Smokers








Pouring Gas-Holes




Blowing the Reaper




  • DrugSlavery Bait&Switch: Most Popular Genuine Horror Story of All Time:
    Potential addicts of tobacco (& other drugs, none of which has gripped the world like tobacco) need to consult Robert Louis Stephenson's Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde.

    New smokers love the magic-carpet-lure cig-thrill (a switch-on-anytime lift) — since YOU control the DRUG. The DRUG is a slave to YOU.

    For awhile….

    The inevitable turnabout is just what makes Stevenson's tale the classic horror story.

  • With tobacco under siege, what are the most common cigarette ads now?
    They're called: movies.

  • The following is based upon DIO 4.3 [1994] ‡13 §A [p.112].
    Squeezing Out Suicides:
    If legislatures wish to stop Jack Kevorkian (“Dr.Death”) by outlawing assisted-suicides, then those laws should also apply to tobacco companies. Otherwise, we have a situation where: it's illegal to help pain-racked elders to die, but legal to help happy & healthy youngsters to die.
    [In the days before assisted-suicide became an issue, it is said that crusaders had tried to wipe out unassisted suicide by making it a capital offense…]
    Another way of interpreting Kevorkian's persecutors: it's illegal to end agony, but legal to cause it. Just the kind of logical consistency one expects of a nation whose laws are written by “legislator”-puppets, whose actions are responsive to those whose cash pulls the strings.
    Why has a decent and selfless martyr such as Kevorkian been pilloried so often in the press — where lobbies can slant “news” so easily? Partial explanation: about 20% of all medical billings occur in the last 6 months of life. So Kevorkian is seen by medbiz as confronting them with a stark choice, i.e., do doctors want to: [a] keep Hippocritically extending “life” when it turns into 1-way misery, or [b] take a 20% pay-cut and thereby endanger doctors' well-being, where yacht-deprivation is a critical risk-factor?

  • Smoking generally starts with “cool” pretense. So honest, unpretentious kids tend not to.

  • Some cinema stars who promote smoking in films don't seem to age as rapidly as dedicated smokers inevitably do. The reasons are several: [a] Some fake smoking (e.g., Cary Grant). [b] Some get facelifts. [c] Some avoid closeups. [d] A hitherto-undiscussed possibility, cokeheads need fixes during filming and smoke ONLY then, as maintenance-substitute before getting back to coke as soon as out of sight of public. Thus, not much regular damage to lungs. May explain why some stars seek maximal privacy.

  • Collective Shamnesia?:
    Based upon DIO 2.1 [1992] ‡1 §L2 [pp.11-12]:
    The reader may suppose that [our pseuduction on smoking] is overstrong; however, it should not be amnesia-forgotten that Hollywood films have been used for most of the last 100y to glamorize smoking. Did this occur by chance?

  • For the tobacco cartel to claim that smoking is a free choice is on a level of hypocrisy rather like talking a child into letting you cut off his leg when he's 10y old — and then selling him a new crutch twice every waking hour for the rest of his life. Just free will.

  • Question for Tobacco Institute:
    if it's OK for adults to smoke, why is it bad for kids to smoke?
    [Whatever the Institute's answer, it won't include the A-word: addiction.]

    When it began to be widely rumored c.1950 that smoking was medically suspect, one could count upon certain softhearted film producers to help out the poor misunderstood tobacco lobby. (Only the hardest cynic could suppose that a film's kindness to weed-interests was performed in return for generous under-the-table fiscal support.) But subtlety has not always been this lobby's strong suit, as we see from a particularly precious cinema scene, which I have extracted from our Doubletakes Dep't, in order to display it, unabridged, in a special niche here.

    In the highly-promoted 1951 scifi film When Worlds Collide (mixing Velikovskian & Noah's-Ark Biblical themes), we encounter the following immortal exchange (between 2 of the main personae, each later vying for roundfirm scientist Barbara Rush's affections), in the office of an astronomical observatory, 10 min into the film:

    Dr.Drake: You smoke? [Offers Mr.Randall an American cigarette.] %zaftig

    Mr.Randall: Thanks, I'll try one. [Just in from S.Africa, Randall pulls out a cig of his own & offers it to the Doctor.] Have a South African one. You — ah — part of this deal, Doctor, this stargazing?

    Dr.Drake: No. No, I confine my gazing to eye, ear, nose [lights Randall's cig], and throat. I'm an M.D. [Immediately lights own cig.]


    [The book on which the film is based was co-authored by Edw.Balmer and (the famous) Philip Wylie: When Worlds Collide 1933 & After Worlds Collide 1934; rebound & published together in 1950, the same year Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision appeared. (A neat instance of mutually-boosting publicity.) The film's special effects are occasionally quite effective (esp. for the time), though nothing in it is as otherworldly as the gooie sanctity at the start and end — laughably out of place today.]

  • It has been common knowledge for years that tobacco-money is everywhere. Under-the-table tobacco money keeps cinema teen-idols puffing away even while the very same cig-lobby elaborately fakes deep-concern for teen-addiction. Legislation that would virtually stub-out-extinguish youth-smoking would be easy with today's technology, but the tobacco lobby has so far kept such ideas submerged. (Anyone who thinks his smoking is only his business is blind: part of every dollar [the typical smoker spends on his addiction] goes towards thought-control propaganda to hook new waves of kids to replace the adults tobacco kills-off.)
    For decades tobacco-money promoted whore-scientists' output, to blow smoke into public discussion's face. Dave Barry deftly jokes about these scientists' leashes, but the reality wasn't funny — indeed, was doubly cruel in requiring
    [a] threats of dissenters' families [see 1/2 hour into the 1999 film The Insider, a story of TWO courageously-defied leashes: tobacco's & CBS'] in order to protect the deceitful luring of citizens into
    [b] smoking a product that has eaten-away the most biologically vulnerable inner-organs of more hideously-pain-wracked murder victims than any, ever. Nazi doctors weren't even in the same league. I.e., tobacco's history proves that greed is not stopped by ANY degree or number of fellow humans' agony, especially when the long-prostituted “Free Press” downplays or diverts from the epochal enormity of the perps' criminality. (And unrepentancy: under temporary [wait 'til after the last death from the pre-warning-label era] legal troubles in the US, tobacco has just gone over-seas and is killing way more foreigners than even Cheney-Bush-Condi's oil-cartel military adventures.)

    Wherever has flown the media call
    For the anti-tobacco Wiesenthal?

  • The Stinky Aggravation of Perpetually Just Getting Back Where You Started:
    Seasoned smokers: Enjoy that alive feeling you get when taking each cig's 1st puff? For non-smokers, the feeling is normal, steady, un-agitated, & doesn't require renewal lung-injections every 1/2 hour. For the rest of your agitated, depressive LIFE. (Well, OK, there's good news: it'll be shorter than ours.)

  • A 2003/9/22 ad for Salem cigarettes (running in the pages of Time's letters dep't) bears the usual:

    SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking
    Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease
    Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy

    Then, as if to run a black-comedy skit on the foregoing, the ad's entire text reads:

    stir the senses

  • H.Stern (who would NEVER take lucre for dropping a subliminal plug) likes to compliment a female guest as possessor of a “smokin' bod”. He might help curb the tobacco plague if he'd instead say “non-smokin' bod”.

  • Ever Noticed “COOL” Anagrams to “LOCO”?
    TV sitcoms are far more smoke-free than Hollywood films, which depend upon “producers” who are notoriously cash-magnet wild-catters — thus particularly vulnerable to the lure of private tobacco-money, which is obviously the cause of the glam-ization of weed-need — by getting young film-star-rôle-models to smoke with not-even-almost laughable-frequency in film after film. All so it'll seem “cool” to be so enslaved that you have a Cool drug-delivery-device regularly hanging out of your mouth. Hmmm. What's the next Hollywood-drugpush-fashism: get the same young wrinkle-free stars to start glamourizing the Coolness of publicly displaying heroine-needles hanging out of one's veins? WHAT'S THE DIFF? (Other than: smoking is a quicker-to-the-brain hit — the quickest, in fact. Short of a brain-surgery dope-line.)
    Simply thus confronting the repulsive peculiarity of such behavior is a wakeup-shock, revealing how far-out a generations-long propaganda-campaign can twist young minds. (As if religious “education”, fashion, and TV hadn't already demonstrated the point many times over. The world over.)

  • However, before too-hastily lauding the toob for its lower smoking-rate (which may largely just reflect avoidance of stirring non-teens' majority turn-off disgust at smoking), we ask: why, during TV 'snews' and other TV-entertainment shows' video coverage of smoking celebs, no talking head's comments (on the puffing stars) ever refer to “cancer-sticks” or somesuch sharp warning of the danger of what these Judas-Goats' are advertising? — much less the suspicion that they are being paid for the service. (One needn't make such cracks most of the time, but: why never? — after all, nasty comments on celebs' trivia, e.g., clothes, are frequent.) Given the unScrooge-McDuck-cubism and touchingly generous ubiquity of tobacco money, the answer isn't really a whollotta-hard to discern.

  • If actors seem mysteriously driven to smoke tobacco in Hollywood films, why are the cable channels' soft-core films virtually smoke-free?
    Mainstream films have obviously been getting tobacco funding under-the-table for decades, to glamorize the unsurpassably suavo-dextrous ritual (top current amoral PPiper-juggler: Vince Vaughan) of lighting-up and sucking-filth
    . But erotic films cost so little to produce, compared to the money they make, that they are less dependent on selling out to the tobacco-industries' drug pushers. We should be grateful for what we can learn from this fortuitous controlled-experiment.]

  • An EnLightening Ratio:
    Since lighting a cig takes but a small fraction of a smoke, it's noticeably remarkable how high a proportion of Respectable films' screen-time is taken-up by this quick but (for the subsidizers) profitably-audience-triggering act. Keep your own stats on the ratio.

  • Some insensitive souls have been known to compare ciggie-sellers to the Nazi swine who ran death-camps. That's unfair. Consider:
    Did Nazi guards make billions from their victims?
    Did the Nazis torture their victims for decades on end?
    And the Nazis only murdered a few tens of millions in WW2.
    Tobacco's toll is already ahead of that … and still rolling&tolling.

  • The cons and pro of smoking:

     CON:                                                                                         PRO:

     cough                                                                                         mild buzz*
     brain enslaved by brainless weed
     bother of injecting every 1/2 hr for rest of life
     tastebuds dulled→heavy food-seasoning→stomach-woes
     expense (cigs now, hospital later)
     eternal stinky ashtray filth
     kisses tasting like it
     dictating air-quality (thus disease) for nearby spouse & friends
     early widowhood for mate
     semi-orphanhood for children
     early-disappearance disappointment for numerous friends
         (other than those who hated the omni-present cancerous stench)
     vascular rigidity & breakdown
     mini-strokes' brain-atrophy
     big strokes [different strokes for different folks…]
     high statistical correlation with other forms of suicide
     wrinkles
     emphesyma
     lung cancer
     who-knows what other cancer-correlations
     fiscal support for child-procurers' cig-propaganda,
         wooing new young drag-addicts to replace their cig-murdered elders.

    Tough call, huh?


  • When one thinks of
    [a] the many minor rules of etiquette hammered into children, and
    [b] various questionably-effective campaigns to lower smoking-rates,
    why not aim right at the key event which starts most kids down the smoking path:
    henceforth teach assertively that one of the worst offenses a child can commit is

    to offer another child a cigarette

    With the kind of intensity now reserved for dress-infractions and other trivia, start branding this act of social drug-peddling as HORRID & INTOLERABLE — worthy of the most severe punishment, shunning, exile from decent society.

  • Missing the Plague's Aggressive Linchpin:
    A key point in this connexion: inhaling tobacco-smoke for the 1st time is an unpleasantly harsh experience — so it is common for the “friend” who initiates a child into smoking to press or even taunt the initiate to make-it-happen. I.e., there's nothing casual about picking up the smoking “habit”. It is remarkable that the biggest factor in spreading the plague (child→child contagion) has received virtually no attention in the numerous so-far-merely-semi-effective anti-smoking campaigns. (Who's ultimately funding them?)

  • [A publishing-world black-joke chuckles that the US' top-selling books are (1) cook-books & (2) diet-books.]
    The same tragic contradiction is matched by most female smokers: spending hours on eyes, cheeks, eyebrows, nose, earrings, under-arms, finger-nails, abdomen, legs, toenails, etc — all to be FAKE-beautiful — and then sucking a coughin'nail to get REAL-ugly.
    However: this is not a contradiction. Smoking is sold as “fashion” — just like all those hour-eating fashist-Beauty-standards are sold. So it figures that the same robots would fall for both cons.

  • Austria's insane rate of smoking is typically defended in the same null-judgemental fashion that anal sex is justified in the era of AIDS:
    “Oh, it's their way of life.” No, in both cases: it's their way-of-death.

  • During DR's first trip to Venice, he encountered two youngsters (2005/7/31) who excused their smoking by declaring: “O, we're young.”
    (Obvious reply: “Smoking'll soon fix that.” [Smoking is the most commonly chosen method of getting old-looking fast. Former ABC News anchor Peter Jennings is said to have relapsed into smoking for greater gravitas in voice & face. It worked. R.I.P.])
    Evidently, improvident kids imagine that being young protects them from smoking's health damages; so, a more educational comment might have been: so shoot yourself in the head — it can't hurt if you're young.

  • Since ACLU has taken tobacco funding, one wonders what its actual priorities are when it opposes serious, random, tight-screen drug-testing in schools.
    Given the surety with which a child's nicotine-use can be detected via urine, we are at the dawn of an era when we could technically (if not politically) establish procedures to end child-smoking — catching all kids who are sneaking cigs (often behind their own parents' backs) and so apprehend child-smokers very early-on in their addiction. Note: in this arena, tobacco-hucksters can't use their usual refrain that it's-a-legal-product, since smoking is not legal for minors. Which is why it's so important to the tobacco industry to “encourage” pious civil-righteousness about kids' privacy, etc.

  • You could go about hanging on your front&back large signs reading: “I'm an improvident, instant-gratification heedless-hedonist who will throw away years of robust health & life, to enjoy a mild but in-fashion high, regardless of physical & emotional damage to self, friends, & widow.”
    But, then, it's easier to just smoke.

  • The smoker sees millions of fellow-humans being addicted and killed by tobacco — but, when he starts smoking, he dreams that HE is the exception.
    [The initial puffs start the soon-to-be-enslaved sucker down a slope that gets ever-steeper with each coughin'-nail. The starting few cigs create an invisible biological craving for more. A shame it's not visible, since taking up smoking is like slowly sawing off your leg and then wondering why you need a crutch — for the rest of your life.]
    Is the initiate aware that ALL the addicts he pities started out with the very same just-a-few-cigs and I'm-the-exception arrogance? — and started down the very same road: only a few cigs/day, so: I-can-give-it-up-anytime. Until he can't.

  • As large corporations cut back on medical insurance for workers, will their opposition to tobacco lessen? Has the cut-back trend been envisioned or encouraged by tobacco money?

  • If You Must Shoot Mass-Murderers, Please Kill the Other Ones:
    Does tobacco fund the rich's GOP (even while living off the poor) not only because the GOP's anti-abortion fanaticism produces more poor people — but also to help protect tobacco execs from entirely-deserved vengeance? It's striking that the US is THE most foetus-obsessed nation on Earth. The GOP-led conservatives' condemnation of abortion has all too often (and all too logically, if one buys the foetus-huggers' abortion-is-murder, viewpoint) led to the terrorizing or even shooting of abortion doctors. Whether by design or no, this has had the ultimate effect of distracting lethal-idealists' attention from tobacco producers as potential crosshair-quarry.


















    *And-or: relief of jangled nerves — jangledness which is ensured by, of course, the waning of the previous cig's nicotine injection….