SHOCKING! THE CONCLUSIONS OF AN IMPORTANT NEW HYPOTHESIS ABOUT TEEN SMOKING IMPLICATE THE EFFORTS OF ADULTS TO PREVENT TEEN SMOKING AND SUBSTANCE USE, AS A PRIMARY CAUSE OF BOTH !

NEW! TRIBUTE TO ANTI-SMOKING ACTIVIST BARB TARBOX

NEW! WHO ARE THESE TOBACCO-CONTROL, TOBACCO-REDUCTION AND ANTI-SMOKING ACTIVISTS AND WHY DO THEY DO WHAT THEY DO?


WHY DO TEENS SMOKE?


Could part of the reason be that they are smart enough to figure out, that all the professed concern from anti-smoking campaigns and campaigners about the health and well-being of teens is actually concern about the health and well-being of the 45-95 year olds they will someday become? And that this professed concern for teens is therefore a lie?


On Saturday, Feb. 1, 14 Grade 10 students from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School south of Calgary, set out on a backcountry ski trip up the Balu Pass in Glacier National Park, B.C. At around 11:45 a.m., they were caught in an avalanche that killed seven of them.

READ FULL STORY

From The National Post, Feb.11, 2003, page A10; "Almost 700 students injured annually" "Children are dying" -
"Close to 700 students are injured or killed each year while skiing or snowboarding during school field trips in Ontario alone..."
"Students have suffered everything from fractured legs to serious head injuries. Last year, a 14-year-old boy died after his head hit a rock in the middle of a 15-metre run and a girl became a quadriplegic after losing control and hitting a tree while skiing."

WINTER SPORTS KILL TEENS!

Tens of millions of dollars are being spent to convince teens that they shouldn't take up smoking or other forms of tobacco use, even though:

Teens don't die of smoking-related illnesses


Something else that teens do die from, is suicide. As September ‘95 statistics released by UNICEF indicate, Canada has one of the highest teen suicide rates in the world; only New Zealand with 15.7 suicides per 100,000, and Finland with 15 were higher.

TRAGEDY OF TEEN SUICIDE


Teens dying from illnesses caused by their own smoking is extremely rare, but teens do die from winter sport injuries and from suicides

SO HOW MUCH IS BEING SPENT TO PREVENT TEEN SPORTS DEATHS? Not even 10% of what is spent on preventing teen smoking.

SO HOW MUCH IS BEING SPENT TO PREVENT TEEN SUICIDES? Not even 10% of what is spent on preventing teen smoking.


Why is the adult population apparently so much more concerned about preventing teen smoking than preventing actual teen deaths? As ugly and painful as this is to hear, it has to do with money.

Teen sports deaths and suicides tend to be very sudden and final, so they don't cost the wealthy very much money. Middle-aged and elderly people who contract smoking-related illnesses tend to linger a long time, requiring lengthy and expensive treatment, and that costs the wealthy a lot of money supporting the health care system. Teen deaths don't cost the adult population very much money, so it seems that it's not worth their trouble making the same kind of investment to prevent them, as is being spent to prevent smoking.

Even more disgusting, is that there is little money to be made by being a professional teen suicide prevention worker or designing ad campaigns to fight teen suicide - but there is tons of money to be earned as a professional anti-smoking campaigner, or anti-smoking media campaign designer.

Then there is the fact that few profitable products exist, to prevent teen deaths, but many extremely profitable products exist that smokers (including teens) can be extorted into buying. [More on that, later on this page].

You probably already know about the tobacco industry, and that the tobacco industry spends millions of dollars employing professional advertising companies that try to manipulate people (including youths) into buying the tobacco companies products. What you might not know, is that there is also an Anti-Smoking Industry that spends millions of dollars employing professional advertising companies that try to manipulate people (including youths) into hating the tobacco industry and NOT buying their products.
[Example - how much do you think this report commissioned by Health Canada, on the best ways to manipulate 7-19 year olds through media campaigns, cost? $50,000? $150,000? More? REPORT
That link is now dead. Why? What is being hidden from you? ]

Both the tobacco industry and the Anti-smoking Industry do what they do, TO GET RICH.
[Refer to THE ATRA SCAM ]

Twenty years ago, the anti-smoking lobby consisted mostly of small networks of concerned doctors. In the early years, these organizations made some valuable contributions to public health - by raising awareness of the health risks involved in smoking and by exposing the campaigns of the tobacco giants to hide those risks as well as to market their products to minors. That was a long time ago, and the anti-smoking lobby has grown into a huge industry involving organizations with multi-million dollar budgets that employ handsomely paid professional lobbyists as well as major consulting firms, advertising and public relations firms, writers, studio personnel, animators, market research firms and pollsters - among many others. Lots of people now make their living, and a very wealthy living, creating advertising campaigns and "educational materials" that are intended to manipulate and control what young people and adults think about smokers, smoking and the tobacco industry.

Some of the money that pays these people's wages, comes from the drug companies that make stop-smoking products like the nicotine patch and nicotine gum. These drug companies make over 600 million dollars a year from people who are trying to stop smoking, so the drug companies pay people to pressure governments for things like higher taxes on tobacco and public smoking bans - because higher taxes and public smoking bans make people feel that they have no choice but to try to quit smoking, and when they try to quit they buy the drug companies products to help them do it.

That sounds like a good thing to some people, but there is also something more sinister and nasty going on here. The stop-smoking products help a lot of people to stop smoking for awhile, but they can't stop people from continuing to be addicted to the nicotine in tobacco, so most of those people still end up going back to smoking again sooner or later. This means that they can be pressured into trying to quit smoking again, and again and again, and each time they buy more stop-smoking products and the drug companies get richer and richer - but many of the people trying to quit smoking still don't become non-smokers.

Despite what we often hear about young people being easy to influence and manipulate, the truth is that most young people have very good BS detectors. They know when they are getting BS from the tobacco industry, and they know when they are getting BS from the Anti-smoking Industry too. Many young people do understand that the Anti-smoking industry is really about money, just like the Tobacco industry.


Why Some Teens That Smoke Became Smokers

People usually think that they fully understand why they do the things that they do. However, people can be influenced in what they choose to do, by processes going on in their brains and their bodies that they can't be consciously aware of. This is quite normal - some parts of our brains often make evaluations about what we need at that time, without us consciously thinking about it, and then encourage us to do things by causing us to feel uncomfortable sensations. For example, our brains sometimes evaluate that we need to interact with other people for awhile, and cause us to feel "lonely". We become consciously aware that we "feel lonely", and we go find someone to hang out with, but we are not aware of the process that went on in our brains just before we started feeling like we needed someone's company.

Some people may become involved in behaviors like smoking, because there are processes going on in their brains which cause them to seek out things in the world around them that are capable of stimulating (or preventing) specific kinds of activity in their brain. [By 'activity', we mean cells in the brain sending messages to each other by passing chemicals back and forth. These chemicals are called "neurotransmitters", and there are many different types of these chemicals each of which are associated with one or more specific functions of the brain, such as making us feel happy or helping us to concentrate]

Their brains evaluate that they need more (or less) of this activity, and make them feel bored or restless so that they will explore the world around them, trying new things and taking risks, until they encounter something which can stimulate this kind of activity in their brains. They are unlikely to have conscious awareness of what is going on in their brains, and come up with "rationalisations" for their behavior - some way to explain to themselves and other people why they are doing these things; "I just like excitement" or "I run with a dangerous crowd" or something like that.

People who experienced a lot of trauma when they were very young, such as;
-being physically, sexually or emotionally abused
-witnessing violence in their family
-the death of parents or siblings
-growing up in a war zone
-being neglected by their parents or living with several foster families
may experience an abnormal development of the parts of their brain that cope with stress. Their brain may adapt to extraordinary amounts of stress by becoming either super-sensitive to stress or by becoming un-sensitive to stress. In both cases, as they grow up and approach the teen years, their brains may begin driving them to explore the world around them for some way to balance the activity in the parts of their brain that cope with stress. Again, they are unlikely to be consciously aware that this is part of what causes them to do the things that they do.

If someone like this encounters cigarettes and smoking, they may find that they really like it or that they immediately start 'craving' more (even if they feel dizzy or nauseous, hate the taste and the smell, or have a mild allergic reaction). This may be because the inhaled nicotine is capable of stimulating (or suppressing, depending on how often they smoke) exactly the kind of brain activity needed to balance the stress response function of their brain. If someone asks them why they started smoking, they aren't likely to be aware of the sub-conscious processes that were involved, and will give a rationalisation - usually something they've heard before - such as; "It was peer pressure" or "I wanted to be cool" or "I thought it would make me look more mature", but those things might not have had anything at all to do with why they really started smoking.


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