Smoking in the Boy's Room

[Phreak]

R&Js and Cohibas are fairly easy to get in my area and good pipe tobacco can be had on rare occasions. So while everyone my age is smoking their cigarettes and some of those are *shudders* natives, I generally enjoy a nice cigar or pipe when funds allow, usually with a glass of blended scotch
(I'm on a tight budget)

[sailaway21]

An anti-smoking ad from DDB-New Zealand. There is apparently no limit to which it is inappropriate not to go in eradicating the gentle art of smoking.

9-11cigs2.jpg (image)

In case you were at all in doubt as to it's meaning, read the caption at the bottom. The blog I found it on queried why they didn't have little bits of ash floating off to the side to represent those who flung themselves from the WTC buildings. They got paid to produce this ad by "ASH", Action on Smoking and Health.

[Giulietta]

That is a little bad taste indeed.

But you also need to understand the world doesn't revolve around the US, and altough to you it may seem shocking, and to me too as I visit the US a lot and as you know saw that sadness with my eyes, to many countries it taken as not so offensive and it's just an analogy.

[camaraderie]

Just another "analogy" ...anti-smoking Nazis!

[sailaway21]

Giu,
That's not a "little bad taste". That's the equivalent of advertizing a BB-Q grill next to a photo of the ovens at Treblinka or Auschwitz!

[PBzeer]

One simple question. If it's as destructive as they try to exhibit, why is it legal?

[SimonV]

money and taxes

[Rockter]

Guys...

Breathe that stuff into your own lungs all day if you want, but keep it away from me.

The idea that this stuff causes lung tumours when you breathe it in, and doesn't when I have to breathe in your dregs (or leave), is the stuff of which Global Warming is made.

The drug is fiercely addictive, and it kills. Normally it kills more of the poorly educated than others, but when I hear educated men talking that it harms only them, I puke into the haze.

Puke, puke, puke.

[sailingdog]

Of course, the study that showed Nicotine was more addictive than cocaine or heroin is usually ignored as well... the mice drinking the nicotine laced water would starve to death...the mice drinking the heroin and cocaine laced water would at least eat... but that probably explains why people gain weight when they quit smoking.

Also, smokers generally ignore the fact that nicotine is often used as a commercial pesticide. I don't know about you...but if it kills stuff like aphids and cutworms...I certainly don't want to be inhaling it.

[TwentySeven]

Originally Posted by Giulietta

But you also need to understand the world doesn't revolve around the US, and altough to you it may seem shocking, and to me too as I visit the US a lot and as you know saw that sadness with my eyes, to many countries it taken as not so offensive and it's just an analogy.

Giu is right here. We shouldn't be surprised about how differently others perceive what causes us pain. Unfortunately it's human nature (although we should still try to do something about it). In fact, plenty of Americans who grieved the 3,000 innocent people who died in the WTC didn't seem to pay much attention to the 300,000 that died in Iraq (quite some crooks, sure, but most of them just normal people trying to live their lives, and entire families too, like everyone else).

The tobacco issue itself is also a good sample of how we have different scales depending on how something affects us. We Americans and Europeans are so concerned about health and make an anathema of smoking in our preppy countries in order to prevent our cute children from falling into the habit, but yet we don't even complain about our tobacco corporations making their profit marketing cigarettes as the coolest cowboy or "samsonite executive" thing among children in third-world countries. Has anyone of you followed up if a fund you invested in made its profit from a tabacco corporation, either directly or inderectly? I admit I haven't. So I may have benefited out of those poor children coughing up their health and their minuscule spare money to engross the dividends of Reynolds, Morris & Co, Dunhill, Altadis, etc.

In line with the ASH add, I hesitate whether to post a link to this outrageous video, unsuitable for sensitive people. Please, don't click if you are (not to mention if you were affected by 9-11 more directly than all of us human beings that were "just" shocked by the news). Link here.