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How to get 7th graders to smoke

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Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#91

Post by rdtsc »

> You can have a PhD and good intentions. You can have money and buy-in. You can do a bunch of reasonable things to prevent a problem that everyone agrees is bad.

Imagine what they could do if they had a PhD and bad intentions...

But let's say, first they do have good intentions. However, even then, if these people devoted their lives to their cause, they promoted programs, wrote countless powerpoint slides, even books. And now some other research comes out and says "well it looks like that other stuff was actually hurting kids". How many of the PhDs with good intentions, will acknowledge that and effectively throw away their life's work?

> Some famous CEOs were mean to their employees and got good results, so I should do that too, which is convenient because I am a jerk.

That's exactly what one of the leadership team did in a company I worked at. They tried to emulate Steve Jobs. And out of brilliance, dedication to perfection, design, hiring the best people, all possible qualities they could have tried to emulated, they emulated being an asshole, hoping the company would become the next Apple at some point.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#92

Post by ta2112 »

nvahalik wrote: post #23
nobleach wrote: post #5

Show them a Quentin Tarantino film? ...or any film for that matter where the main characters seem so "cool, unfazed and untouchable". To a young (mostly male) mind, that's the ultimate goal; to be in charge. For most beginning smokers, it's not about the inhalation of tobacco, but the subversive "screw the rules, those don't apply to me" façade. This might sound obvious but, if we want 7th graders not to glorify smok…

Requiem for a dream still haunts me.

Just when I finally almost forgot about it, this comment rips it back into my poor brain.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#93

Post by chucksta »

quacked wrote: post #40

At the core of the problem is that social services that address the physical consequences of smoking (mostly medical professionals and financial counselors) are run by people who believe that everyone ought to be treated similarly and have similar opportunities, regardless of behavior. Smoking is considered "a problem" to society because intelligent, caring people that notice that smoking injuries and medical conditi…

Tell us how you really feel.

> They enjoy it and don't really anticipate or care about the consequences.

This is the actual core and it applies to all risky and anti-social behavior. Speeding while driving, sloth, over indulgence, smoking, addictive drugs, ..etc

What's your take on the morbidly obese? Deny food and let their diabetes take hold?

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#94

Post by chias »

"I understand these trainings exist solely for the purposes of ass-covering."

This is not really true.

They exist for shifting liability -- which is similar, but also quite different -- to where it needs to be. They exist so that you don't even have to listen to the "but that's just normal", "but we always do that", "i had no idea that wasn't allowed" excuses when a person gets in trouble. They exist because otherwise when someone does something that everybody including the perpetrator obviously knows was wrong, they can say "how was I supposed to know that was bad?" and suddenly you have to start arguing in a context where your opponent can "win" the argument by feigning being an idiot, which is a surefire way to have a shit day.

Consider this: https://dynomight.net/teaching/

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#95

Post by quacked »

toast0 wrote: post #77
quacked wrote: post #40

At the core of the problem is that social services that address the physical consequences of smoking (mostly medical professionals and financial counselors) are run by people who believe that everyone ought to be treated similarly and have similar opportunities, regardless of behavior. Smoking is considered "a problem" to society because intelligent, caring people that notice that smoking injuries and medical conditi…

> literally "other people are dying because of this habit so you need to hate this habit." I didn't need a media campaign to hate this habit, although it probably helped when they made Mr. Potato Head give up his pipe, the smell and the residues everywhere were enough. I guess it was one way to get kids to play outside; I never wanted to be in my grandparents' homes while they were smokers. Didn't matter if they were…

You're in low-risk group, then. I think 95-99% of HN commenters don't even need an emotional response to smoking trained into them; just an explanation of the risks is enough, or an appeal to their manners (some people don't like the smell of smoking.)

I personally like the smell of smoke and get a great nicotine buzz when I do smoke. If it didn't cause health issues I'd smoke all day.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#96

Post by Log_out_ »

patwolf wrote: post #22

This brought back memories of the D.A.R.E. officer coming to my elementary classroom to give us the "don't do drugs" speech. At the end of the speech with feigning hesitation he'd pull out the drug briefcase to the cheers of the kids, like a band holding out their best song for the encore. "This here is methamphetamine, aka crystal meth or speed. If you see a man running down the street with the strength of a bear, t…

The rootcause is the hyper competitiveness od us society. There are only winners and loosees, and loosers do drugs.. So every economic downturn people do what they were told, if success does not happen and self destruct to keep life bearable.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#97

Post by sandworm101 »

flatline wrote: post #45
patwolf wrote: post #22

This brought back memories of the D.A.R.E. officer coming to my elementary classroom to give us the "don't do drugs" speech. At the end of the speech with feigning hesitation he'd pull out the drug briefcase to the cheers of the kids, like a band holding out their best song for the encore. "This here is methamphetamine, aka crystal meth or speed. If you see a man running down the street with the strength of a bear, t…

I did not get the briefcase in my DARE education. What I did get is a cop telling me that my parents having a glass of wine with dinner or a cigarette after work was just as bad a them using cocaine, and that you could OD and die on weed. All drugs are equally bad. A few years later when my friends were smoking weed and laughed at my concerns, and I realized I’d been lied to, I pretty much did everything under the su…

>> What I did get is a cop telling me that my parents having a glass of wine with dinner or a cigarette after work was just as bad a them using cocaine

That cop came to my school too. On a bicycle. He also told us that 50% of us would die in any car accident over 50mph. It was really hard to not laugh at him given the number of us who participated in the local streetracing scene. In a room full of students in jackets and ties, he stood there spouting lies in his spandex bike shorts.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#98

Post by the_af »

nobleach wrote: post #5

Show them a Quentin Tarantino film? ...or any film for that matter where the main characters seem so "cool, unfazed and untouchable". To a young (mostly male) mind, that's the ultimate goal; to be in charge. For most beginning smokers, it's not about the inhalation of tobacco, but the subversive "screw the rules, those don't apply to me" façade. This might sound obvious but, if we want 7th graders not to glorify smok…

> This might sound obvious but, if we want 7th graders not to glorify smoking, we quit glorifying it in our media

There was quite obviously a concerted effort to remove smoking from movies and shows. It's been going on for more than a decade. It's quite abrupt, go back far enough and everyone smokes, especially the cool guys and gals. Then fast forward and almost nobody smokes, not even the villains. Ads for smoking are gone from my country's TV and cigarette packs by law must display horrifying photos of emaciated cancer patients.

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#99

Post by npteljes »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #11
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, these are the kinds of ads we need: https://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2010/02/25/anti-smo...

I was thinking more like this https://www.theonion.com/new-anti-smoking-ads-warn-teens-its... But that one is not bad either :)

Got a good laugh out of me, thanks for sharing!

Re: How to get 7th graders to smoke

#100

Post by quacked »

chucksta wrote: post #93
quacked wrote: post #40

At the core of the problem is that social services that address the physical consequences of smoking (mostly medical professionals and financial counselors) are run by people who believe that everyone ought to be treated similarly and have similar opportunities, regardless of behavior. Smoking is considered "a problem" to society because intelligent, caring people that notice that smoking injuries and medical conditi…

Tell us how you really feel. > They enjoy it and don't really anticipate or care about the consequences. This is the actual core and it applies to all risky and anti-social behavior. Speeding while driving, sloth, over indulgence, smoking, addictive drugs, ..etc What's your take on the morbidly obese? Deny food and let their diabetes take hold?

Obesity is different, because eating is a basic need, and the factors in the US behind obesity have more to do with the available food being "poisoned": corn syrup, pressed oil, dyes, and other industrial fillers are added to almost all packaged foods, and social traditions around food preparation are vanishing because they're inconvenient with the modern lifestyle.

If you don't want to be obese, you have to maintain constant self-denial, long-term planning, and a basic scientific understanding of nutrition in the face of your available food supply being hijacked by advertisers and profiteers. For millions of years, the best possible strategy for feeding was "acquire as many calories as possible and make them as tasty as possible", and only in the past 30-40 years has that strategy suddenly started yielding bad results.

I think there is a much stronger need for a huge legal and philosophical intervention into the western food supply than there is into the western nicotine supply.

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