Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate smoking. Such an insidious habit, so seemingly innocuous yet, as Shane Bradbrook points out, it’s the number one killer of Maori. Then you have to wonder how much of the so called Obesity Epidemic if affected by the sedentary lifestyle associated with smoking.
I’ve long been aware that the advertising and marketing efforts of the Tobacco companies is based on aspiration – to be sophisticated and western and, lets face it, white. So many foibles in the developing nations are based on those same factors – leg lengthening, skin bleaching and smoking. All dangerous, and frankly unbelievable. Yet they happen. We even hear that Chinese brides get raunchy wedding photos taken in an effort to appear modern. That message had to come via the distorted movie industry and it’s low-class relation the porn industry.