July 01, 2005

• Hah! I was already ugly and impotent before I started smoking! I win! Err....
• but is the risk of cancer no longer a sufficient (de)motivator? Definitely not, and almost any smoker I've ever met was well aware of their shorter lifespan because of it. Someone can't choose to motivate you to quit, you absolutely have to WANT to quit or it doesn't work, no matter how many pictures of black lungs people see.
• I don't think that the risk of cancer is much of a motivator for young people. It is too far off. They are sure that they are going to quit long before they will get cancer. I think that they should focus on the cost of smoking, the dirtiness of it (clothes, walls, furniture, hair, etc.), and what it does to one's appearance. Young men smoke to look cool. I have no idea how to get rid of that one. Young women have more reasons, but many smoke to keep their weight down. For those, I would hope that an ad campaign showing what it does to one's appearance might be enough to offset the hope for weight loss. But, honestly, I think that cigarettes should be illegal. While I don't think that we should stop trying to discourage young people from smoking, I don't know that societies efforts have had much of an effect.
• But, honestly, I think that cigarettes should be illegal. Seconded. Money is such an unstoppable force though, and the tobacco companies have so much of it.
• Cigarettes should be illegal? What are you, some kind of fucking nazi? This post is suckth. If people don't have the freedom to go about killing themselves slowly in a disgusting manner, they will simply turn to killing other people quickly and cleanly. Fuck that. I'm on the side of nature: let man smoke. Bum eyes.
• So...wait. Smoking is bad for you??
• Hmmm, according to the uglysmoking site, "fags make boys impotent." Not sure what that has to do with smoking...
• >but is the risk of cancer no longer a sufficient (de)motivator? My mom- one of flintiest skinflints the world will ever know- would never have quit over health concerns. But when the price went up to 60 cents a pack... THAT was too much for her.
• I feel unbelievably stupid admitting this, but yes, price would be the tipping point for me. If the state jacks up the tobacco tax one more time, I will undergo acupuncture, chew nicorette gum, cover myself in patches, whatever it takes. I have quit smoking before, but it's true that one really has to want to quit in order to be successful.
• In Canada, a pack of smokes is $8. That still hasn't stopped Mr. Koko ... although he is planning to quit again today, but I'm not holding my breath (so to speak). Cost, health, legality and appearance issues will never be sufficient deterrants for hardcore smokers, and most (if not all) new smokers figure they can quit after a while, so it'll never be a problem for them. However, the constant barrage of anti-smoking propaganda could have a cumulative affect on smokers wanting to quit, so I can't say it's totally useless.
• Yes... let's make smoking illegal. That will work. The dealers would love that one... real smart
• After clicking on "inhale" a few times, I started to see a visible change in the model's teeth, but I didn't really notice any difference with her hair.
• Higher prices = black market, and more of those cheap chinese knock-off Marlboros filled with sawdust and asbestos. No; I suppose the only way is to make it uncool to teens, who get addicted and no matter what reasons they might hear later on, they just can't get rid of the habit easily. How to do that, now that's a big question. Censor all movies and TV shows with a happily relaxed couple taking a drag after having sex? There is a campaign underway to de-glamourize cigarettes in India by blocking them in Indian movies, like those pesky pixels in japanese porn. Not being a smoker, I can't be sure, but that would make it more interesting and alluring to me, if I were a young person.
• Listen.. people.. prohibition doesn't work. People are stupid.. let them fuckin' sort it out themselves.. a'right?
• Criminalizing the purchase of cigarettes would be stupid. OTOH, I have no problem with so-called sin taxes, or anything that makes it less profitable for the tobacco companies themselves.
• I'll second third that. Aaah, the good 'ol days when I was a smoker. Had a lucid dream one night in which I found out I had lung cancer and was surrounded with fire and an eerie bright orange light... Woke up in a heavy sweat and out-of-breath. From that moment on, I was a non-smoker.
• I myself am a proponent of letting people do whatever the fuck they want with their own lives. Want to smoke? Go right ahead. Want to look like a pockmarked barnacle? Fine by me. Want to cut the crap and snort pure tar? Sure, have a cup! But want to puff your toxic waste in my face and stink up my clothes? Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!
• I am speaking of the US now, but the FDA here would fall over laughing if someone presented the equivelant of cigarettes to be sold in the US. The only reason it is illegal is because large corporations make billions of dollars off of it. Drugs that cure diseases are not legal to be sold if they might cause some other malady. Pretty sure cigarettes would get laughed out of committee. I just don't think that appeasing multi-billion dollar corporations should be the basis for making something legal. And chy is the first person to ever call me a nazi in a non-sexual setting.
• Eh, he said 'fucking nazi'... :>
• I stand erected.
• You realize if you ban cigarettes, we will NEVER get pot decriminalized, right?
• > Do you want to be ugly and/or impotent? well, i guess i should try everything once. or maybe twice if it's really fun, or really sordid. they can pry my cigarette from my cold, prematurely-wrinkled, nicotine-stained fingers. no, really. i go through phases of smoking and not smoking (maybe 6 months at a time). if i'm smoking, i won't try to smoke in your house, in your face, in close proximity to you. but some of the shite i've read here in the past (e.g. the person smoking at the next table ruined the meal for me) makes me wonder whether i'm buying the wrong cigarettes. i mean, my smokes don't fire a dispersed array of laser beams, damaging all those around me. what's the problem? am i choosing the wrong brand?
• I hate people who think the solution to their inconveniences is to make more laws. They should be banned from the US.
• i mean, my smokes don't fire a dispersed array of laser beams, damaging all those around me. what's the problem? am i choosing the wrong brand? As a non-smoker, I have to accept some brands seem 'better' or worse than others. Some days my sense of smell is overly-sensitive, and even the faintest tang of nicotine installs in my sinuses and yes, can disturb a meal, make me lose concetration or even initiate a headache. Others, even some cigars, I do actually find pleasing. But... of course, it's one thing to get a whiff of concentrated smoke that goes away, another to come back home from a cafe or bar or concert and realize your clothes stink right until next day. Those times after a concert or party where smoke was overflowing, I always leave my coat and shoes out in the terrace, remaining glothes direct to the basket. Not neurotic overreaction, but simple convenience; waking up to realize one re-breathed again and again the same stale fumes from clothes in the bedroom isn't appealing to me. So, yes, everybody is free to do as they please, but take in mind most non-smokers resent a smelly fog as a breach of territory.
• Part of the problem with advertising like this is it makes smoking look appealing to the types of people most likely to take up smoking; rebellious, doing badly in school and/or in trouble in school and not having much regard for the future are all relatively strong predictors of smoking initiation. These ads are preaching to the choir. I doubt they'll do squat when it comes to actually discouraging kids from starting smoking. Now that I've thought about it a bit more, they might be aimed at first year college students. There is a big increase in people starting smoking around the age of 18; see here for 2002 smoking data. So this might make sense from that point of view. As an aside, the SAMHSA site is a treasure trove of statistics. Topic index here. For something really interesting (it's the wave of the future folks) check out this.

  The numbers of new users of psychotherapeutics in 2002 were 2.5 million for pain relievers, 1.2 million for tranquilizers, 761,000 for stimulants, and 225,000 for sedatives.

  That's non-prescription use; drug abuse, basically. Compare it with

  There were an estimated 2.6 million new marijuana users in 2002.

• I smoked at least a pack a day, often twice that, for 25 years, and quit five years ago -- after seven years of coughing and asthma. Want to be unable to climb a single flight of stairs without stopping halfway up to cough and try to breathe? Go ahead! I wish I had a video of me having my first five cigs of the morning to show young people. It didn't FEEL all that glamorous. It was not uncommon to cough so hard I puked up my coffee; sometimes I even cracked a rib.
• Yah, yah. I he!ar your indigant bullshitty whinges. Do you have any idea what would happen if the taxes we paid went away? Why, I'm thinking a substantial part of your state budget woule dry up! Yes! Much of your funding for public services depends on sin taxes! Yo! You dumb (mostly) white santimonious people! It's an addiction, similar to the latest Urban Outfitter shit or the croc shoes craze. But it's not a faze. It has been nurtured, nay, encouraged, by the government and the corporations that profit by the proliferation of new victims. But they keep dying. Hence the problem.
• I didn't call bernockle a nazi, the comment was directed 'out there' into the ether.
• Also I was rather drunk at the time.
• Hi, Chyren. I'm still pissed, but for some reason I like you.
• You'll hate me later.
• we will NEVER get pot decriminalized Who is this "we" you speak of? Been decriminalised here since 1986 or so.
• FYI, Nicotine is odorless (and colorless too). I heard of a study of behavior modification in teenagers with regards to smoking and they found that the strongest modivation to not smoke was when they focused on telling kids that someone else (i.e. big tobacco) was trying to tell them what to do. I'll try to find more about it.
• FYI, Nicotine is odorless (and colorless too). A burning cigarette is neither colorless nor odorless. Whom are you informing, and for what purpose?
• But, honestly, I think that cigarettes should be illegal. And while we're at it, let's start regulating what and how much people eat, or ban motocycles.
• c13, do you believe that if I introduced a product that shares the exact same pros and cons that cigarettes have that it would have any chance of getting approval to be sold?
• Why does anyone think it`s any of their business what other people do? I want to smoke cigarettes, or for that matter, anything,(although I do regret smoking that Qualude back in the seventies) it ain`t nobodys business but my own. Some people smoke everyday and live to be 100, some people go to church everday and die at 20. Guess what?? That`s life. If people want to complain about something, look at all the chemicals and toxins you basically are forced to breathe everyday by corporations that poisoning the Earth. Stupid Humans,
• retank, as an adult you have every right to do whatever you want, (including smoking qualudes), but this is targeted at kids who are far more suseptable to peer pressure. Besides, if you want to smoke, then ignore ads like this and smoke. That's the nature of the free market.
• My solution for cigarette smoking: Make cigarettes ten feet long and a foot in diameter. That way it'd be very difficult to smoke.
• Mighty Mezz, but not too strong You'll be high, but not for long If youse a Viper

• My solution for cigarette smoking: Make cigarettes ten feet long and a foot in diameter. That way it'd be very difficult to smoke.

  plus i'd cut my smoke breaks at work down to one a day! genius!
• O----------------------* [] /| Look! here's a sketch!
• look at all the chemicals and toxins you basically are forced to breathe everyday by corporations Number 1 argument of (to be fair, not all) smokers in public areas when asked not to share their habit with unwilling persons in the vicinity. "The car passing by is expelling more cancerogenics than a 1000 of my cigarettes!" Sure, but the driver isn't stuffing his muffler in front of me, expelling fumes all over my plate, and then expecting me not to be annoyed, is he? Intolerance, I know, and I and my ilk should go back to the hills and live in an isolated cabin and choke on oxygen all day, but we have to live in society, what can we do... And, about kids: it's really them that have to be informed and guided on their choices and the cost for their actions, from everything from sexuality to smoking. Don't know if you woke up on your 18th birthday and, after balancing pros and cons, said "I think I will try smoking". Around here, kids are starting to smoke at 10, and it's not the delicious low-tar flavor they're after, but their peer acceptance. Getting on the 'cool' side of the track.
• ...many smoke to keep their weight down. A doctor friend of mine explained why smokers gain weight when they quit. Not because they eat more. Because suddenly their bodies no longer have to spend so many resources repairing the damage to their bodies done by tobacco smoke. Take it for what it's worth, but the guy is a cardiologist.
• For the life of me, I can't see why marijuana was banned in the first place. It's no more intoxicating or addictive than alcohol, and generally speaking, you can walk north, south, east, or west in just about any part of the U.S. and grow your own. Why have cohorts of state and federal employees galloping around trying to control something that can't be controlled?