Re: Government Radio Propaganda
Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
4 Nov 1997 23:24:13 GMT
Kevin Peterson writes:
>sitting in a smokey room for 2 hours is like smoking 4 cigarettes
Well, it's not a ceteris paribus comparison; what they probably mean is
"like smoking 4 cigarettes _in a well-ventilated area_". In real life,
smokers are always subject to their own second-hand smoke indoors, so
sitting in a room for any amount of time will never be more dangerous
for the nonsmoker than for the smoker!
However, if you twist things a little bit, you can get the effect you want.
I think politically-motivated deceptive tactics seriously discredit genuine
public-health information and more sober anti-drug campaigning. (You could
take a look at the paragraph about drug legalization in my article about
the meaning of "educational" at
"http://ishmael.nmh.northfield.ma.us/~sigma/english/educational.html".)
If it weren't the job of the "Drug Czar" to tell people how dangerous drugs
are, wouldn't people tend to believe him more?
--
Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus. -- Cicero, in Catilinam I