The Fatter of Two Evils

Americans, 67 percent according to a Gallup poll, are more afraid of getting fat than smoking cigarettes. Daniel Engber says they've got it all wrong:

The analogous number for those who consume at least one pack of cigarettes per day is 3.7, meaning that heavy smokers are almost four times more likely to perish than nonsmokers, about double the risk associated with obesity. Estimates of avoidable deaths reflect this difference in the odds: According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking accounts for an excess mortality of more than 400,000 Americans every year, compared to just 112,000 for obesity. That's despite the fact that there are many more fat Americans—obesity rates are now 50 percent higher than smoking rates.

This is particularly true as smoking becomes less socially acceptable as an activity. In New Zealand, smoking is generally perceived as a profoundly anti-social habit: something to be scorned and treated with contempt. The government has declared it their goal to wipe out the consumption of tobacco by 2017, and is pushing ahead with a plan to deprive cigarette packaging of basic branding — a policy that conforms with the other equally-infantilising social legislation here. (You might remember that New Zealand was the first to introduce a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.) It must feel like such an insult to be treated as though you can't make good consumer decisions on your own.

I'm genuinely fine with governments broadcasting ads advocating 'smokefree' spaces and anti-smoking measures — even the strident ones, which tend to be easy to ignore. But I think we may be well advised to dispense with the notion that legislation, not a natural evolution in opinion as new information emerges, is to be credited with curbing the tobacco problem.