WARNING: I'm about to take a stand that will be almost uniformly unpopular in today's rabid, irrational stance on this particular subject. You may be shocked and appalled, probably subjugating all sense of reason to the popular herd mentality of the day. If you do react thusly, rest assured that you qualify as "normal". Please try to resist the impulse to riot and loot, though, until I have a chance to join you. I need a DVD player. That said, allow me to commit my latest act of intellectual violence against the hive mind of humanity.
I am truly annoyed at the legal, economic, and public thrashing cigarette makers are suffering at the hands of greedy money-grubbers, soulless lawyers, and those idealistic little radicals who won't be happy until they've turned the U.S. into a police state upholding their own little agenda. Now I'm no friend of cigarettes. In my life I've smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes, usually when I'm too drunk to feel the pain in my lungs. Actually, I've just faked the last few, opting to puff instead of inhale. I want my lungs to be pink when they fry me. Even if there were no well-documented health risks, it's still a dirty, expensive, stupid habit.
That said, there are a lot of dirty, expensive, stupid things people do, with health risks even more dire than that of smoking. Why are cigarettes so singled out? I just don't get it. There seems to have been a cabal of individuals hell bent on destroying the entire industry for as long as I can remember. First they brought up the health risks, which was legitimate. In response, they slapped on explicit warning labels and banned TV advertising. Then they tried to push the passive smoker thing, and all smokers got pushed outside or in specially designated areas with the lepers. Now they're trying to drive them out of business, claiming that cigarette manufacturers have the responsibility to pay the health bills. How ridiculous is that?
Sure, cigarette companies lied about cigarettes being dangerous and addictive, but since when is lying a capital offence? Sure, the guys in charge are a bunch of scumbags constantly scheming of new ways to sell more cigarettes. Hell, I can think of at least 535 scumbags in that quaint little town of Washington D.C. who make a LIVING out of lying and scheming. If you're stupid enough to ignore all of the warnings and amply backed-up research, maybe you SHOULD smoke and do us all the favor by taking yourself out of the genepool. By the way, gasoline makes you high if you drink it.
What really frightens me about the cigarette thing is how ruthlessly the makers have been pursued by various groups. Sure cigarettes increase your odds of particular maladies, but let's be real. Those are the years at the END of your life, so they'll probably suck anyway. Between osteoperosis, prostate problems, gray hair, failing senses, annoying grandkids, no sex, and non-cigarette-related illnesses (yes, there ARE some), what do you have to live for?
Then there are all those OTHER vices that they are quite irrationally ignoring. When you smoke cigarettes, you are hurting ONE person: yourself (passive smoking has no scientific basis). What about drinking, hmmmm? How many people are killed by drunk drivers? What about people who get all drunk and then beat up their spouses or kids or go and kill somebody? How many people have rotted livers? How many chicks go and drink while pregnant and give birth to alcohol syndrome babies (also known as born criminals)? What about crack, cocaine, heroine and happy stuff like that? If those anti-cigarette lobbyists could get off the bong long enough to string two thoughts together, they'd realize that if they devoted all of the money and energy they've sunk into destroying cigarette manufacturers into anti-drug campaigns, the Columbian cartels would switch to cotton candy making.
This whole anti-smoking thing is just passing the buck, avoiding responsibility for choosing to ruin your health. Those people who started smoking before they had warnings SORT of have a case, although they could always have quit. My grandfather did, so it IS possible. Those idiots who have taken up smoking since then have NO case and NO right to bitch. Hell, the smoking rate among people my age is rather appalling in spite of, and probably BECAUSE of, all of the anti-smoking mania in the world.
Smoking is plain stupid, but no more so than driving too fast, smoking pot, not exercising, eating junk food, drinking, sexual promiscuity, listening to loud music all the time, playing tackle football, or sun bathing! Egad! Are they going to make all of THOSE things illegal next? Ok, the first two are already illegal, but people still do them, including those anti-smokers, I bet! Now I'm certainly NOT advocating that they make everything else illegal, too. If those budding totalitarianists tried THAT, I'm taking my genius to another country. Those antismoking people give away their commie tendencies by constantly using the phrase "Big Tobacco", as if small tobacco was somehow virtuous and pure.
So, in conclusion, the singling out of tobacco, forcing them to pay outrageous restitution and put money into anti-smoking ads is just plain imbecilic. Assuming we take this to its ultimate conclusion, the outlawing of cigarettes, do the morons actually think cigarettes will magically disappear? Uh, NO. It didn't work for alcohol, it didn't work for cocaine, and it won't work for tobacco. It'll just get the glamour of being illegal. Hell, that's why teens smoke today: because they're not supposed to. If you want to blacken your lungs Cajun-style, knock yourself out. I won't stop you. I might make fun of you and I'll certainly disapprove, but it's your right to kill yourself if you want to. Don't expect ME to pay for your damn cancer, though.
I wonder if all of this could have been avoided if cigarette makers had just said, "Yeah, it can kill you. So what?" People probably would have just shrugged and lit another cigarette.
