At a time in history where various social justice movements are gaining rapid momentum, the question of the use of violence inevitably arises. That is, under what circumstances, if any, is violence of any kind acceptable as a protest tactic? While I am not a full-blown pacifist (for example, I believe in the use of physical force in cases of absolute and immediate self-defense, and no "duty to retreat" when one is truly cornered), and I will leave it an open question as to how "self-defense" is defined and whether or not violence has a place other social justice movements, I will say that I do NOT believe that violence as a protest tactic has any place in the movement to lower the drinking age or the broader youth-rights movement in general. Period.
I'm sure some of us, young and old alike, may fantasize at times about using violence against police and judges who enforce the vile and ageist abomination that is the 21 drinking age and its ancillary laws that prop it up. And you know what? You are perfectly justified in your fantasies, and your grievances are absolutely NOT trivial. I am the last person who would try to gaslight you in that regard. But when one decides to act out those fantasies in the misguided hopes of redressing those very real grievances, that becomes a serious problem for our movement. Most of us in the movement are non-violent, and any violence committed in the name our movement only gives ammunition to the other side, confirming ageist stereotypes and hardly makes us look like we are mature enough to drink at 18 or any other age for that matter. Thus, adding violent tactics to our movement is far more likely to backfire than it would in other movements.
I am not against the use of non-violent civil disobedience, by the way. But when it comes to aggressive, offensive physical force against law enforcement, judges, politicians, or even MADD for that matter, I will say this to any potential "lone wolves" considering such "propaganda by deed": NOT IN OUR NAME!
As Gandhi would say, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". And as I like to say, when you fight fire with fire, we all get burned in the end. Keep that in mind when protesting or debating.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Friday, May 6, 2016
Vote Green, Not Brown!
We at Twenty-One Debunked just seriously lost some respect for California, a state that we, until fairly recently, regarded as one of the least-worst states in the country (though the bar is set rather low to begin with) in terms of social policy in general. Looks like the Golden State just joined Hawaii, NYC, San Francisco, and a growing number of localities in this country in raising the purchase age for tobacco to 21, with Governor Jerry Brown (remember him?) signing it into law on May 4, 2016. The law change takes effect on June 9, 2016, just a few weeks later, when the age limit will rise from 18 to 21 overnight without even so much as a grandfather clause. Brown also signed other bills on the same day restricting e-cigarette use (i.e. "vaping") in public and expanding the coverage of various no-smoking zones, among other things, but the one that really stood out the most (and rankles the most with us) is the 21 smoking age. The one exception: active-duty military members age 18-20 can still buy cigarettes and other tobacco products. But this exception is a rather hollow way of addressing the fundamental injustice of being old enough to die for one's country but being too young to smoke (or drink for that matter), and doesn't make things much better. So even with this exception, Twenty-One Debunked still opposes this new law regardless.
Hopefully, there will be a ballot measure in November that will undo the hike in the smoking age. Until then, though, we might just want to boycott all things from California whenever possible. That includes major Hollywood movies (which still feature omnipresent product placement from Big Tobacco) and fruits/vegetables grown with fracking wastewater thanks to the very same Governor Jerry Brown. VOTE GREEN, NOT BROWN!!!
Hopefully, there will be a ballot measure in November that will undo the hike in the smoking age. Until then, though, we might just want to boycott all things from California whenever possible. That includes major Hollywood movies (which still feature omnipresent product placement from Big Tobacco) and fruits/vegetables grown with fracking wastewater thanks to the very same Governor Jerry Brown. VOTE GREEN, NOT BROWN!!!
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Tobacco, The Ulitmate Dark Horse of Drugs
Almost immediately after posting a recent article about the roundly debunked "gateway drug theory", we at Twenty-One Debunked felt we should post another separate article about the particular case of tobacco, especially in the form of commercial cigarettes. While our organization does not generally view tobacco as a particularly high-priority issue, perhaps it is something we should be revisiting given both recent evidence as well as recent efforts to raise the smoking age to 21.
While the primary dangers of smoking tobacco (i.e. cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, birth defects, etc.) have been well-known for decades, what has been much less appreciated is the neurotoxic properties of cigarettes. The thing is, nicotine is a known neurotoxin, and it is likely that at least some of the thousands of other chemicals in cigarette smoke are also toxic to the brain as well. One reported effect of nicotine is that it can "prime" the brain's reward system for addiction in general, including to other substances. This seems to be particularly true for the early adolescent brain. While these findings are based primarily on rodent studies, human studies seem to dovetail with this idea far more for tobacco than for cannabis or even alcohol. Thus, the psychopharmacological aspect of the gateway hypothesis seems to hold true indeed for tobacco, and if there were such a thing as an actual gateway drug (which is a very big "if", if you ask us), tobacco would have to be it, hands down.
Additionally, tobacco is also emerging as a potential "dark horse" in the etiology of psychosis and schizophrenia as well. This has been informally hypothesized for many years now while being overlooked by most researchers, and is only very recently beginning to be taken seriously by mainstream science. Perhaps cannabis (which is often mixed with tobacco in many countries, and whose use is often predicted by prior and concurrent tobacco use in general) has been taking a major bum rap in that regard as well? All while Big Tobacco has subtly and sedulously promoted tobacco smoking as "self-medication" for decades, of course.
That said, Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes any attempts to raise the smoking age any higher than 18. Instead, we (along with the TSAP) believe that we should deal with cigarettes the way we would deal with any other defective product such as the historical examples of the Ford Pinto, lawn darts (Jarts), leaded gasoline and paint, DDT, incandescent light bulbs, and old-style refrigerators. Either 1) require the defects to be sufficiently fixed, or 2) failing that, remove such products from the market. And yes, commercial cigarettes as they exist today are indeed defective by design in that they addict, enslave, and kill far more people than they have to. Worldwide, they kill about 6 million people per year, hence the name of Robert N. Proctor's bombshell of a book, Golden Holocaust.
Since 2013, the endgame strategy that the TSAP (and Twenty-One Debunked) currently supports has been to let tobacco phase itself out by gradually reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to a (relatively) non-addictive level. Since 2009, the FDA now has the authority to set a legal limit on the nicotine content of tobacco products, as long as the limit is not zero. Much research indicates that there is a threshold level of nicotine required to create and sustain addiction, and if all cigarettes were to fall below this threshold, smoking rates would plummet precipitously. In fact, one tobacco executive was quoted as saying, "‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week." This idea was originally proposed by Henningfield and Benowitz in 1994, and has been endorsed by the American Medical Association and several other experts including Proctor himself. Malcolm Gladwell also discussed it in his aptly-titled 2000 book The Tipping Point. Thus, the TSAP recommends reducing the maximum nicotine content (not delivery) of cigarettes from the current level of 1-2% to less than 0.1% within 5 years, and doing the same for quasi-cigarettes (i.e. little cigars) and perhaps roll-your-own tobacco (but no other products). That alone would reduce smoking prevalence by as much as 80% within a fairly short timeframe, with further reductions possible in the more distant future. Alternatively (or in addition), the FDA could require the pH of such products to be raised to 8 or higher to discourage deep inhalation, as is naturally the case for most typical cigars and pipe tobacco currently.
The TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked also recommend that the following measures be taken as well:
The tobacco industry has basically dug its own grave. Time to push them in there, yesterday.
While the primary dangers of smoking tobacco (i.e. cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, birth defects, etc.) have been well-known for decades, what has been much less appreciated is the neurotoxic properties of cigarettes. The thing is, nicotine is a known neurotoxin, and it is likely that at least some of the thousands of other chemicals in cigarette smoke are also toxic to the brain as well. One reported effect of nicotine is that it can "prime" the brain's reward system for addiction in general, including to other substances. This seems to be particularly true for the early adolescent brain. While these findings are based primarily on rodent studies, human studies seem to dovetail with this idea far more for tobacco than for cannabis or even alcohol. Thus, the psychopharmacological aspect of the gateway hypothesis seems to hold true indeed for tobacco, and if there were such a thing as an actual gateway drug (which is a very big "if", if you ask us), tobacco would have to be it, hands down.
Additionally, tobacco is also emerging as a potential "dark horse" in the etiology of psychosis and schizophrenia as well. This has been informally hypothesized for many years now while being overlooked by most researchers, and is only very recently beginning to be taken seriously by mainstream science. Perhaps cannabis (which is often mixed with tobacco in many countries, and whose use is often predicted by prior and concurrent tobacco use in general) has been taking a major bum rap in that regard as well? All while Big Tobacco has subtly and sedulously promoted tobacco smoking as "self-medication" for decades, of course.
That said, Twenty-One Debunked strongly opposes any attempts to raise the smoking age any higher than 18. Instead, we (along with the TSAP) believe that we should deal with cigarettes the way we would deal with any other defective product such as the historical examples of the Ford Pinto, lawn darts (Jarts), leaded gasoline and paint, DDT, incandescent light bulbs, and old-style refrigerators. Either 1) require the defects to be sufficiently fixed, or 2) failing that, remove such products from the market. And yes, commercial cigarettes as they exist today are indeed defective by design in that they addict, enslave, and kill far more people than they have to. Worldwide, they kill about 6 million people per year, hence the name of Robert N. Proctor's bombshell of a book, Golden Holocaust.
Since 2013, the endgame strategy that the TSAP (and Twenty-One Debunked) currently supports has been to let tobacco phase itself out by gradually reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to a (relatively) non-addictive level. Since 2009, the FDA now has the authority to set a legal limit on the nicotine content of tobacco products, as long as the limit is not zero. Much research indicates that there is a threshold level of nicotine required to create and sustain addiction, and if all cigarettes were to fall below this threshold, smoking rates would plummet precipitously. In fact, one tobacco executive was quoted as saying, "‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week." This idea was originally proposed by Henningfield and Benowitz in 1994, and has been endorsed by the American Medical Association and several other experts including Proctor himself. Malcolm Gladwell also discussed it in his aptly-titled 2000 book The Tipping Point. Thus, the TSAP recommends reducing the maximum nicotine content (not delivery) of cigarettes from the current level of 1-2% to less than 0.1% within 5 years, and doing the same for quasi-cigarettes (i.e. little cigars) and perhaps roll-your-own tobacco (but no other products). That alone would reduce smoking prevalence by as much as 80% within a fairly short timeframe, with further reductions possible in the more distant future. Alternatively (or in addition), the FDA could require the pH of such products to be raised to 8 or higher to discourage deep inhalation, as is naturally the case for most typical cigars and pipe tobacco currently.
The TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked also recommend that the following measures be taken as well:
- Ban the use of additives in cigarettes, especially those that are harmful or increase the addictiveness of tobacco.
- Ban the use of any radioactive fertilizers or harmful pesticides for growing tobacco.
- Phase-out the practice of flue-curing tobacco, which is a major resource hog and bad for the environment.
- Improve the quality control standards for tobacco products (and electronic cigarettes) to be at least as high as for food.
- End all government subsidies for tobacco farming and production.
- Divest completely from Big Tobacco at all levels of government.
- Vigorously enforce the current age limit of 18 for tobacco and e-cigarette sales to achieve 100% retailer compliance.
- Continue to allow widespread availability of reduced-harm tobacco and nicotine products (i.e. snus, e-cigarettes, etc.) so that smokers can easily switch to less dangerous alternatives.
- Improve education and smoking cessation programs, funded by tobacco tax revenues.
- Give out free nicotine patches, gum, etc. to any smokers who want to quit. NYC already does this.
The tobacco industry has basically dug its own grave. Time to push them in there, yesterday.
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