A couple of years ago my wife and I had the opportunity to visit Prague.
After a long day trying to trade our Levi's 501s for a car with absolutely
no success <Reference to a Levis advertisement> we decided to take in a
movie. Before the movie there was a cigarette comercial for L&M cigarettes
- a brand I associate with fat women dressed in dingy yellow cotton night
gowns and curlers sitting in their trailer homes watching black and white
TVs while flys buzz about the dirty dishes in their sinks. The ad showed a
handsome young czech flying into New York and hooking up with two
mini-skirted American models at a Disco. The models took him across a
really weird European version of America. At the tail end of the
commercial he ended up in a Biker bar in LA bumming L&M cigarettes from Bon
Jovi and telling jokes to his two model friends. He was sitting on a bar
stool while they were standing on either side holding his arm and leaning
on his shoulders. He had no trouble holding his beer and cigarette in
front of him.
As my wife and I watched the commercial we were practically rolling in the
aisles while the twenty or thirty Czechs in the audience probably thought
we'd imbibed in too much Pilsner. It certainly seems like a shame to kill
the geniuses who came up with that masterpiece.
If the government really wanted to prevent advertising induced smoking
you'd think they would show these wonderful ads of the tobacco companies
manipulating people in other cultures....especially with images of that
friendly VH1 America.
>This would be the beginning of a grass
>roots movement to discourage people from telling murderous lies because
>they are paid to do so. It would lead to a net saving of lives. If
>however this plan didnt work and it was simply another pointless murder
>of an innocent by some misguided soul, at least the excess population of
>the planet would be reduced by 1.
The key to this movement is WHO do you murder. The people who get me are
the OBJECTIVE News media who are SHOCKED that the tobacco companies have
supressed information that tobacco was addictive. IF ONLY WE HAD KNOWN.
Even worse the tobacco companies even added Nicotine to their cigarettes
so that they could deliver a higher dosage of Nicotine in Low Tar
cigarettes!!!! The only possible reason people would smoke a low tar
cigarette was because they wanted to quit ... by delivering EXTRA Nicotine
the government was stringing the junkies along ...
>Thinking about it, it might be more effective to murder the
>person who holds the most shares in tabbacco inc.
>I'll leave the finer subtleties of this decision to any self appointed
killers that might
>read this.
Shouldn't it depend on if the share holders use tabacco or not? The same
with the advertising people/tabacco executives etc. Rather than actually
killing these people perhaps you could kidnap their progeny - and then
treat them like chicken ala Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Once the progeny
had contracted AIDs you could send them back to their parents. A nice
little Crack addiction would be a bonus.
>Tony Hindle.
Note that I am a Nicotine addict. Nicotine is my second favorite drug -
Caffeine is my first with alcohol a distant third. I knew someone a long
time ago who tried cocaine but didn't think the bang for the buck ratio was
there. They thought that the other illegal drugs were too powerful ... but
thats proabably a matter of taste. We digress though ...
In America the tobacco companies must deny that they are marketing a drug
delivery system. Recently the tobacco companies have invented "smokeless
cigarettes" that consisted of a heated plug at the tip, glycerine soaked
tobacco in the middle, and a filter at the end. The smoker would light the
tip, starting some reaction that would produce heat for five minutes or so.
The smoker would then draw air through the tip causing nicotine to
evaporate and be delivered to the smoker without burning the tobacco. The
FDA said these weren't cigarettes ... they were nicotine delivery systems
and wouldn't let the tobacco companies market them. My point is that the
American government forces the tobacco companies to maintain the pretense
that smokers get something from cigarettes besides nicotine. Admittedly
the ritual of smoking is fun too ... in the same way that the ritual of
shooting up was portrayed as fun in Trainspotting. It would be pretty
pointless without the drug.
A friend of mine has pointed out that the tobacco companies really ought to
play political hardball. They should simply say "Oh Well ... we're not
making any more cigarettes until the U.S. Govt. gets off our case." You
would see MAJOR political change in less than a week. It would certainly
be a wonderfully calculated risk since its not clear to me how many smokers
would stay clean until the lines started up again. It would also be a
wonderful experiment to document the effect of a dedicated minority on
public opinion in a democracy. I believe the number of smoker's in America
is equivalent to the number of African Americans. This tactic would make
the Civil Rights movement of the early sixties look like a high school
student council campaign.
Nate