The Two Deadliest Behavior Assaults On America: Why is one trashy and not the other?

To clarify, I'm not a smoker, never have been... and although I've raised four children, worked hard until recent early retirement, I've been responsible with my personal eating, exercise habits, and can say I'm "in shape". I've noticed a disturbing disconnect in awareness when it comes to smoking and obesity. Cigarette smoke is said to offend the "senses" (smell sight, and sound) of many. Personally, I'm neither terribly offended by cigarette smoke or the obese but may give the nod to the smell of smoke over the sight of gluttony at the dinner table. My point is not that either smoker or glutton be shamed but since BOTH were/are the MOST DEADLY ASSAULTS by individual habit on our county's health and economy, one has already been shamed successfully, why not the other? Don't try the "genetic" excuse, some are disposed to more body mass but obesity is a recent behavioral epidemic that did not plague over half of our nation 50 years ago. We know cigarettes kill but turned out after bans that "second hand smoke" had been wrongly "accused". It was, however, used as a ploy to shame smokers and successfully instituting legal bans. In the aftermath, politicians, scientists, and doctors consider the assault on smoking and smokers a two-fold success by reducing smoking and removing the "offense" to our senses.


If you've kept up, I think you'll find these quotes to be typical from anti-smoking researchers and politicians.

"...although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will tell you that "secondhand smoke causes an estimated 3,400 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmokers each year," scientists have long understood that the actual number might be closer to zero.."


Even though proven false:

"...The warning that "secondhand smoke kills," with lung cancer as the paradigmatic example, played an important role in the debate over government-imposed smoking bans..."


The bottom line:

"...because the main goal of smoking bans was "to change societal behavior" by stigmatizing smoking, making it less convenient and less socially acceptable..."

So smokers were and are shamed, plain and simple...and if it gets them to stop and saves their lives, this has been perfectly acceptable among the knowing researchers, doctors, and politicians. Now that obesity kills more Americans than smoking and costs our economy and health care more than smoking ever did, what is wrong with making being overweight unacceptable in the same fashion by stigmatizing as "trashy"?