Dictionary.com’s main definition of terrorism…
“the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce”
The definition of terrorize is…
1. to fill or overcome with terror.
2. to dominate or coerce by intimidation.
3. to produce widespread fear by acts of violence, as bombings.
Do anti-smoking campaigns terrorize people? Absolutely. Are they terrorism? You decide.
The best example that I could come up with is when “The Truth”, an antismoking agency founded with smoking lawsuit dollars, piled over one thousand body bags outside the office of cigarette executives. Here are some key photos from the comercial that appeared on national TV.
This is the bodybag that The Truth uses throughout the comercial. Real bodybags don’t say “Bodybag”. It’s the equivalent of banks putting a big dollar sign ($) on their bags of money. This is meant for the lamens that don’t know what they are looking at. They want to scare you, not provide informtion. Most body bags are black by the way.
This is a photo of a “The Truth” volunteer (or perhaps employee). He is using a megaphone to publicly taunt tobacco employees. “The Truth” makes it out that they are only targetting the “Execs” however, if somebody came into your work with a megaphone and told you that your boss is a murderer what would you do and how would you feel?
This is the faceless person they used to show the tobacco exec. This could be somebody totall different. They like to portray them as greedy aging white men.
This is an up closeup photo of the stack of over a thousand body bags. Keep in mind that onlookers had no idea what this was for. Recently Boston got scared because the “Cartoon Network” put Lite-Brites all over the city advertising a cartoon character. What would you be more scared of, a childs toy or 1,200 body bags.
Zoomed out photo from a helicopter of one of the 2 stacks of body bags.
This shows you both stacks of body bags. They have stategically been placed on both sides of the building effectively branding them ask killers. Any person coming down either street would have to cross over as to not come close to these. Keep in mind that this was done during normal business hours in a large city. There is no through traffic. Where people scared inito not driving or walking down?
You may have liked this commercial. As a non-smoker (I hate smoking it’s disgusting) I was a little upset by this. It demands attention by terrorizing individuals, everybody is deemed guilty and they use a lot of stereotypes.
If you have never tried a cigarette, I definitely recommend you try one. They are gross and you don’t need another person’s warning to tell you that they are horrible for you.
We don’t know how much was spent on this commercial. It could range anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars (don’t possible fines, the number of people needed to coordinate this, the helicopter and the price of movie condition body bags).
Couldn’t the money have been spent better on tobacco education?
