It has become a cultural norm to shun smokers and treat them as pariahs. It was made possible, not by the fact that smokers die younger, but because smokers impacted on those around them.
A fear of second-hand smoke allowed us to treat smokers as second-class citizens.
But obesity, which is now overwhelming this country in terms of presence and impact on our health service, does not receive the same contempt and fear, possibly because of too many links to political correctness and the freedom to live your life your own way.
Basically, if a person gets obese, it's not something I breathe in. I'm not affected by it in a person-to-person sense. It does not affect my mobility, my quality of life. But figures tell me that two-thirds of adults around me are either overweight or obese. A million people in New Zealand are obese. That is going to impact on me as a New Zealand citizen at some point.
Diabetes, obesity and poor health affect productivity, taxes, health care and birth rates. Obese people are a severely negative impact on New Zealand society. If they allow their children to follow the same pattern, could that be called child abuse?
