Here's a quote from the front page:
Philip Morris USA (PM USA) agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no safe cigarette.
Here's my translation of advertising bullshit to English:
Okay, it's no longer profitable to feign ignorance. We make a dangerous, addictive, deadly drug with very few benefits and horrible side effects. Hell, if cocaine was legal, no way we could compete with it. It's far safer, less addictive, and actually has some less than obscure medicinal uses. As long as the DEA holds our real competition at bay and our lawyers can keep us from actually losing money on a product that should have drawn criminal penalties for our executives decades ago, we'll be fine. In fact, this shit is so addictive, we can afford to put up a web site with links to every known method of quitting. Quit if you can. We dare you.
Plus, Big Tobacco thought they'd be banned from advertising on TV, the most powerful media in the modern world, permanently. Now they can buy prime advertising time with a pretense of responsibility. If they could, they would take Kellog's spot away and be the 'proud sponsor of PBS Kids.'
And their shit about trying to prevent kiddos from smoking, be serious. You have to be in the 10 to 14 year age bracket to pretend you enjoy cigarettes long enough to need cigarettes. If Big Tobacco could pull it off, they'd make it illegal for adults to buy them and legal for children. That way you get the kids good-and-solidly hooked while they extort higher allowances from their parents in exchange for bringing home a carton for Mom and Dad.
1 comment:
the Winston Cup is now the Nextel Cup
Tobacco or “telecommunications”…I’m not sure what is worse.
Now they're required to advertise how dangerous their products are,
Like ‘we’ haven’t known this for bloody decades? Are people so irresponsible that this is truly necessary. [rhetorical]
Will Krispey Kreme have to advertise that, “you know, donuts are bad for you” and McDonalds (et al) that their coffee is, you know, served hot…
Never mind that the service is provided better by others.
Yeah, every morning I get to hear the old chap who (supposedly) maintains the apartments around my way. He constantly has a cig perched on his lips and every 6 minutes or so gives of an alarming, really violent cough that alerts most life forms in a 20 metre radius.
As if the completely foul smell and taste weren’t deterrent enough.
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