Once again, we here at this website have managed to dig deep into our bag of problems and come up with a good one to rant about. This week it's smoking. Possibly less exciting than campaign finance reform, but better by far than Playboy bunnies with straight razors and lemon juice.

A new study released by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center indicates that non-smoking campaigns do not have the intended effect. I find that hard to believe. After all, the television that I watch seems to consist of shows where cool people (or really evil ones, which in my mind comes to the same thing) smoke.

The ads are all anti-smoking, or at least it feels that way. In terms of coolness (or evilness) the shows win. There are two series on right now that I've seen. One is shot in gray and white and features a person with a permanent disfigurement - one woman has a tracheotomy, another has a puffy face and lumpy neck - talking about how old they were when they started smoking and yadda yadda yadda to the point that we see them now. The other one has a group of apparently cool college age kids (I'm guessing; they're probably 45.) doing parodies of the more familiar cigarette ads. There's one where they're gonna ride horses, so they load the horses up with these huge black sacks, all containing something that could be humanoid, labeled BODYBAG. There's another where they attach parachutes to the bodybags and throw them out of a plane, and another where they're using the bags and a bulldozer to build a memorial to smokers.

All in all, they're only moderately effective in my opinion. If you're me, once you've seen the ones in gray, you change the channel as soon as they come on, and you watch the others because you can't wait to see what those wacky hipsters are gonna do next. In other words, either the horror or the humor takes over, and the message is lost. Then you go back to the show with the cool people smoking like fucking chimneys.

Now, before I'm accused of being insensitive - which would HARDLY be true - let me say that I have friends and relatives who smoke or have smoked. I know people who have died or are dying from smoking. I know people who clearly have serious health complications, yet continue to smoke. My point is not that I don't see the agony that smoking can cause. My point is that people have no personal responsibility anymore, a concept compared earlier to emaciated crack whores, which is the truth.

Where do people get off ignoring the evidence of what smoking does? So the industry says that smoking poses no real danger - so what? Do you think that I believe that if I merely hold Coke, I'll get kissed? No. Industries lie. They rely on your gullibility to sell a product, not necessarily one that you want or need or is good for you, but one that you have purchased because on some level you believe the ads. So now we know that companies make money off of your purchase of their product, a purchase which is voluntary. Why, therefore, do we allow people to sue the tobacco companies? We don't allow people who die from using crack to sue their dealers for better quality control, do we? And don't try to say it's because crack is illegal and tobacco is legal - that's a load of horseshit. In a country where a woman sued God (Arizona, 1984. Her house was destroyed by a tornado, which was classified as an act of god and therefore not insured, so she sued God), people can sue anyone they want.

My point is to ask why. We are causing the tobacco companies to pay ridiculously huge sums of money to people who believed advertising and started smoking. My opinion is that it's their own damn' fault. They believed the ads.

Let's face it, in terms of advertising, Big Tobacco's got it all. They've managed to successfully market an addictive product that will KILL you. Handgun manufacturers probably wish they were as successful. I can't think of anything with the ad presence of Big Tobacco. Nothing.

And the whole point, for me at least, is that I don't assume that advertising is real. I didn't assume that when I was thirteen, and I don't now. So what's with suing them? So quitting is hard - so's death. I have no sympathy for these people who sue the tobacco companies for lying about the health risks of their products. I haven't heard of anyone before ever blaming a manufacturer for selling a product successfully. Generally, there's got to be some kind of culpability involved. Some family gets into their car, gets 20 miles down the road, and the car blows up. They bought the car in good faith, assuming that it wouldn't do that. Most cars don't, ergo, a reasonable assumption that the car will not blow up. Someone buys a pack of cigarettes, starts smoking, develops a pack-a-day habit, makes few if any efforts to quit because the things are addictive, then dies of lung cancer. Okay, if you were in the first generation of people to die from smoking, I'd buy culpability. However, A LOT of people have died over the years. It is a reasonable assumption that smoking kills - no matter what the manufacturer says. There are health warnings all over the pack, and the health risks have been noted since at least the 18th century. It is not like the car - the smoker has every reason to assume that the "car" they're in will go boom.

Basically, my belief is that if you chose to smoke cigarettes, that's fine. You've made a choice - one that comes with risks, just like getting in an airplane or a car or picking up hitchhikers - and to me, that means that you've made a decision to accept the risks. That does not mean that you have the right to get pissed just because a manufacturer lied to you, you believed their lie, which was designed to sell a product, NOT get that product removed from the shelves, and you developed a serious illness as a result of using their product.

I'll sympathize with you, I'll grieve for you, but by God if you assume that your illness is not, in large part your OWN fault, then I will be merciless. I will have no sympathy for you. I reserve that for people who actually use the brains they've got and take responsibility for their own actions. Get the hell out if you can't be responsible. With a gun preferably.

Still not playing well with others,

Channon