I was reading the Czech daily DNES today in Starbucks, and stumbled upon something interesting. Though we all know that smoking is negatively portrayed in various forms of media, I did not realize how extensive this negative portrayal actually was. As I was reading the paper, (and it's quite a thin paper if you take away all the crap about sports and business ;)) I counted three articles about the negative effects of smoking, including a massive headline, and one article on the portrayal of Czechs as alcoholics on the internet. The articles claimed that smoking causes microscopic particles to attach to your hair and clothes and thus even if you smoke outside, you bring these particles inside and they come into contact with other people. This then, of course, causes a higher chance of death of your relatives, mainly children (that was basically the gist of the article). The other two articles claimed that a) smoking kills you and b) even China is beginning to adopt smoking bans.
I found this interesting because as a fairly liberal country even in terms of new health trends such as healthy living, environmental-friendly companies and governments and smoke-free public places, the Czech media really seem to be appealing to people to change attitudes. These trends seemed to be of more interest to the west, however, it seems that the Czech Republic (or so the media imply) wants to "hop on the bandwagon".
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