smoking and tobacco rage

Imagine someone tried to sell you "wrinkle cream" - not "anti-wrinkle cream" - but "wrinkle cream". For five smackers a shot, no less. "Slap this stuff on your face every day, day and night", burbles the salesman, "and you will look forty by the time you are thirty! How can you resist such a tempting offer?"

Now swap "wrinkle cream" for "Cigarettes", for cigarettes seem to have a similar effect: all the 30+ smokers I know look like sh*t for their age.

This is where the anti-smoking lobby has got it wrong about the human psyche. They cry, "smoking will kill ya!". Indeed it will, but it is not an immediate death, breathing down one's neck, so to speak. Not unless you set yourself ablaze, anyway.

Incidentally, death by fire happens a lot to smokers and the people unfortunate enough to live with them. Cigarettes cause a high proportion of fatal house fires. The tobacco industry has anti-fire technology, whereby an unpuffed cigarette will stop burning, but they are reluctant to use it. Customers' deaths, of course, are usually less important to corporations, than profits, but I digress.

If you tell a smoker that their habit is destroying their heart, cardiovascular system, lungs and/or causing cancer etc., they will shrug, nervously smoke another tab, and hope for the best. But if you were to inform them that smoking is guaranteed to make them look like their granny a few years down the line, then they may be more likely to quit. People are short-term creatures, they are only vaguely scared of an agonizing, long-term death, but many are vain, and the idea of premature aging is terrifying.

So ciggie packets should have warnings like "These tabs will shrivel your skin until you look like a rancid prune!" or "go on, smoke, and before you know it, you'll resemble an old slapper!"

It is a scary thought that smokers buy "anti-aging" cream to try to counteract the effects of smoking. Unfortunately for them, not a single "anti-aging" cream actually works: they are fraudulent products. Apply the cheapest moisturizer and the effect is the same. You can go forwards in time, but not backwards. Moving forwards in time is easy, the surefire way to old age is to suck in the aging gas that is cigarette smoke.

Aging is not the only disaster to inflict the vain smoker: if you are thinking of taking up smoking, bear in mind it may make you fat. Smokers do less exercise, a phenomenon that is not good for your waistline. A confounding factor is that some women report that quitting smoking makes them pile on weight. Indeed I was chatting to a model with the tobacco habit. She explained that she desired to quit but dare not because she would put on a stone. Within a few months of that conversation she quit - quit modeling that is. I'm not surprised, she was thirty but already had bags under her eyes, and signs of jowls. It amazes me that models smoke: to destroy your countenance that is your livelihood seems unsound, like a painter urinating all over his masterpieces.

Writing this, an unholy trinity springs to mind. People smoke, people buy rip-off anti-aging creams. People quit smoking and expose themselves to the third felon in our nightmare tale: the dieting industry. Quit smoking - get fat - go on a diet - diet fails - get stressed - put on weight, start smoking...

If you think smoking will make you look cool, ask yourself, is it cool to pay through the schnozzle for something that will kill you, poison your offspring, and will make you old, fat and penniless into the bargain? Also you will be spurned by boyfriends/girlfriends that will only tolerate non-smokers, because they can't stand the smoke and the associated ugly smells. The anti-smoking lobby should raise all these points.

At the exhibition of dead, preserved bodies I attended recently, Body Worlds, some of the corpses had horribly blackened lungs. These, of course, were smokers. The exhibition mentions a few casual facts: smokers are twenty times more likely to get lung cancer. Often, lung cancer is first noticed when the cancer has compressed the rest of the lung, so that less air can be inhaled. Subsequent chemo treatments, and lingering death just add to the pleasure. Smoke-filled rooms are bad for you, because the air is toxic. If you smoke twenty a day, then every year you are filling your lungs with a coffee cup of tar.

Recently, extremely controversial "research" in a supposedly respected British medical journal claimed that secondary smoking - breathing in the smoke of smokers - is not harmful. This counter-intuitive revelation was produced by an organization sponsored by tobacco corporations. What a surprise! There was a huge outcry about this deception. The wife of Roy Castle - whose husband is believed to have been killed by secondary smoking - pointed out that cot deaths are more common where the parents are smokers. Don't you just love corporations? Their nicotine stained fingers are hardly less innocent of those of Death himself.

Every penny that you give to the tobacco industry by buying ciggies will fatten their profits, your money will go towards their efforts to encourage kids to smoke. Every pack of cigs you buy will indirectly harm and kill others even those that are not breathing your own smoke!

I have composed this this anti-smoking diatribe because a couple of people that are entangled in my life have serious problems brought on by smoking: their health continues to be savaged and raked by their habit. They'll die prematurely as a result. They are no longer young, but they were when they started the habit. I hate to see the tobacco corporations targeting teenagers with advertising: they are targeting their next victims, all in the name of profits. We live in a sick society run by corrupt politicians in the pay of corporations (via "lobbyists"), but that is hardly news. But if this page deters even a single potential smoker, then I'm thrilled.

One last thing: alcohol is yet worse than smoking - that stuff leads to emotional and physical abuse, and wrecks not only health, but the lives of entire families.

Incidentally, I have never been a smoker, but have had some lousy experiences with alcohol: alcohol rage.

Now, who wants to buy some wrinkle cream?


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From:	Rajiv Ruwala	Subject:	Alcohol Vs Cigarettes	2003-07-19 06:23:54
From:	Chocolate	Subject:	Chocolate	2004-10-06 01:51:33
From:	Lauren	Subject:	Thank you	2004-12-01 05:54:21
From:	mike	Subject:	Alcohol vs cigaretts	2004-12-17 17:25:18
From:	Fiona	Subject:	Selfish Smokers	2005-02-28 04:37:54
From:	lucy	Subject:	smoking	2005-04-01 15:18:19
From:	edwin	Subject:	thanks	2005-04-08 03:33:38
From:	evan	Subject:	alcohol and cigarettes	2005-05-05 02:52:41
From:	Justin	Subject:	hey	2005-05-24 19:30:02
From:	CiD	Subject:	Agreed!	2005-07-26 01:55:15
From:	Lizzie	Subject:	Wow...	2005-07-27 23:49:54
From:	Sam Bairstow	Subject:	People will do what they want to.	2005-07-30 18:51:47
From:	Selena	Subject:	thanks you	2005-08-25 04:51:13
From:	kassie	Subject:	dumb!	2005-09-26 18:31:06
From:	secrete	Subject:	like this article,want 2 publish at web	2005-10-18 20:34:57
From:	jon	Subject:	alcohol	2005-11-10 00:18:36
From:	katie	Subject:	don't commit suicide	2005-11-18 14:41:44
From:	mike	Subject:	alcohol	2006-05-25 02:59:22
From:	Rohan	Subject:	Thanks buddy	2006-09-07 13:22:31
From:	Jewel	Subject:	Smoking	2006-10-23 10:56:26
From:	keef_ak	Subject:	Good point	2006-12-19 04:27:24
From:	sara-jane	Subject:	comment	2007-03-01 11:21:46
From:	Heather	Subject:	Alcohol Vs Cigarettes	2007-11-18 17:42:25
From:	a.sidat	Subject:	smoking	2008-03-25 13:52:12

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On the talkback comments
	In reply to Rajiv, I agree that alcohol in moderation can provide a small health benefit, but surely that is outweighed by horrific injuries, ruined lives and lives lost due to drunken violence, (glassings are horribly common, ask any medic), alcohol abuse by family members, alcoholism and drunken driving. Alcohol is fairly evil: arguably it wrecks more lives than smoking, though I'm only guessing. It's like Satan's apples vs. Lucifer's oranges I suppose. I saw this spoof ad for Smirnoff, showing four children. Three of the kids were content, however the unhappy child behind the vodka bottle had his arm in a sling. Incidentally, there is experimental evidence that nicotine has a greater affect upon the brain when combined with alcohol. I've noticed this: the only time I might smoke a cigar is over a beer. And if I do smoke, it definitely makes my hangover worse for some reason. Lauren - gosh!!! :-)) Thanks for the talkbacks so far - Jim

Smoking irony: to my shame, I actually worked in a cigarette factory for a short while.