Prevention education is important, but I wonder if the meat counter will be restricted to 18 and over to purchase and come with a warning from the surgeon general.
I'm being unusually sarcastic, but I've had this conversation several times in my own head and I can't figure out a solution.
Leaded gasoline was poising the nation, but no one stopped driving. Only when the government forced the corporations to change did the lead poising stop.
You can't make someone change, you can't force an individual to change but if you never allow it to enter their world then it has been prevented right?
Bring back shaming. Encourage fat shaming. Encourage alcohol shaming. We still encourage smoke-shaming, and it has resulted in a reduction in smoking. We need to stop being so afraid and sensitive to shame. It is a natural human tendency to police behaviors with negative externalities via shame.
Pass all the laws you want, but social shame is far more effective.
And we still go skiing, and we still take nonessential car trips. Things have benefits as well as costs.
Many cancers are in fact overfunded relative to their societal impact. Moreover too much money is spent on chasing cures rather than prevention:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3411479/ http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/02/07/where_do_the_mil...