We Live In a Gray, Gray World
The US Government has been working since 2006 to force tobacco companies to add language in the harshest possible manner to cigarette packages decrying smoking. We're not talking "The Attorney General has determined that cigarettes are hazardous to your health" here, we're talking messages like this:
“We told Congress under oath that we believed nicotine is not addictive. We told you
that smoking is not an addiction and all it takes to quit is willpower. Here’s the truth:
* Smoking is very addictive. And it’s not easy to quit.
* We manipulated cigarettes to make them more addictive.
* When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain-that’s why quitting
is so hard.
Paid for by [Cigarette Manufacturer Name] under order of a Federal District court.”
This is very, very interesting, this idea that if you lie to Congress, you should have to pay for advertising ON YOUR PRODUCT setting the record straight. It makes me think, though, that there are better targets than the tobacco industry for these kinds of statements. Just imagine if, with every political advertisement, the politician had to fess up to all the lies they'd told in other advertisements. I realize I'm tap-dancing on a First Amendment minefield here, in the sense that political speech is what the First Amendment is foremost about. From what I understand, forcing people to own up to lies would put a damper on free speech (obviously, that would be the point, to make people shut up for a second and think of the ramifications of what they are about to say) and there's probably not a single court in the US that would let that fly.
Anyway, lies are difficult to prove because. First, how do you prove the person speaking the lie knew it was a lie? Secondly, the people who swallow a lie don't want to believe it's not true. I mean, if the American public could unanamously agree on some folks who make baldfaced lies, we could weed out some of the bad apples from Congress with landslide voting.
It's fun to think about, though.
“We told Congress under oath that we believed nicotine is not addictive. We told you
that smoking is not an addiction and all it takes to quit is willpower. Here’s the truth:
* Smoking is very addictive. And it’s not easy to quit.
* We manipulated cigarettes to make them more addictive.
* When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain-that’s why quitting
is so hard.
Paid for by [Cigarette Manufacturer Name] under order of a Federal District court.”
This is very, very interesting, this idea that if you lie to Congress, you should have to pay for advertising ON YOUR PRODUCT setting the record straight. It makes me think, though, that there are better targets than the tobacco industry for these kinds of statements. Just imagine if, with every political advertisement, the politician had to fess up to all the lies they'd told in other advertisements. I realize I'm tap-dancing on a First Amendment minefield here, in the sense that political speech is what the First Amendment is foremost about. From what I understand, forcing people to own up to lies would put a damper on free speech (obviously, that would be the point, to make people shut up for a second and think of the ramifications of what they are about to say) and there's probably not a single court in the US that would let that fly.
Anyway, lies are difficult to prove because. First, how do you prove the person speaking the lie knew it was a lie? Secondly, the people who swallow a lie don't want to believe it's not true. I mean, if the American public could unanamously agree on some folks who make baldfaced lies, we could weed out some of the bad apples from Congress with landslide voting.
It's fun to think about, though.