I don't think it's that the individual things are bad for you, it's obsession with those things.
Obviously it's hard not to be obsessed with fags if you're a smoker, that's a constant. Everything else though is simply a fad the media latches onto.
I remember similar things with other big trends of other big new technologies and social changes. They all spelt the end of the world. The car, TV, Rock and Roll, Pong (et al), Video Recorders, The Sony Walkman, computer games (violent 8-bit addictive things), shoulder pads, boys in make up, cocaine, drink (alcopops), mobile phones (the original), acid house/raves, computer games (violent FPS things), MDMA, the internet, mobile phones (this time texting), email, social networking, ciggies, drink (in general) and now smart phones.
I don't think that's an exhaustive list, but it's certainly all the things that have made headlines that I can remember or have read about. It's all about trends and popularity of new things.
When something new comes about, there's often a very rapid uptake by people who love these things. New technologies or social presentation that really suit them. The thing is, that these things really stand out in the "old world". A skater (ooops, missed skate boarding several times in that list :lol: ) wearing head phones in 1980 would have stood out in the normal world. Yet for that skater, having your music where ever you go, and having it privately available to you is just the most natural thing in the world. A 40 year old in a suit walking past would never understand the concept (and let's face it, the news is really aimed at people 30+, going on 70
). Yet in three years time, that same person would sit at home listening to The Beatles in his favourite chair on his (top of the range) Walkman while his wife put on Coronation Street. Suddenly the alien and obscure is a natural part of life.
The issue is really the way that these things rub badly with "the norm". It isn't helped by the fact that early adopters really do go over the top. Like everything though, the novelty wears off over time and you end up with a happy medium of use, but for near enough everyone.
Using the Walkman example, there are hundreds of millions of MP3 players sold, they're ubiquitous. Yet you'll see fewer people in the streets with headphones in today (despite higher sales of personal music equipment) than you would have done at the height of Walkman sales in the 80's. If you do see it, then you'll find it's a much larger cross section of the population that it was in the 80's too.
Alcohol and tobacco are slightly different (as are drug trends). They are certainly controlled though by attitudes towards them by "the mob".
Smoking has become less and less socially acceptable over a long time. It's not been a sudden change, but attitudes have been changing for ages. It started with campaigns in the 70's/80's when the true dangers of smoking became apparent. There was a push from a lot of health organisations and lobbyists to put smoking in a very negative light. I assume the number of smokers and sales of cigs has dropped dramatically from the 70's to today? Certainly the attitude changed massively. I remember every house I went into as a child was filled with smoke, usually from both parents (my own included). Cinemas with ash trays, smoking on buses - anywhere people would have to spend longer than ten minutes "contained" allowed smoking. I've certainly worked in places where people smoked at their desks.
Over the years the parents found it less acceptable to smoke in their home. They gave up, or only smoked outside. Public places moved smoking to the back, and eventually out of the doors (cinemas, buses, trains and then finally most restaurants). As the world became more "smoke free", smoking places become
very obvious, as do smokers - it's a very obvious smell. So socially, it's become less and less acceptable which has led to the ease of the "public smoking ban" in the country. Twenty years ago it wouldn't have been possible, but the slow change in attitude has brought it about. While a complete ban on the sale of cigs seems implausible today, I'll bet in twenty years time it will have happened.
Drinking is the same. Attitudes have changed massively over the decades. For my parent's generation, the fathers would finish work in the evening, go and have a beer or two (or three) and then come home for dinner, TV and sleep before the next day. Drinking was a completely acceptable way of "celebrating" the end of a hard day at work.
Work meetings would be done in pubs or restaurants over pints of beer and bottles of wine. A lunch time pint on a Friday was the norm. It still happens (I talked to Jerry about this, and he said it still seems common in London), but it's certainly very different from the olden days. I remember the shock at ICI when they covered the bar taps in the "executive lounge" at the world head quarters. That was 1994 and alcohol was suddenly barred from being served on-site during the working day.
Most work contracts today will have a clause that if you're under the influence of alcohol (or drugs), then it can lead to a disciplinary - and that can be a zero tolerance too.
So, what happens then? If it's not socially acceptable to go for a few pints after work, if all working men and women have to "be responsible"? We save it all up for the weekend instead and this has led (I believe) to the binge problems we have now. A mix of making alcohol a "temptation" by both reducing accessibility to minors and also by reducing socially acceptable drinking mid-week. By trying to make everyone "squeaky clean", we're just making matters worse.
Drinking is very different to smoking in that if you have a fag in the morning, you are still capable of working all day. You're simply feeding an addiction. Drinking alters your state of mind in a different way. A fag relaxes a smoker because they have their fix, a pint relaxes a drinker because it's a substance that causes relaxation. For a lot of people, mild intoxication is a pleasant experience. For a few, strong intoxication is a pleasant experience. This will never change; people who like to drink will always like to drink. Trying to contain and reduce drinking is like squeezing jelly to contain it. All that happens is that the jelly escapes through the cracks. The amount of jelly is the same, you're just changing how it's contained - it has to go somewhere. People will always drink and any effort to stop it simply won't work, it'll just make it diverge in unwelcome ways.
So, the point. It's always happened and it'll always happen. The media will latch onto things that most people don't do or don't understand. Then after a short period, that thing will become accepted and common to every day life and the next "big worry" will appear. The annoying thing is, the reporters jumping on this are probably the same people who were the first "Walkman rebels", or "Cocaine snorting party animals", or "mobile phones are great" advocates. They've been on the other side, and are now just the same old **** spouting journalists their parent's generation were.
