>>>For example. It's a proven fact (scientifically proven) that cigarettes are bad for health. But money generated by that industry is so big that they won't stop making them.
>>
>>Weapons are worse - you can live several decades smoking without getting sick, but acute lead poisoning kills you on the spot. And the money generated by that industry is so big that they won't stop making them.
>>
>>There's a long history of points which would prove you right, despite your picking the wrong example.
>
>I don't think that I picked a wrong example. There could be other things more important
>than that but my example is a valid one for a non-smoker. I'm a non-smoker surrounded by non-smokers. So to me this is not mass-distraction.

It's just that there's big dollars in both pro- and anti-smoking camps. Just as the old data showing that smoking is not that harmful shouldn't have been trusted, simply because the research was funded by manufacturers, nowadays I don't trust the data produced by their oponents. They also stand to gain a lot by proving they're right (government shows it cares, lawyers earn thousands of bucks an hour in class action lawsuits), and I've seen several cases where their method of proof was just plain wrong or at least unscientific.

So let the jury sit on this one - the wrong thing with this example is that it can so easily lead the course of discourse into waters where you didn't intend it to go, and that's a distraction too.

>> Why is smoking a wrong example? Because it's a weapon of mass distraction, so everybody has an illusion that the governments are doing something about public health. Anti-smoking campaign consumes just about enough on-air time, so nobody notices the other things being done (aspartame, other pollution, forests, rape of Alaska... list goes on), because it's time for sports now, after these messages.
>
>Perhaps Forests could be weapon of mass distraction for others. The main thing is that we should act before it's too late. That is the toughest question to answer. When is it going to be too late? I guess we'll know when we're there.
>
>What seems to be the logic of many is that they don't believe that it will become too late one day. So they continue abusing the system. We could think that at least when it becomes too late there won't be no hope even for those that profited all this time. So these suckers will also be confronted to what is going to happen. That could be a conforting thought for those that were good citizens all their life. But the problem is that if/when that happens then the abusers will probsbly think "At least we profited of everything before we got into this mess". So for abusers it's a win-win situation. They don't care and they'll never care.

It's more diverse. Too late for what? For each extint species, one by one.

How about a law that whoever is dumping should live within 100 meters from the dump? That would make them think twice.