Your not looking for a debate but you asked a question.
I only said who does like them would be a better question because everybody was agreeing with you. As in:
“Who likes ice cream?! The question is who doesn’t like ice cream!”
Or whatever.
Yeah! You go get cancer and emphysema and die, you bad boys and girls, you! That will show those bastards!
:rolleyes:
“The TRUTH, folks! Here it is! The TRUTH! Big Automotive needs to be stopped. People die in cars! Big Air Travel needs to be stopped. People die in plane crashes!”
Yadda yadda yadda. Hey, where are the “Truth” ads for the alcohol purveyors? People die from liver disease! People not only die from drinking, but they get tanked up, hop in their cars, and kill other innocent people! Woo Hoo! Obviously, Miller, Seagrams, and everyone else are selling “Death In A Bottle”, but keeping it a secret! (Shhhhhh. Don’t tell the kids.)
“Duuuuuuuude, cigarettes are, like, bad fer yew, ya know? Hey man, goin’ to that kegger tonight?” :rolleyes:
I’m so sick of seeing these whiny sniveling morons in these stupid ads. Listen, kiddies, every single one of you in those commercials are teenagers or maybe in your early twenties. The last I checked, cigarette packs have had warning labels on them since you were all shitting in your diapers. You know, stuff like “These things may cause emphysema…these things may cause lung cancer”, etc. Are you all so surprised? What the fuck is “Big Tobacco” hiding, anyway?
I don’t smoke. Haven’t for about 15 years. However, I sure as hell smoked when I was in High School. Joe Camel did not make me smoke. The Marlboro Man did not make me smoke. Not a single billboard, ad, or poster made me start smoking.
My friends got me into smoking. My peers. Like most others my age, I thought it was “cool”. So I really don’t want to hear any of this bullshit about “Big Tobacco” in effect shoving cigarettes in my mouth.
The reason these commercials irritate me is that out of all the reasons not to start smoking, threat of death is the least convincing of all to teenagers. Not because teenagers “think they’re immortal”–that’s become a meaningless cliche–but because most, if not all, teenagers don’t think they will be smoking forever. They thnik they will smoke for 5 or 6 years and then quit. And the truth is, many will. They don’t think thiy are ever going to get that nasty black 20-years of smoking smoker’s lung because they arent gonna smoke that long. There isn’t much health risk from this, and kids know it. There is the signifigant risk that in 5 or 6 years you won’t be able to quit, and then in another 15 years you’ve got a black spot on your lung. So the smart thing to emphasize is a) the simple fact that true addiction can happen to anyone, even very strong people b) the long term pain of quiting and c) more immediate disadvantages: social taboos, lack of sex appeal, the expense, etc.
Ease up, Phil. No one said it was rational.
WTF?! The whole point was the commercials are so annoying they have the opposite effect of discouraging smoking. Nothing more. The commercials are counter-productive.
Sheesh, nice damn thing to say, Phil, especially to people who made clear they’ve quit or are quitting.
Cheap, nasty little shot there, Phil.
Veb
Really? Please provide two cites demonstrating that these commercials have caused an increase in smoking or a decrease in the rate of quitting. I doubt you’ll be able to, because it isn’t true. If anything, they may be of no impact, but do you really think you can back up a claim that they have an effect counter to that intended? Of course they don’t.
**
Oh, please. Grow up. I think you need to upgrade your sarcasm chip, unless you genuinely believe I genuinely want you to get cancer and/or emphysema.
I think anyone who would blame their desire to smoke on a fit of pique over a fucking television commercial is being delusional. You don’t want to smoke because you’re annoyed by your TV; you want to smoke because you’re addicted to tobacco. It’s that simple. If you’re fighting that addiction, bully for you, but I fail to see how starting again (or ceasing quitting) would inconvenience “The Truth” more than it would inconvenience you in the long run.
I like this point. And here’s a follow up question:
How is ‘thetruth’ going after ‘BIG TOBACCO’ any different than the dumbass drug war that really only focuses on cutting off supply?
If you leave demand in place SOMEone is going to fill it. The entire weight of the US with (God help us) Hoovers FBI couldn’t stop bootleg booze during prohibition, why should it work here?
The Truth commercials annoy me because they’re annoying, not because of their message. But you can’t bitch about them being propaghandists (is that a word?) because they don’t do any more misleading then the cigarette companies do. If you ask me (which you didn’t), smoking does three things that are lame: turns your teeth yellow, makes it harder to sell a car, and it’s expensive. That’s about it. Cancer, whatever, everything now has carcinogens in them. I do however think that the Truth commercials are good for getting little kids who aren’t smoking to not smoke. I remember when I was growing up, going through my ‘cowboy’ phase, I thought the Marlborough Man was the coolest dude on earth.
Anyways, my point is that smoking is already over-glorified by our entertainment-based society. So counter-advertising(s) are alright by me.
punk snot dead
The current anti-smoking advert in the UK features a guy in, I believe, his late 30s. He explainins how he has learned that he has lung cancer and can expect to die in the next few years. It is entirely genuine and extremely heartwrenching and difficult to watch.
Now that is an effective advert. Personal choice indeed.
pan
TVeblen, I apologize in my post above for telling you to “Grow up,” because it’s gratuitous and off-base. I do, however, think you missed my point, or the intentions behind my statement.
There are very few topics in life about which I am really passionate. The Beatles are one; smoking is another. I grew up in a family of smokers–both my parents started at young ages, and my sister started at 14. Both my maternal grandparents smoked, as did several other of her family members. I, against all the odds, have never so much as attempted to smoke one of the foul things. Not that that stops my family members from filling my lungs (as well as those of my asthmatic wife) with that crap every time we visit.
If I had my druthers, nobody would smoke. Not that I want it banned–I would rather that all people make the free choice not to use it. I have watched my great-grandmother waste away from smoking-related emphysema. I watched my great-uncle die from smoking-related lymphatic cancer. I am reasonably sure (and terrified) that, some time in the future, I’ll have to watch my mother succumb to some similar illness. She’s been going in for pulmonary tests over the last several months.
My mother and father started in an era where, not only was it commonplace, there were advertisements with doctors recommending certain brands for their health benefits! My mother smoked for 26 years, quit for 5, and started again; she’s still smoking, AFAIK. My father’s story is similar, except last June he quit again. I don’t want to see my parents die of cancer or emphysema that could have been avoided; I don’t want to see you or UncleBeer do so, either.
So when I see someone say something to the effect of, “After seeing those commercials, I want to go smoke out of spite!” it makes me angry. Angry because the only person you’d be spiting is yourself.
I think an even better question is: why are we talking as if teenagers only know what they see on TV, and are only influenced by what their friends are doing? Aren’t we just admitting we’ve lost the fight before it’s even begun?
As to the commercials, in my last quarter in college I met and got to know a 19-year-old anti-tobacco activist who was one of the people intimately involved in designing that campaign. This girl had made fighting the tobacco companies her life’s work. But her problem was almost entirely with the companies themselves and their marketing techniques, not with smokers. In fact, we both hung out with smokers and I never heard her say anything about their smoking. She saw her struggle as a fight against corporate manipulation.
No harm and no foul, Phil. Appreciate your clarification, and FWIW my posts weren’t miracles of clarity either. I was projecting my reaction to the commercials too broadly.
Just to be clearer, I don’t blame anyone but myself for my years of smoking. No body made me start, and nobody bought, lit up and inhaled for me. Not to say I don’t think the tobacco companies aren’t complete sleazebags but they aren’t responsible for my choosing to smoke. (My own stupidity did that quite nicely.)
My reaction to the commericals is mostly “idle contrarian”. Of course they wouldn’t actually make me pick up a cig and smoke it. This is no lovely reflection on my character, but I have much the same reaction to other annoying commericals. The Pasta Roni commericals (“whine with dinner?”) with bratty little snots making snide comments about the food, making faces, etc. doesn’t incline me to cook something the the little dears would enjoy. They more inspire me to smack the brats on the backside for rudeness and treating their moms like short order cooks.
Not the best analogy, but that was the general perspective I was coming from. But I readily admit my personal reaction isn’t indicative of anything. Maybe those commercials do reach some people.
As an aside to kabbes, haven’t seen the commercial you describe but it sounds wrenching. It reminded me of the commercials shown here with Yul Brynner shortly before he died of lung cancer; something like “please, whatever you do, don’t smoke. Just don’t smoke.”
Veb
There are so many lies, but the truth is far more fascinating. I don’t hate those ads. Being an old fogey it took a couple of viewings to figure out what they were about, but I think they’re cool.
I have been a quitting smoker for over twenty years. I am not a blank slate when it comes to cigarette smoking. I have bookmarks in my browser to various quitnet.org organizations, and some killer links that show pathologies, or ‘cut up dead smokers’. My mother died a slow death from congestive heart failure. As I enter my forties friends are starting their bypass histories: livers and hearts are giving out. F### it. I’ll stop smoking when I want to, and not because of any ad campaign. But if those ads keep one child from accepting a cigarette…
Those ads that show body bags being parachuted are jarring, and I like that in an ad. All advertisements are based on lies. A director of a lab where I once worked used to work for 3M. He told me those salesmen could sell you shit in a can and you would like it. Advertising and sales has always been about lying, it should be no surprise. So what if the lyers are actually saying something good?
Veb, I don’t know about wanting to smoke after seeing those commercials due to contrariness, but that’s probably because when I’m watching TV you can bet a cigarette is already dangling out of my mouth! 
Whoever wanted to know the name of those “crappy” cigarettes with the blue pack, they are “American Spirit” IIRC. I bought one pack. Ehhh, they weren’t as bad as Pall Malls IMO. Yuck!
Smoking is still pretty cheap if you roll your own smokes. I can get a can complete with 230 papers from Bugler for just over 10 bucks. That sucker lasts forever; hell, the tobacco usually gets dried out before I can finish the can (now I resort to freezing most of it and just carrying around a little pack of what I am gonna use).
But thetruth ads do suck big time. Those little snots…man, I just want to punch their smug little faces. I want a counter that says “Violent emotions induced by normal commercials: 0. Violent emotions induced by thetruth commercials: 1, 430, 435.” Their website is terrible, too. I was involved in some chat room or message board or some shit, but they are completely tyrannical about what they let get posted. I typed up well-thought out responses, critiques flaws in other posts, etc, but I never got one comment in after an hour of trying. The pro-smokers they let in all had half-ass arguments that Barney Fife could have beaten down, just to make smokers seem even more stupid.
WE ARE NOT STUPID. Well, as a rule, anyway.
pldennison “You don’t want to smoke because you’re annoyed by your TV; you want to smoke because you’re addicted to tobacco. It’s that simple.”
Eh? I would not say something like that. I am addicted to tobacco; that is not why I smoke. That happened because I happened to like smoking in the first place. WTF, I am not a slave to the tobacco companies if I’m doing something I want to do in the first place.
“I don’t want to see my parents die of cancer or emphysema that could have been avoided; I don’t want to see you or UncleBeer do so, either.”
I have likened life, metaphorically, to a trade-off between taking time to smell the roses and having roses to smell in the first place. Some view the balance more precarious than others.
I have known my friend’s grandmother who died from lung cancer even after two surgeries. My grandfather, who smoked even more, ended up dying from drinking in his late 70’s. At least, that’s what the doc said. To hear some people tell the tale, he should have died from clogged arteries from the fried food he ate every day, or lung cancer from the pack he smoked each day since the nineteen-thirties.
Fact is, you never know what’s gonna kill you, only that something, sometime, is. Don’t live in fear, man. There’s a whole world of pleasures out there.
To add my own point of view to this discussion, I do not feel that cigarettes are as addictive as they are made out to be (at least for some people.) I tried cigarettes, and at one point I would have one or two a day, not because I was convinced by Big Tobacco, but because of peer pressure. I resisted for quite some time, and I finally caved. I liked the buzz it gave me (after I got over the horrendous coughing fits I was wracked with after the first few attempts). When I smoked a pack’s worth a month later, I realized that I still was not addicted. I never craved a cigarette for any reason other than the buzz or to “look cool”. Then I tried to smoke one after running a good 400 yards, not a good idea. I quit. Done. Cold turkey. I never looked back.
Personally I think everyone should try a cigarette without anyone or any commercials biasing them. Nobody ever loves a cigarette the first time, it’s terrible. I believe that many teens start it just to “give authority the finger” so to speak.
i do enjoy cigarettes and don’t enjoy those Truth commercials, but it’s not just the didactic-cum-ridiculous approach… something i think has been overlooked on this thread is how freakin’ GROSS some of those commercials are. a 5 year old kid could be watching the simpsons or really ANY TV show and all of a sudden there’s a commercial where they strap a kid down to a metal gurney and come at his larynx with a Black and Decker! or any of the “guys with no jaws” type ads… how can they POSSIBLY get away with that on network TV? supposing i had a V-chip–would it block out anti-smoking propaganda commercials that rank up there with Seven, Trainspotting and Pi in terms of disturbing, not-for-kids imagery? whether or not i agree with the message, or even the obnoxious presentation of the message, i think it is inappropriate to put this stuff in places where kids can see it.
hey, does anybody remember that “smoking fetus” commercial that was shown like 5 times on CBS in the early '80s? i was a little kid back then and the sight of that fetus with a cigar in its hand, taking a puff scared the LIVING SHIT out of me. nowadays, i think people would hardly blink.