TY - JOUR T1 - Hate mail, tobacco control and social change JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - 87 LP - 88 DO - 10.1136/tc.2011.043125 VL - 20 IS - 2 AU - Ruth E Malone Y1 - 2011/03/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/2/87.abstract N2 - As a result of the USA's latest mass shooting, there are calls for more civil and civilised discourse.1 The propagation of ‘hate speech’ towards political opponents, some say, led to this tragedy by fomenting and encouraging always unstable individuals to act on their most violent impulses. While the similarly inflammatory rhetoric of tobacco industry-supported ‘smokers' rights’ groups2 is familiar to most tobacco control advocates and many researchers, I can't help but wonder at some of the exceptionally vitriolic correspondence recently received at the journal, particularly since we instituted the Tobacco Control blog (see http://blogs.bmj.com/tc/).The blogosphere, unfortunately, has emerged as a place for all manner of anonymous adolescent angst and anger to be indiscriminately disgorged and widely disseminated. I am not sure why we thought perhaps the TC blog might be different, but it most assuredly receives its full share—most of which we do not publish because it simply upchucks an undigested stew of incoherent fury and makes no real contribution to the purpose of the blog. For example, among the recent unpublished tirades was one from ‘social leper’, also known as SickofitAll on another blog, who wrote: “I fucking hate you and your profession. I've paid for my iron lung—and her brat's incubator, and that fat bastard's reinforced bed…You should all be lined up against a wall and shot in your motherfucking faces”. The rant goes on to issue threats of violent rape in graphic detail and ends by … ER -