There used to be a great computer game involving battling robots. I can't remember the name because it died when computers moved past the old 286 processors. The game was clocked by the processor clock so once it got onto a 386, you'd lost within the first second. The computer's robot moved faster than the scren could update.
In that game, there were extra points for a 'combo' attack (the old 'one-two' in we old people's language). Now it seems the antis are trying for those extra points in real life.
So we hear of a Romanian two-year-old smoking and drinking coffee. Nicotine and caffeine in one hit, and a two-year-old too. This has to be top of the league for hysteria.
The thing is, we're told it's coffee in the cup but we never see inside. It could be vodka. It could be dog's urine blended with pureed otter pancreas and with croutons cunningly disguised as floating fag-ends.
Or it could be water.
The cigarette glows mysteriously blue. Is it real (dodgy video perhaps?) or is it an Electrofag? I have blue-ended ones. They come with zero-nicotine cartridges included in the kit.
So it is possible that this child is smoking and drinking coffee. It is also possible the child is inhaling steam and drinking water. Why would a mother encourage a child to inhale steam?
My mother used to do that whenever I had bunged up sinuses. She didn't have access to the handy little steam-generating nicotine-free Electrofag so I had to have a towel over my head and sit with my face over a bowl of hot water with some volatile organic chemicals in it. Anyone else remember that?
So what does the video show? A child smoking and drinking coffee, or a child with a cold, using a steam inhaler and drinking water?
I don't speak Romanian so I can't tell. The Mail and its commenters seem very sure but then only one of those scenarios is an actual story.
3 comments:
Now, you may call me the ultimate cynic when it comes to all things even remotely anti-smoking, but that constantly-on blue light, the lack of smoke coming out of the child’s mouth and the lack of coughing and spluttering which would inevitably result in such a young child breathing in real smoke does make it look rather like this is a cheap electro-fag. Now, in view of this, and bearing in mind the fact that in this day and age the last thing that any parent inclined to let their young children smoke cigarettes would do is video it – let alone put that video out for public consumption – smacks to me just a little bit of a deliberate set-up, designed to invoke mass public hysteria and re-ignite the fires of anti-smokism which are quite clearly now dying out. We’ve seen increasingly desperate attempts by the anti-smoking movement since the ban came in – after which politicians’ interest in them has withered away – to elbow their way back to the front of the “public health concern” queue.
Now that it seems likely that this was an entirely harmless electro-fag, the chance that this video was made by a virulently anti-smoking parent (either the mother or the father, or both) as perhaps the most desperate of all last-ditch attempts to flog this fast-dying horse back to life, seems not altogether impossible. Maybe one of the anti-smoking organisations even forked out a small back-hander for the parent/s as a “thank you” for their sterling efforts for the “cause”??
But, as I say, I admit that I'm the most suspicious person in the world when it comes to these "cheeldren smoking" stories, but can you blame me? With the anti-smoking movement prepared to plumb any depths to maintain their support (and thus their funding), this kind of trick wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
Anyone else remember that?
Yup.
"Anyone else remember that?
Yup" ...
Friar's Balsam, if memory serves me correctly .. ;)
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