According to Droits des Non Fumeurs, anyway. Meaning “Non-Smokers’ Rights”, they’re fighting that ever-so-important battle of keeping people under 18 from smoking. And in this ever-so-important battle, they’ve whipped out an interesting kind of artillery… saying that smoking, being a “slave to tobacco”, is like being forced to perform oral sex!
The slogan is bland enough: “To smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.” But it accompanies photographs of an older man, his torso seen from the side, pushing down on the head of a teenage girl with a cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes are at belt level, glancing upward fearfully. The cigarette appears to emerge from the adult’s trousers.
Seriously?! This is what an anti-smoking group has resorted to… implying that making a personal choice about consuming a product is equivalent to being sexually violated by an older, stronger person. You can see the offending ads here.
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Spotted a very interesting post over at the Institute for Democratic Education in America. It started as a response to the following comment:
I used to direct an after-school program, which was housed in a public school classroom, and I tried to implement a democratic meeting with my middle school students (a diverse group in terms of race and family income). As well-intentioned as I was, the students didn’t respect me as a leader because I was offering them decision-making power. They seemed so used to an authoritarian school day that they didn’t know what to do with an unexpected dose of freedom. It was also just a drop in the bucket compared to the way they spent the majority of their time. How would you have handled this situation?
- Redwood City, CA
Jonah Canner responded to the above scenario with an excellent post about how we are all democratic by nature, even little kids respond to each other democratically while playing, and it is school that imposes an authoritarian structure upon us. The following years stuck in school become a long, tired battle between authority and resistance to it. With all the harm that school does it is hard to reverse it over night, it is hard also to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of that ongoing battle of authority and resistance. Especially when you don’t seem to fit easily into expected roles. I definitely encourage you to click the link and read the post. It was an insightful response.
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The 21 year old drinking age doesn’t work. You know it, NYRA knows it, Choose Responsibility knows it. Vote for this issue so the whole country can understand the harm that the 21 year old drinking age does:
https://www.change.org/ideas/view/21_doesnt_work_change_the_drinking_age
The top 10 ideas with the most votes on Change.org will be presented to President Obama and the nation and Change.org will lobby on their behalf. The first round of this contest ends on February 25, so we need as many votes as possible in these next two days!! Please vote and tell everyone you know to vote for this idea:
https://www.change.org/ideas/view/21_doesnt_work_change_the_drinking_age
Right now lowering the drinking age is very close to make it into the next round, but can’t do it without your help. Winning this will send a powerful message to Washington and to the nation that 21 doesn’t work and the people of this country want a change. It only takes a moment to vote, so please vote to lower the drinking age:
https://www.change.org/ideas/view/21_doesnt_work_change_the_drinking_age
This is replying to a Canadian Press article, “Students failing because of Twitter, texting and no grammar teaching” from earlier in the month.
Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can’t write properly.
It’s perfectly possible to know and use both informal textspeak and proper English. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasn’t tried.
For years there’s been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.
Many anecdotes do not good evidence make.
Now there seems to be some solid evidence.
Ah, good. You’re acknowledging that those anecdotes weren’t evidence.
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I’m pleased to say yesterday’s first run of #16tovote on the 16th was a complete success! Yesterday, as our newest voting age awareness campaign, many youth rights supporters posted to Twitter their feelings on lowering the voting age, as well as relevant links, and retweeted each other’s voting age tweets, all with the hashtag #16tovote. Search results for #16tovote can be found here, but here are yesterday’s awesome voting age tweets! We will be doing this again on March 16! Will you join us?
youthrights Top Ten Reasons to Lower the Voting Age! - http://bit.ly/cavxOT #16tovote
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Why don't you 
