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Philip Morris

the New Pariahs. Drinking Drivers, Smokers and Swingers Targeted in Sudden Turnaround of Attitudes

Date: 10 Aug 1987
Length: 5 pages
2022875353-2022875357
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Author
Sipchen, R.
Type
COMP, COMPUTER PRINTOUT
NEWS, NEWS ARTICLE
Area
PARRISH,STEVE/OFFICE
Litigation
Okag/Privilege Withdrawn
Okag/Produced
Characteristic
EXTR, EXTRA
Site
N326
Named Organization
Ash, Action on Smoking & Health
Business Week
Ca State Inst for Men
Gingerman Restaurant
Glamour Magazine
Harvard Univ
House
Los Angeles Times
Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Natl Commission Against Drunk Drivers
Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity
San Francisco General Hospital
Smoking Policy Inst
Uc Berkeley
Uc San Diego
Ucla
Univ of Mn
Usc, Univ. Of Southern Ca
Abbott Lab
American Cancer Society
American Heart Assn
American Lung Assn
Author (Organization)
Lexis Nexis
Los Angeles Times
Mead Data Central
Times Mirror
Named Person
Banzhaf, J.F. III
Gusfield, J.
Hitchcock, J.
Jewell, D.
Lasswell, T.
Moore, A.
Mosher, J.
Reiss, I.
Rosner, R.
Smelser, N.
Stewart, N.
Surgeon General
Wallack, L.
Master ID
2022875166/5504
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Services of' 14Aead Data C.entralj Inc: LEVEL 1 - 36 OF 55 STORIES Copyright (1c) 1987 The Times Mi!rror Company; Los Angeles Times August 10, 1987, Monday, Home Edition SECTION: uiew; Part 5; Page 1; Column 1; View Desk LENGTH: 2108 words PAGE 121 HEADLINE: THE NEW'PARIAHS; DRINKING DRIVERS, SMOKERS AND SWINGERS TARGETED IN SUDDEN TURNAROUND OF ATTITUDES BYLINE: By BOB SIPCHEN BODY: If he chose to be so crass, his bedpost would be ragged with notches. Among a certal'n circle of women he's known as "Marathon Mani." Lots of them love him. And that's the problem. As one of his recent love interests pointed out: "Any woman in her right mind would be afraid'of this guy. . . It's bad enough that I slept with him six years ago. I wouldn't do it again if he were the last person on earth." In the last few months,, she added, "every single woman I know has been running through her list." And the skillful seducers at the top of the charts are getting scratched off quicker than you can say: "Acquired Immune Defi'cien cy Syndrome." Hot on the heels of the Me decade, the 19805 held promise as an age of giddy abandon. But "Saturday Night Fever" has new connotations now. And the studs and femmes fatales aren't the only folks whose habits -- once tolerated,, even glamorized -- are now increasingly scorned. Almost overnight, it seems, smoke rs, drinking drivers and sexual adventurers have become social pariahs. Change Quite Sudden Attitudes have changed far faster than most sociologists ever figured possible ---in the views of those who see themselves as sudden outcasts, "behavior fascists" have abruptly imposed "life-style apartheid." But how? After all, the modern war on cigarettes has been escalating since the surg eon general"s 1964 report on smoking and cancer. America has had its crusaders against the evils of demon rum since the Colonies were established, and preachers have railed against casual sex for at least a couple thousand years. Attitudes appear to have shifted most abruptly when crusaders stopped focusing on protecting people from themselves -- and took up the theme that they were also hurting others. Anti-smoking forces, for instance, scnred many of their most decisive victories in the last few years, when the issue changed from smoking per se, to concern about secondhand smoke and health costs; the campaign a ainst alcohol abuse has been on a roll since Mothers Against Drunk Driving 's ~irst passiona te warning that drunks are killing us and our kids, and so-called promiscuity has ~~~19 0 F ~~I .~ m L E r ~~ 0 3jErt,
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Services of Nlead Data Central, Inc. PAGE 122' (c) 1987 Los-Angeles Times, August 10, 1987 declined most substantially only since AIDS transformed philanderers into potential assassins. "There's no questionithat some smokers are feeling like social pariahs," said John F. Banzhaf III, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Anti-Smoking Push Banzhaf is in a good position to assess the shift in public attitudes toward smokers. Twenty years ago, he was instrumental in securing equal time for the first anti-smoking messages on television. Such public education has brought about gradual changes in attitudes i'n the last two decades, he believes. But he thinks change has accelerated as non-smokers have become more disgruntled. "The attitude the public has toward the behavior is often mo re important than health factors," he said. "Why do people go on diets? Not to live longer, but because fat is out, thin is in." In his 1981 book "The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking, Driving and the Symbolic Order," Joseph Gusfield, professor of sociology at UC San Diego, concluded that society's concern with drunk driving was largely symbolic and that the public remained unwilling;to view drunk drivers as criminals. Recently, howeve r, Gusfield has modified his opinion. In part because of the "enormously greater amount of attention" paid to drunk driving in the last several years, Gusfield now•suspects that social mores may have changed more rapidly than he had previously thought possible. In terms of sexual mores, the "earthshaking phenomena" of AIDS (and herpes before that) has abruptly cut off the casual encounter, said Neil Smelser, professor of sociology at UC Berkeley. Giving the cold shoulder to potential ff partners who might be at risk is "just rational behavior on the part of people who are frightened," he said. Smokers "People in this country are trying to be holier than thou," said designer Neil Stewart, 36, as he sipped red wine and stared across the smoke-filled ba r at tthe Gingerman Restaurant in Beverly Hills. "It reminds me of the school . ground. There's always a''Fatty,' and he°s doomed. "American culture wants to categori'ze everyone: 'We don't smoke so you 0 - shouldn't.' . . There are more people in America trying to make money off . (changing) people's bad habits than anywhere in the world," Stewart added. N N ~ Robert Rosner is one of those people. "1984 was a qood year for me because I ~ got called Biq Brother a lot," said Rosner, who is executive director of the ~ Smokinq Policv Institute a Seattle nonprofttorqanization that helps W v1 businesses implemen po c es res r c nq smo na in t he workolace. "I'd get asked, 'It's 1984. What's next? Coffee? Additives? Suqar?" ~ Rosner said he doesn't personally care whether people smoke. But, he added, "_The issue is that people should not smoke if they share an airspace. . . It's the difference between trying to run someone's life and concern about your own."
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Services of Mead Data Central, Ina PAGE 123 (c) 1987 Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1987 There's little doubt that Americans have become concerned. Last year, two out of three Americans beli.eved that smoking indoors was harmful to non-smokers and nine of 10 favored no-smoking sections in public places, according to a poll conducted for the American Cancer Society and the American Heart and Lung associations. And last month, the House voted to ban smoking on all airline flights of two hours or less. Ten states and 260 communities now have laws restricting smoking in public places, and 30% of the nation's corporations limit employees' smoking on the job, according to Business Week. As for why employers seem increasingly to view smokers as pariahs, Banzhaf of ASH.pointed out that it's a matter of economics. He cited estimates that the health costs to a company can be as much as $5,000 per smoking employee. Snowball Effect Naturally there's a snowball effect to all this. As fewer people smoke, psychologists say, It becomes less socially acceptable to do so and easier to implement anti-smoking regulations -- and that compels others to abandon the habit. (X "When one interviews smokers who want to quit, what we see now is people ~ saying things like: 'I'm aware that people look down on smokers,' " said Jan Hitchcock a psychologist with Harvard University's Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and Policy. " .They're worried about what other people think. They feel besieged and beleaguered." II' Advertising and image are also~ tied up in determining which habits are happening and which are declasse. Thirty-two percent of the adult population r smokes (as compared with 42% 20 years ago) but that figure is now much more heavily weighted toward the blue-collar worker and the poor, Business Week reports. And that may be increasing the spiral of aversion. "People in higher socioeconomic classes are not smoking as much, so people who aspire to higher classes are not smoking as rouch," Hitchcock sai6. Drinking Drivers N Thirty-five-year-old Dennis Jewell knows as much as anyone about changing r0 attitudes toward certain types of alcohol-related behavior. "I don't think it N ever sunk home that (drunk driving) is a serious crime,"'Jewell said in an ~ intervfew last spring at California State institution for Men in Chino, where he awaited transfer to another prison to serve out a sentence of 77 years-to-life ~ for killing five in a family in a collision -- the stiffest drunk ~ driving-related sentence in California history. Gr1. Cultural mores on intoxication in general began changing with the health and (~ nutrition movements of the '70s, specialists say. "Increasingly in the business world and in social situations, becoming intoxi'cated, becoming the clown, is less accepted than it used to be," said Jim Mosher, associate director of' alcohol policy for the Trauma Foundation at San Francisco General Hospital. Shifting attitudes are also reflectedin recent policies at sports stadiums cutting off beer sales or reserving areas for non-drinkers, Moshe r said. II
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Services of Mead Data Central, ina PAGE' 124 (c) 1987 Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1987 But the battle against drunk driving, launched by Mothers Against Drunk Driving:i'n 1980, iIs the most heated'front in a war being waged by a loosely knit coalition of groups concerned with the broader issues of alcoholism and public health. 478 New Laws At least 478 laws related to highway safety and alcohol were passed by state legislatures between 1981 and 1985, according to the National Commission against Drunk Drivers. As of last year, 43 states had adopted laws making 21 the legal drinking age, while 42 states have minimum imprisonment provisions for second-offender drunk drivers and 17 have such provisions for first offenders, MADD reports. But attitudes an6behavior are distinctly different, and sociologists point out that statistics on drinking in general show only a gradual decline and that those on drunk driving are open to interpretation. "Cultural change is tusually) slow, but we're seeing some interesting thin gs currently," said Thomas Lasswell, a professor of sociology at USC. By some Indications, attitude changes have been greatest among younger people. On college campuses, the term "designated driver" has achieved a prominent place in party vernacular; flyers for parties often carry the acron ym 'EAABs"(Equally Attractive Alternative Beverages), and many fraternities and sororities now sponsor "dry rushes." From such well-orchestrated peer pressure is the new pariah born. Earlier this year, a UCLA student at the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity admitted in an interview that he had driven after drinking, "because P spent all my money on drinks and didn't have enough for a taxi." "You're a dirt bag~," ameavesdropping frat brother said. "If someone's drinking these days, they have some fear about what's going to happen," said Lawrence Wallack, assistant professor of health education at UC Berkeley, who has been doing alcohol-related research for 14 years. But Walla ck argG#s that whatever drift there is toward ostracizing drunk drivers is being counteracted by such things as televi'sion commercials that bombard young viewers , with shots of race cars roaring about as beer jingles blare, or of men O professing their lust for "fast cars, fast women and good beer -- not necessarily in that order." ~ The Promiscuous (~ ~ It's the premier sexual cliche of the mid-'80s: "You're not just sleeping (~ with her (or him) you're sleeping with everyone she (or he) has slept with in G~ the last seven years." ~ AIDS now surpasses cancer as the most feared disease in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City metropolitan areas, according to a Los Angeles Times poll last month -- andnearly one in five of those polled said they've made major changes in their lives accordingly. L EZ. 19 " 1EXIS I~ LEXIS kEXIS *
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Services of Mead Data Central, Ina. PAGE 125 (c) 1987 Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1987 Eighty percent of college women and 65% of college men report they have become more selective choosing sexual partners, according to~a poll reported ini the current issue of Glamour magazine. Fear of sexually transmitted diseases has led 75% of singles to avoid casual sexual encounters such as one-night stands, and 36% said they are abstaining from sex with new partners altogether, according to another poll, released in July by Abbott Laboratories. In an age when "lots of lovers" translates into "multiple exposures,"'some experts contend that the attitude change reflects an existing drift toward conservatism in general -- that America is once again embracing premarital chastity and marital monogamy. Others doubt that the apparent trend signifies a return to a Victorian morality. For one thing, lust has always tempted folks to lie. Equilibrium Sought . Also, "after any period of license In any culture,.there's always a swi% back (until) a culture reaches a state of equilibrium," said UCLA social anthropologist Alexander Moore. "The time of sexual license occured for good technological reasons -- we had convenient contraceptives and the control of venereal disease. I'm not at all sure that the movement for sexual license has spent Itself. . . . There are still a lot of people in this country rebelling against sexual puritanism." "The person who will become the pariah is the person who"s careless. Not the one who has frequent partner changes . .," said ira Reiss, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and author of a number off books on sex including "Journey Into Sexuality" in 1986. "It's likely we're going to become more pragmatic. That's quite different from saying we'll have a dramatic change in behavior back to the conservatism of the "50s. It's much easier to get people to pursue pleasure than to deny Pt."' GRAPHIC: Photo, Signs of changing times: Public criticism is focusing on habits that once were acceptable to much of society. Los Angeles Times SUBJECT: SMOKING; DRUNK DRIVING; SEX; VENEREAL DISEASES; ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME; CULTURE; LIFESTYLES om 0 LEXiS *i~^Ez1s~~e~~~~,^er~~~ ~

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