The Freedom Of Choice Fallacy

I've been a disciple of Dr. Allen Brandt's views about nicotine addiction after I began to dig deeper into the issues involving smoking with Smoking Blows. I've been spreading his message ever since.

And the fact is - there is no such thing as "freedom of choice" when it comes to tobacco abuse.

Almost 90% of adults smokers began smoking while they were children, not yet capable of making a rational, informed, or even a legal decision to smoke. That's why the tobacco industry has targeted children and teens, they're easy to manipulate.

Once those young smokers become addicted to the nicotine found in cigarettes, and upon reaching adulthood and realizing their mistake, their addiction now impairs their ability to make the "choice" to quit smoking. Most adult smokers want to quit smoking, but many just can't beat their addiction.

Yet, the tobacco industry, the people in their pockets, and especially the many unwavering political Libertarians continue to push the view that smoking is a matter of personal choice.

In their views, smokers who experience the negative health consequences associated with long-term smoking should only blame themselves, because they had a "free choice" whether to smoke or not. Of course, once you understand the facts behind a nicotine addiction, you then realize that those views are pure fallacy.

Unfortunately though, there are still many uninformed people who buy into that Libertarian "freedom" line of reasoning whom mistakenly blame themselves for their medical predicament, and whom also support Big Tobacco's efforts to find replacement smokers and continue the genocide.

So, it's heartwarming to find other medical professionals following in Dr. Brandt's footsteps, and using all of their abilities and skills to inform the public about the real issues behind nicotine addiction and the fallacy of "freedom of choice" surrounding smoking. See for yourself -

Dr. Pauline Dekker and Dr. Wanda de Kanter are both pulmonologists at the Red Cross Hospital in Beverwijk (Netherlands). After 20 years of daily practice in which they treated thousands of patients with smoking related diseases (mainly lung cancer and COPD) they decided that something needed to change. Chemotherapy, inhalers, the pain and the suffering, all could have easily been avoided if only tobacco had never been legalized.

While continuing their work as chest physicians at the hospital in 2008 they started a project to keep young people from smoking. For their efforts they have received several prizes, the latest being the prestigious “Muntendam prize” by the Dutch Cancer foundation (KWF).

They used that money to fund their latest campaign at TEDx-Nijmegen which illustrates the guilt and the shame that lung cancer patients feel when confronted with their smoking related disease. Guilt and shame that should actually be felt by the tobacco industry.