The country which believes that it can solve every problem by censoring something, Australia, is planning to ban all images of people smoking from the world wide wibble.
In a move which shows how powerful the Australian government believes it is, the Ministry of Health wants to extend its restrictions on tobacco advertising to the web.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon claims that the legislation will bring the internet into line with restrictions in other media.
Apparently she thinks that Australia runs the internet, and it will do what she tells it.However the Aussie media has thrown the spotlight on Cameron Reilly who runs popular blogs while smoking. It points out that if Roxon gets her way, Reilly will have to stop smoking his trademark cigar while talking.
Roxon's view is that since tobacco advertising has been driven away from newspapers and television it has mushroomed online.However, it is not so much advertising that seems to bug her but the 1,000 tobacco-themed Facebook groups available to people of all ages, plus YouTube clips and Flickr galleries.
True, some of these are produced by tobacco company employees, but others are simply people who like talking about smoking.
Reilly said social networking and voluntary communities that could not be compared to advertising. He likes to set the scene for his blogs. It's not like there are ads all over my podcasts.
Reilly told the Sydney Morning Herald that the interesting thing with online is where the line is drawn between advertising and people just talking to each other.
Mike Daube, chairman of the National Preventative Health Taskforce, which advised the government to tighten restrictions, said Parliament had intended to ban all tobacco advertising and tobacco companies would always try to subvert bans.
Australia's internet minders want to remove smoking images from all internet
screens Down Under, and this could even lead to an Apple ban.
As one pundit puts it: "The country which believes that it can solve
every problem by
censoring something is planning to ban all images of
people smoking from the world wide wibble."
The Ministry of Health there wants to extend its current TV and
newspaper restrictions on
tobacco advertising to the web, and Health Minister Nicola Roxon is on
record as saying that the such proposed legislation will bring
the internet into line with restrictions in other media.
But what about the popular blogger Cameron Reilly who runs blogs while
smoking? If Roxon gets her way, Reilly will have to stop smoking his
trademark cigar while talking. In other words, he will have to stop rocking on.
Hello Australia, goodbye cancer sticks.
The fact that these tobacco-related groups/pages have to be actively sought out means that they are not advertising, rather they are solely an assembly point for those with common interest. No sinister "big tobacco" motive, just people enjoying their freedom to talk about the things they like. Of course Labor wants to talk that away.
Sigh, I grow tired of Nicola Roxon's condescension towards the people of Australia.
She needs to be shot in the face.
What about drawings of smokers? What about the zillion press photos of smokers, and movies? No pipe for Santa Claus?
What about images of the Hookah Smoking Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland?
What about images of legal medical marijuana smokers?
What about mimes pretending to smoke?
What about Native Americans smoking peace pipes?...with organic, non-adulterated tobacco, by the way.
What about Art (capital 'A') that depicts smokers?
Cezanne's cafe scenes...Banned?
Political cartoons with smokers (for or against the "habit", as some like to call it) ?
What about an image of a person just exhaling something...which could be just breath condensation on a cold day? Will the breather have to prove it wasn't smoke?
How about images of exhaust pipes spewing smoke? Industrial smokestacks? Chimneys on homes?
This is so insane a proposal, one is prompted to guess that this Health Minister is doing this as a Reverse Psychology tactic to show how hypocritical and insane the "anti smoking" religion has become. She can't be serious, can she?