I’m a smoker. It’s not something that I’m necessarily proud of. It’s bad. Any 5-year-old could tell you that. Ask a 5-year-old about smoking cigarettes and chances are that they’ll look at you as if you had just said a dirty word. Poophead.
I wonder how a 5-year-old feels about wine coolers?
ABC News, in a noble attempt to get more people to quit smoking and keep potential addicts from ever starting, has implemented a new health series called “Quit to Live.” Every night on the evening news they’ll do a little story about the dangers of smoking.
Last night, the danger they reported on was the tobacco industry itself.
See, Big Tobacco is targeting our children. Yes, again. This time they’re doing it in new and more clever ways. Tobacco marketing campaigns are the stuff of legend. It seems that no mere mortal is impervious to their genius strategies. Why are they seen in this light? Well, because so many people have died from cigarette smoking that it would seem completely unbelievable that new smokers would ever pick up the habit. And yet they do pick up the habit. People continue to smoke. It has to be because of Big Tobacco’s revolutionary and devious marketing strategies, right?
I mean people can’t be that stupid could they?
Why can’t we just call smokers stupid? I know I am. Smokers are stupid. Smoking is stupid.
Calling the Tobacco companies “evil geniuses” is stupid.
As I said, ABC news was critical of the tobacco industry last night for marketing cigarettes to our children. Even in this post Joe Camel world. How are they doing it you ask? What unbelievably evil scheme has the tobacco industry implemented to push nicotine to the kiddies? It’s a plan so fiendishly clever that it has gripped the attention of the world.
They’ve lowered prices, they’re offering freebies and they’re making flavored cigarettes.
What will those evil geniuses think of next?!
And so specific to children! I know, as an adult, that I have no use really for free, inexpensive or good-tasting things. That’s why we have Starbucks. Adults like to drink $5 latés that taste like drywall.
Damn you Big Tobacco! Lets just keep the cigarettes tasting like the inside of a chimney. And god forbid you should try to keep the price down. The next time I see a “buy two packs, get a third pack free” promotion at the 7-11, I’m going to throw my Slurpie right in the cashier’s Hindu face!
But seriously. I don’t want to defend the tobacco companies. But let’s be fair here. Adults do enjoy flavored cigarettes. Ever been to a pipe shop? That place is like a smoker’s candy store. And they’re not new. Flavored cigarettes aren’t new. Sure, kids will enjoy a good “Mandarin Mint” smoke every once in a while. After all, nothing compliments a luke-warm beer served in a plastic keg cup like a flavored cigarette. But let’s not relegate all “flavored things” to the kids. I enjoy good things too much. (Like cartoons. Another thing that has been completely handed over to the tykes. If it’s animated…it must be for kids, what with the vibrant colors and all)
And since when did the children get the monopoly on all inexpensive things? The experts on ABC News claimed that since “kids smoke more when the cigarettes are less expensive,” the “lower prices” of cigarettes promotes smoking specifically to kids.
Excuse me?
Really, though, this has all gotten out of hand. Until it’s made illegal, tobacco companies have the right to promote their product (not to kids of course). I don’t care if you like it or not (I hate Miracle Whip but they still sent me a coupon for it). Let’s not be hypocrites here. If you want to go after Big Tobacco, fine. Go for it. Tell the world about the evils of smoking. You wouldn’t be lying. But let’s not stretch the truth about it just to create a sensationalized hatred for the tobacco companies. There are so many things to hate the tobacco companies for, we don’t need to create reasons.
And what about liquor? Why have I not seen a single news story about Schnapps? So many wonderful flavors. So easy to get drunk off of. Wine coolers? They’re essentially melted snow-cones for slutty chicks, right? Flavored vodkas and gins? Cocktails? And even if kids are too lazy to make a decent cosmopolitan, they can get them now, pre made, in cans. Tasty.
The last time I checked, no high school kid ever smoked one too many vanilla flavored cigarettes and ended up getting pregnant or falling off a roof or crashing their car into a mini-van full of pre-schoolers.
Isn’t smoking bad enough on its own? Do we really need the hellfire and brimstone?
Fun Fact: Wall-Mart has a new commercial touting their dedication to community and the veterans. On it they have a WWII veteran talking about how much he likes Wal-Mart. And he should like it, after all he works there. He’s really old. He can barely walk. But he works a Wal-Mart. I’ll bet that nobody else would hire him.
How nice that after driving prices so low with foreign goods that employers can’t afford to pay retirement benefits to their long-term employees and still compete in the marketplace, Wal-Mart had the heart to give this 80-year-old man a job so that he can work until he drops dead.
Yeah Wal-Mart!
I need a cigarette (I'll take a menthol, it's not really a flavor, it's been grandfathered out of the flavor category).
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