© 2002 Tobacco Control
EDITORIAL
Tragedy
The banality of tobacco deaths
1 GLOBALink Tobacco News
2 Tobacco Control
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Simon Chapman, Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Edward Ford Building A27, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia:
simonc@health.usyd.edu.au
The attacks on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent anthrax scare have provided twin lessons in the perils and possibilities of tragedy
Keywords: tobacco related deaths; statistics
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables
William Shakespeare,
Hamlet, Act I, Scene II
The king dies and his son Hamlet mourns. Hamlet's grief is increased by his mother's unseemly haste to marry her late husband's brother. She has calculated too coldly. Health advocates are not evil plotters, but their motives and actions have sometimes been likened to those of Queen Gertrude and King Claudius. The question arises: should they profit from tragedy? And can the tobacco control community appropriate dramatic images for its denormalisation campaigns and not alienate the public?
The 11 September attacks in New York and Washington, and the subsequent anthrax scare, have provided twin lessons in the perils and possibilities of tragedy. The bonds of faith, family, and community can be shattered or strengthened in suffering's wake. In similar fashion, tobacco control advocates' messages can be
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