la_vie_noire | (no subject)

There is an anti-smoking campaign at my faculty, the people who organize this work at the Ministerio de Salud.

The thing is this:

In one hand, these anti-smoking campaigns are plain ableist. They devalue, objectify and exploit disabled bodies. The posters I have seen on campus are sensationalist images about gorgeous models hiding or sporting some kind of "ugly cancer." The talk this Doctor gave was mostly about showing "awful" images of people with cancer, appealing to "No one wants to end like that." One teacher said that showing these images was the best form of "conscientization" because "even if they are ugly, it's the only way to make people pay attention." And of course they are effective: we live in a very ableist society, very focused on physical appearance. The same teacher said, "if you don't care about your health, at least do it [don't smoke] for vanity!". Campaigns like these contribute to the dehumanization and devaluation that disabled people live every day, most of these messages read as "you don't want to end crippled, sick, dying and ugly like these people." And of course, disabled people's identities don't even matter for these campaigns, let alone disabled people who never smoked in their lives.

In the other hand, this is a very poor third world country and a lot of laws regarding free-smoke spaces, advertisement and warnings just aren't carried out (or obeyed) because big tobacco companies put a lot of money in authorities (and smoking is a big industry here). As it was said in the talk, a lot people don't know that these laws exists, and don't get education or information about their healths. Again, this is a country where people are poor, and a lot of working able-bodied people can't afford losing their jobs due to health problems that smoking gives them. Disabled people or people with health problems (like asthma) sometimes don't even get the chance to chose if they don't want to be exposed to smoke. Most people, able or disabled, have a hard time paying for expensive medication. Also, this campaign here is, economically, a very poor one and probably the most important being carried at the moment. I don't want say they don't have merit, who am I to talk? The woman who gave the talk is the one leading the project, she is a doctor who works in the public sphere and worked a lot to make some laws pass, while fighting the big Tobacco Companies.

But the anti-smoke information has been running at my faculty (Chemistry faculty), and still just helped to stigmatize people who smoke and can't afford quitting. The man who works in the photocopy service is an avid smoker, he also had had health troubles due to smoking; but the anti-smoke campaign here just contributed to make him feel self-conscious. He works 07:00 am to 09:00 pm Monday to Friday and sometimes Saturdays, can't afford an effective quitting method because, of course, doesn't have the money or the time. Conversely, the students and teachers who smoke don't feel a lot of pressure because they are in a more privileged position.

So these things show and underlying problem: being disabled in a poor country. A lot of disabled people can't work and won't get work and thus are living in extreme poverty, not only they can't be informed and chose about their health; they are devalued, discriminated and dehumanized by people who are supposedly there to help them.

Threaded | Flat

Agreeing so much. Thank you for this.

The thing that annoys me about this is how they seem to imply that gorgeous people can't get sick. My dad? Has cancer, and yet he has never smoked in his life. He has always been extremely healthy and he exercises a lot.

There are more important things to consider when smoking than 'OMG you'll end up with yellow teeth and hideous', which is what annoys me about anti-smoking campaigns. Most of them don't even seem to try and make it seem about health. Oh, no, it's always about the vanity.