The following item was published recently in Scotland’s Daily Record. “Twelve addicts between the ages 16 and 60 claim their lives have been destroyed by the demon drink and that they were not warned of the risks. The group will claim alcohol caused health problems, loss of jobs, relationship breakdown, and adversely affected the quality of life. They believe drinks manufacturers should have warned them of the dangers.”
It would seem that a trend has been set by successful legal claims against major tobacco companies in the United States for damage to the health of smokers. Billions have been awarded to suffering addicts. There’s little doubt the dozen litigant drunkards in Scotland didn’t dream up their legal response all on their own. They must have heard about the enormous loads of cash dished out to cancerous and heart-diseased tobacco victims in the US and decided that their own afflictions and social failings also offered tempting pay-offs. Why spend hours every day dutifully drinking as much as you can get down on available cash and credit and then having to suffer terrible penalties like walking into telephone poles, being unable to stop beating up your wife and kids, being so disgusting, smelly and unreliable you get fired from your job, becoming feared and loathed as a loudmouthed, vomiting slob and then, on top of it all, suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, all your own?
Like the tobacco barons, the breweries and distilleries knew perfectly well all this and more was, in many cases, an inevitable consequence of the use of their products. All the Scottish dozen are demanding is that the liquor merchants share some of their stupendous profits with the loyal customers who continue to keep them in such a lucrative business. Such logic is as easily visible through the bottom of a bottle as through a dense cloud of blue Stuyvesant smoke.
The breweries and distilleries will, of course, argue that they have done more than their bit when it comes to warning people about the dangers of drink. At least once a month adverts appear on television advising citizens to be “responsible” users of alcohol. What is meant by this admonition isn’t too clear; but it does sound just a little like counselling someone to be “responsible” when going for a swim in a tank full of starving sharks. Anyway, being responsible takes all the daring and thrill out of agreeable pursuits like getting smashed and driving your car through a wall. Responsibility and shark-tank swimming also don’t go together.
Having once been an heroic puffer, I’ll say one thing for smokers: despite their ashtray breath and their lethal personal atmospheres, they don’t come anywhere near drinkers when it comes to ostentatious offensiveness. You won’t find tobacco smokers asleep in gutters or thinking it’s great fun to stand on a table and urinate over one’s friends. For reasons like that, smokers deserve some recompensation from Philip Morris and his colleagues.
There is a hidden danger in this threat of legal action against the drinks manufacturers. What’s going to be the next target on the legal firing range? Cigarette packets now carry health warnings. No such warnings appear on bottles of beer or wine — until Manto has her way, that is. But surely there are many other day-to-day products that require some sort of disclaiming notice from their manufacturers.
What about having all motor vehicles adorned with large warning notices stating: Irresponsible driving of this vehicle can lead to death or mutilation? Alongside this warning could be gory pictures of car crash victims, like SABC television and e.tv enjoy showing. The side panels of the cars and lorries would be required by law to carry at least two of these a vehicle.
In the case of South African minibus taxis, warning notices should be prominently displayed above the entrance doors. Riding in this taxi is likely to reduce your life expectancy by at least a third.
And what possibilities there are for cautionary notices when we enter the hideously perilous domestic environment. Enamelled into the side of the bathtub in large letters: Warning: Known to facilitate drowning when carelessly used. All electrical appliances should bear one of those little red electrical flashes and the words: This appliance can kill you. This latter warning would have been extremely helpful in avoiding tragedy in the case of the Australian household where a deeply juiced-up stevedore attacked and killed his wife with her own electric cheese grater.
A lot of today’s appliances do carry muted safety messages. If you look hard enough, you’ll find them. I have an American-made lawnmower, the instruction booklet of which seethes with warnings and disclaimers. But I don’t see or hear any such precautionary advice on products like South Africa’s news and information leader, SAfm: Listening to our broadcasts can bore you to death.
As a valued friend of mine observed on this subject: “This laundry list is without end. Within 10 years, those of us who remain standing after the political mismanagement will have been proscribed into oblivion.”