"Invest in tobacco control as a best buy in health"
Bans: strategy, arguments, psychology
Ensuring your target groups are too divided to band together. The way bans are currently shaping up reveals that prohibitionists are targeting three groups: smokers, drinkers and the obese. Non-smoking drinkers are unlikely to align with smokers. Nor are the obese, some of whom are ex-smokers. End result: smokers have only themselves on whom to rely. The obese — some of whom are practising pietist Christians — are unlikely to band together with drinkers. So, each group is on its own.
(Thank you Chris Snowdon for that one)
IN SWITZERLAND, NEW HIGH-TECH LOUNGES PUT THE COOL BACK IN SMOKING
With improved ventilation systems and careful décor decisions, the new smoking lounges could even bring smokers and non-smokers together – to enjoy a good cognac for example. At least this is what Vahé Gérard is aiming at. The director of Gérard Père et Fils, a smoking lounge inside the Grand Hotel Kempinski, had enough of hearing his clientele complain about drafts of cold air and clothes getting smelly. On his own initiative, Gérard developed a new, alternative system of permanent air circulation using laminar flow technology.
“This is like an air mattress, pulsated through the floor and breathed in through the ceiling every two minutes. The atmosphere of the room is therefore completely renewed. It can also be air-conditioned according to the season”, explains the cigar expert, who set up a business, G-P-F Concept Management, to market the product.
Patented worldwide under the name Airkel and complying with energy and health federal standards in Switzerland, Gérard’s system – which costs $27,000 for every 10 m2 – has been installed as well in the smoking areas at the Bon Génie and at the Starling C Bar & Lounge. You can identify it by the thousands of tiny holes on the floor and on the ceiling. The air is good to breathe there, and the furniture does not bear any smell either.
(Thanks so much to my personal best buddy Simon Chapman for that one)
It's so cool of him to let us know this new technology exists!
The animating force behind modern liberalism is the desire to micromanage the lives of others. The state decides where you go to school, what doctor you visit, and the pension fund you will contribute to. Liberal is another name for control freak.
Drinking Big Gulps, eating Happy Meals, and smoking Marlboro Reds isn’t good for you. But neither is fascism. The greatest threat to an individual’s health is an overbearing government.
The antidote to this public health crisis is choice. Freedom presumes the right to be “wrong,” to make choices another wouldn’t, to decide. Life is so much more interesting with millions of people making billions of choices rather than a few people making all of the choices.
