thetruth.com - Go F*** yourselves!!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

First of all, I don’t smoke. Second of all, I don’t like cigarette smoke (who does?) Thirdly, everyone in my family (except me) at some point has smoked.

However, there is something fundamentally wrong with being overly concerned with the health of total strangers, as these thetruth.com people seem to be.

Not only do I NOT consider their motives noble and altruistic, I consider them selfish, egotistical, pretensious, and borderline psychotic.

My opinion regarding tobacco policy is this: We are done. In fact, we need to rollback a lot of the laws which have gone too far. We are wasting time & effort with a complete non-issue.

Smoking is not so evil that the right to choose to do it is less important than the risks of doing it.

So if any smokers out there ever encounter one of these thetruth.com idiots please, PLEASE, do us all a favor and put your cigarette out in there eye!

2

I don’t smoke. I don’t let people smoke around me, if I can help it. And no one will ever smoke in my apartment.

But hear, hear. The “Truth” ads are horrid.

3

Moderator’s Note: This looks more like a rant than a debate to me. (Rule of thumb#1: Debates don’t generally include the words “Go F*** yourselves!!!” in the title; rule of thumb #2: debates don’t usually conclude with an invitation to someone to perform an act of grievious bodily self-harm; rule of thumb #3: all the pretty colors–it’s Christmas in June!–aren’t really needed in a debate.)

Off to the Great Ashtray of the SDMB.

4

Point well taken…

5

I, too, feel that the people putting on those “Truth” ads are a bunch of big stupid-headed poo-poos.

“Cigarette smoke contains 3264 toxins!” Oooh! Over three thousand, and they’ve counted them all! Oooh, I’m quaking in my boots! Never mind the fact that 3262 of them are in quantities so small it would take you a thousand years of nonstop chain smoking to get enough of them to feel even slightly ill.

“Second hand smoke kills over 140 people each year in California alone!” How the fuck do they know it was second-hand smoke that killed those people. Oh, I’m sure second-hand smoke wasn’t any good for those people, and may have marginally contributed to their chances of getting a serious disease – but the same can be said for that cold or flu bug you picked up from a co-worker last week. And I’ll bet the flu contributes to a lot more than 140 deaths per year in California. The flu can get downright nasty. I say we require all employees to wear filtration masks at all times and bathe in disinfectant every 20 minutes to ensure that no one catches second-hand flu!

“Cigarette companies put ammonia in their cigarettes, claiming it’s for ‘taste.’ Here, drink some ammonia!” Oh, that’s a wonderful strategy. What if someone takes you up on it, and downs a whole glass full of the stuff? Ammonia in such large quantities is downright poisonous. Do you want a wrongful death lawsuit, thetruth.com? Well, do you?!

I gotta wonder who’s putting up the money for this “The Truth” advertising campaign. It’s nation wide – that takes LOTS of bucks. Who’s funding it? The insurance companies? The drug lords, so that you’ll switch from cigarettes to cocaine? Who? Who?!?

6

I’m on your side Hail Ants those fuckers should die. I do smoke, I’ve smoked for a long time and those ads don’t make me want to stop, they make me want to grab one of those sumbitches and stick a carton of smokes up each of their asses.

As a smoker, I’m considerate, I don’t smoke where I shouldn’t and I don’t flaunt the fact. Yea, 100,000 cigarettes might have enough arsenic to kill a rat…but I rarely carry that much on me in my briefcase(and I never try to feed it to a rat).

7

I know someone who worked for Truth. He and all the kids who stood around talking to passerby on the street about Truth were potheads…

Apparently they have a special box where they try and bum as many cigs from people as possible to “see how many cigarettes they can get out of kids hand”. This dude didn’t have to buy cigarettes ever since he could just steal them out of the box.

8

I used to smoke cigarettes a bit. I don’t anymore. Now I have a rare, occassional cigar, but I still consider myself a non smoker.

I’ve bitched about these turds in the past. Those ads would have been brilliant in 1958. Few people in the general public knew how bad cigs were for them.

But we all know now! It’s a vice some people chose to indulge in. We all know the risks. Now fuck off.:mad:

Some of those “Truth” fuckers look like bored, know it all college students. They need grow up, and learn idealism is a path straight to hell! Or else they just need to have a fork shoved in their eye. “Duh, we can’t mail these poisons to the tobacco company. I wonder how they get their cigarettes to the stores”. By TRUCK you worthless fuck! What? Did ya think they were mailing cigs to the stores?

What I’d like to know is, are some of the scenarios in those commercials real, or are they staged? Are they really sneaking into hotels and putting signs on the doors? Why haven’t they been arrested. Or shot?

9

I saw one where a girl abandons a “baby” carriage and runs off, with a “baby” crying. People gather close and peer inside, and they see a baby doll with a tape recorder of an infant crying inside. There’s a sign about how cigarettes/evil tobacco companies leave x number of children motherless. That one was soooo irritating. I’m sure they would have used a real baby if they had thought they could have gotten away with it.

10

thetruth is the spawn of the American Legacy Foundation; which was created as a way to legally squander all the cash the states won in their lawsuits against the tobacco industry. That’s LOTS of bucks.

11

I hate those ads. HATE HATE HATE!!! :frowning: I don’t smoke, but those arrogant bastards make me want to light up each time they show their drivel. I should start commercials about how belonging to truth causes early death by being beaten with a vacuum cleaner hose by fed up TV watchers.

12

This actually came up recently,
and of course any rational person can see that the ads are fallacious and fear-driven propaganda.

And of course, people should not be concerned with other people’s personal habits, unless they infringe upon another person’s livelihood. I know this brings up a semi-debate, with the issue of second-hand smoke, but all of that is inflated and is basically a moot point anyways. Where else besides bars/clubs and certain restaurants can you smoke inside anymore?

But, the Truth ads don’t offer any criticism towards American Spirits (my brand of choice), Winstons, Nat Shermans, Planets, or whatever other additive free cigarettes that are out there.

IMO, it is pretty fucked up that some cigarette companies add chemicals, burn accelerators, etc. to cigarettes, especially without disclosing the ingredients. ESPECIALLY since many of these cigarettes are not vegan (honey and milk are common cigarette ingredients). If a food company did this (put meat into a product without listing it as an ingredient) I would be thoroughly pissed.

In short, many cigarette companies are driven by profit and should not be turned into saintly martyrs, and we should not be hasty in defending them. What we should defend, vigilantly, is smoker’s rights, and thus we should put a metaphorical flame to all the Truth ads.

But it is clear that even those who oppose smoker’s rights also oppose these ads simply on the grounds that they are not factual, and they use emotive/fear driven propaganda without scientific basis.

Kind of like people who are against drug use, but oppose the “Just Say No” program because of its utterly stupid premise- just say no. Don’t think, don’t look into the facts, don’t analyze, don’t weigh your options…just say no.

Say no to truth ads. Look into the facts all you want, I urge that…you will say no regardless.

colin

13

Actually, I suspect that part of the funding comes from Tobacco companies themselves. What could help their reputation more than to make the opposition look like idiots? Oohh… I smell a conspiracy theory!

14

I myself like TheTruth ads and smile whenever I see one;

score one point in the fight against ignorance.

Shit, who the hell else do you expect to be countering the lies about cigs? Not so much now, as it was a few years ago (when the argument “well if it is so bad why doesn’t the government do anything about it, huuuh?” was heard. Well now they do, :stuck_out_tongue: )

But hey, I love shock advertising when used to dispense knowledge. Great way to encourage people not to start smoking either. Woohoo! I remember in Middle School the teacher brought in photos of some guy with testicular cancer, or cancer of the groan sac, or something in that general area. Annnyways, this guy had to have all of his trousers custom made because his groan dragged along behind him, as in it stretched to the ground and them some.

Lovely. Ick.

Great way to get the whole entire “Stay away from cancer carcinogens!” message across though. :smiley:

15

I do not smoke.

When I see a Truth ad upon the television, or in a magazine, I will walk down the street to my local kiosk and purchase a package of Camel cigarettes.

This is how much I hate them.

What I hate the most about the ads is the whole “the truth is infectious” blurb and they put the little asterisks around the indicate “that person has been infected.” If ever had the misfortune to stumble into one of their stupid shots, and they suggested that I somehow agreed with their message, I’d sue for slander.

I probably would lose, but, hey, they still suck.

16

I have a personal grudge against the “Truth” ads, since they almost gave me a godawful nickname. Some friends of mine thought they were being funny when they suggested that they could call me “Tobacco Rat”. I nipped that in the bud pretty quick.

My friend Wheels suggested I start a rival site called lies.com, and could have an image of my face with a cigarette in my mouth getting closer to the screen while the Thompson Twins’ “Lies, Lies, Lies” played in the background a la the video (80’s people remember.) Unfortunately, there already is a lies.com, so that’s out.

The people at “Truth”, along with similiar groups, have admitted that they want to eventually ban cigarettes entirely. Informing isn’t enough for them. Getting me to smoke only in my home isn’t enough for them. They’re just another in the long string of people who think they know what’s best for me.

And in case that last sentence is about to reignite my month-old conflict with my “first week on the board” arch-nemesis Com2Kid, allow me to say right now that I consider that argument over, even if he remembers it. With working 15 hours a day at that goddamned fireworks stand, I can’t afford to start anything here for a couple weeks :frowning:

17

What ignorance? Who out there is ignorant of the health risks of cigarettes? Some of us still choose to light up (myself only occasionally).

Plus, Truth’s ads are full of statistics that are chosen to sound bad, rather than because they are meaningful.

18

I don’t smoke. These commercials make people think that because I don’t smoke, I must agree with these loons. I love shock advertising and that kind of stuff. However, it is still a gimmick. If you use the same line over and over, the message just gets stupid. Yes, cigarette companies do put harmful things in cigarettes, and this is very important, but when you deliver the message in such a way that people want to smoke to show you up, you need a different way to approach it.

Go ahead and smoke. Just keep it away from me, and make the Gubbmint stop subsidizing tobacco farmers. It’s that simple!

19

I hate these commercials with a passion. I wish someone would run a parody ad and website where people would pledge to light up every time a Truth spot came on the air.

It’s hard to pick the one that sucks the most, what with the giant rat and the baby carriage and the banners flying over the beach, but the current “I just wanna mail these cigarettes” spot just chaps my ass. The poor guys at the store and the people in line probably just wanted to go about their business and get on with their lives, without putting up the antics of some self-righteous jackass. Personally, I think the asterisk at the end of each signals which people are thinking “What an asshole.”

20

RexDart wrote:

And when cigarettes are gone, they’ll go after cigars and pipes and chewing tobacco.

Never mind the fact that chewing tobacco, if cured properly, can be made 100% carcinogen-free (because you don’t burn it when you use it).

I also doubt that “Truth” will be very big on any of those experimental tobacco-smoke-delivery systems that aren’t supposed to generate any carcinogens (e.g. Eclipse).

As far as I’m concerned, the main reason for the public outcry against cigarettes is not because they cause cancer. It’s not because they’re addictive. It’s not because of the health risks of 2nd-hand smoke, real or imagined. It’s because, to a non-smoker, cigarette smoke smells bad. Every other excuse, if you’ll pardon the pun, is just a smoke-screen.