinely support tobacco harm reduction. Continue reading →
Tobacco harm reduction, anti-THR lies, and related topics 