4 ms·

I have no evidence, just observation. With regard to obesity, it's a relatively newer problem compared to smoking and I haven't seen nearly as much public facin

I have no evidence, just observation. With regard to obesity, it's a relatively newer problem compared to smoking and I haven't seen nearly as much public facing campaigning to fix it. For example, I don't think I've ever seen a PSA about eating less, whereas I've seen literally hundreds about cigarettes since I was a child. Admittedly, most anti-obesity campaigns also seem to be neutered by lobbying. "Stop drinking soda" becomes politicized and turned into "move" by lobbyists. Taking a 30 minute walk is great advice for overall health, but will do absolutely 0 to address obesity. I guess overall, there's no guarantee of success here, but I tend to view the shift in public sentiment about tobacco as a direct result of public health efforts. Which leads me to believe it's at least possible for other issues (obesity, alcohol). But certainly it is difficult and with unknown risk of failure.

AmericanChopper 5y ago
I smoked for years and the public health campaigns had no positive effect on me or anybody I know. I actually developed a certain level of contempt for how much they manipulated the statistics, and generally took a non-evidence based approach to their regulation. The primary piece of government intervention that got me to quit was taxing the hell out of it. As much as I don’t like the government presuming it can make risk decisions regarding how I choose to live my own life, I like paying it taxes even less. My personal motivations were firstly avoiding the nuisance of dealing with the odor, and secondly the health impacts. I also expect that all the advertising restrictions has likely had an impact, but that didn’t personally influence me at all.