Self-Deluding Immunity to Reason

How much responsibility can society take on for the greater good of its parts? What level of personal responsibility should society expect from the individuals who make up that society? When should the state assume that it has done its utmost to caution its population against harm? When does it become incumbent upon the individual to take full stock of the actions they undertake that have the very real potential to do them extreme harm, and to take all necessary steps to reduce the impact of personal harm?

People love their little vices. Some of which individuals practise in moderation, and which are then tolerable, as long as they do no harm to others. Actions and recreational devices such as gambling, social drinking, use of recreational drugs, and smoking. But then, compulsive people - and there are so many people who do act and react compulsively - become accustomed and then addicted to the psychological lift they experience when they're engaged in these practises.

In the process, gambling, drinking, drugging themselves, and smoking to excess. All of which, accepted to a degree by society at large - as moderately acceptable past times - when over-indulged result in personal tragedy. The loss of income through channelling expendable and then vitally-required funds to feed the gambling habit. The loss of control when drinking and/or the use of psychotropic drugs overtaking reason.

Employment is forfeited, and often enough family relations as well. And then there's the habit of indulging in smoking to an exorbitant degree. Not that medical research has given a pass to light smoking; fact appears that most people who smoke do it compulsively, seem incapable of exercising restraint, even with the well-publicized knowledge that doing so is a severe deterrent to good cardiovascular health and longevity.

It's been seven years since Canada initiated a lawful requirement for tobacco manufacturers to place gruesome photographs of cancerous lesions on lungs, diseased hearts and other organs on packages, along with text messages that warn consumers "cigarettes cause lung cancer", or "cigarettes cause strokes". The very first country in the world to initiate such public education, compelling manufacturers to comply in this manner.

The photographs are ruthlessly and unrelentingly dreadful and, enhanced by the text, one would imagine anyone starting out on a smoking career would be forewarned to the extent that the action result would be interpreted as a miserable and slow sentence of death. It's an unequivocal message of harm to one's internal organs through cancer onset, as well as leading to other forms of physical health breakdown.

A recent poll of smokers indicated, however that although 93% responded that they'd seen those warnings on their brand of cigarettes, they deliberately avoided viewing the images and their tag lines about premature death and the potential for harming fetuses. Fully 22% claimed never to look at the health warnings. It would, obviously, interfere with their intent and their pleasure.

"It's worthless, period. No smoker looks at it" according to one long-time smoker interviewed in the study. "We don't care. That's not going to make me stop smoking or even think about it." This, from Arminda Mota, a tobacco-industry-funded smokers' right group.

One wouldn't expect the tobacco industry to voluntarily fund non-smoking warnings, but it comes as somewhat of a shock to realize that individuals can be so adamantly obtuse as to lobby for the right to die early and painful deaths because it's their right as individuals.

Well, they've made that choice. It's an informed one. No one can be ignorant of the facts, that smoking tobacco - as well as imposing ill-health on others by exposing them to second-hand tobacco inhalation - leads directly to various types of cancers. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths, especially among young women who appear less likely to heed cautionary messages than young men.

Health Canada has recently issued a statement to the effect that research reveals that "awareness of specific health issues related to tobacco-related health hazards is growing". Adding that "Health Canada believes that the warning messages continue to be an effective and efficient way to reach smokers at a very low cost."

That may be so, but it's also obvious, given the responses of smokers who embrace denial and who deliberately take steps to avoid reality, that there is nothing much society can do to protect people from their own poor choices. Other than pick up the pieces, by providing extensive and expensive health care when obdurate smokers succeed in destroying their health and prospects for the future.

Through their immunity to reason. They will not be denied those tenuous pleasures that seem to make life more pleasurable, more bearable to them. In the process truncating their lives as well as the quality of the briefer life lived.