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The banality of tobacco deaths

¹ GLOBALink Tobacco News
² Tobacco Control

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

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 . . . [Full text of this article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				S Shatenstein If it bleeds, it leads: the pathos derby Tob. Control, June 1, 2004; 13(2): 97 - 99. [Full Text] [PDF]

				S Chapman Formula One racing and the end of tobacco sponsorship: half pregnant at 350 kph? Tob. Control, June 1, 2002; 11(2): 87 - 88. [Full Text] [PDF]

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