Smoking: The Dark Side of the Truth

This is for all you smoking Nazi's out there. Yes, you lot, who through some sense of superiority to fallible man have determined that the smoking public's value has somehow been lessoned by an addictive drug more powerful than any vial thing out of the laboratories of science and chemistry in the last 200+ yrs.

Yes, I smoke. This affects me and several million others around the world, but it does NOT effect you. You have chosen to cut people who smoke out of your life. For better or for worse, this decision is yours to make. I don't judge you for that.

What I do judge you for, is what you do AFTER you judge us smokers.

DON'T TELL ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW

I walked into a convenience store the other day. I was out of smokes. I had the money to pay for them in my hand, and I walked directly up to the empty counter and ordered my particular brand.

"Cigarettes Are Bad For You." a voice behind me said.

"Stupidity is worse." I retorted without turning around.

"What do you mean by that?" she snapped.

What I said next probably terrorized her more than I had initially intended, but the effect was the same. I turned to face her. She couldn't have been in college yet, maybe just old enough to start smoking.

"Lady, lets look at this logically." I started, "You believe that with all the negative advertising, all the warning labels, and all the little hints and tips, well meaning ladies, like yourself, drop on me in public places, like here, that; 'I don't know that cigarettes are bad'."

"What you fail to see" I continued, "is the obvious fact that; I am 40 years old, and you don't know me at all."

I paused for dramatic effect.

"But!" I continued, " You could have learned a little bit about me before you said anything at all, if you had paid attention."

"I'm dressed for riding that motorbike out there. Fact is I pulled into a convenience store and parked right up to the building. Ergo, I don't need gas. I probably have plenty in the tank." I explained.

"I didn't go to the cooler for beer, or to the snack isle, so chances are pretty good that I don't need those things.

"I came to the counter and asked for cigarettes. Why? I could be low, or I could be out of cigarettes.

By this point I could see the teller and the lady were both feeling very uncomfortable, but I was on a roll.

"If you had been paying attention, you would know that people who have run out of cigarettes tend to be a little, shall we say, IRRITABLE.

"Again, you don't know me, but you still assumed I was uninformed, and that it was your obligation to enlighten me, but, since you DIDN'T pay attention to any of those things, OR to the fact that Florida is a concealed weapons state, you can now see how Ironically STUPID that was on your part."

I paid for my smokes and finished my visit with: "As I said; Stupidity is worse."

I couldn't be sure, but I think they both were lighting up as I pulled out of the parking lot and down the street.

DON'T FEED ME BULL AND CALL IT STEAK

We have all seen the ads on TV for the 'TRUTH' websites, there's more than one. I love those ads. They give me more ammunition against the smoking Nazi's than any place else.

"Apples and Oranges": The guy walks into a gun store and asks for 'Light Bullets' and then goes on to equate cigarettes with bullets. This is a classic usage of "negative peering" Take something you want abolished or destroyed and 'Peer' it to something that people already think is evil or bad.

Try walking into a fruit stand in Washington State and asking for a 'Naval Apple' or into an orange grove in Florida and asking for a 'Macintosh Orange'. You will get the same dumbfounded look on the grocer's face as the commercial displays so prominently on the gun shop clerk.

The two items, apples and oranges, cigarettes and bullets, don't and in a deliberate disinformation campaign, shouldn't have anything to do with each other. It's your run of the mill Apples and Oranges argument, made with deliberate intent. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TRUTH.

"Nazi Book Keeping": An almost silent commercial for one of the smoke nazi dot com sites, where something grotesque is displayed and later some statistic is displayed, usually WRONG.

Several of these commercials have been taken off the air, ironically, for violations of the 'Truth In Advertising' Laws. Specifically one of the first ads was removed for saying that cigarettes kill more people in the United States then actually DIE in the United States, every year. A tactic that is rife through out history. Find Numbers that support your argument, or better MAKE THEM UP.

All Kinds of statistics are just flat MADE UP. This list of fraudulent statistics goes on and on and on. What I find truly ironic is the number of times a Smoking Nazi will tell you how often the cigarette companies lied or made up numbers. What they fail to say is how many of THOSE alleged lies resulted in action against the cigarette companies. The numbers are less than you might think, even though federal reporting regulations, Congressional hearings, FDA and USDA regulations all have stiff criminal actions for any type of falsifications or frauds perpetrated relative to almost all facts related to tobacco and tobacco products, including health effects.

The same standards are not applied to the owners of the smoking nazi dot coms or to individual smoking Nazi's who will rattle off numbers left and right, without even giving their validity a second thought.

"Can You Believe That?": The same actor from the "Light Bullets" commercial, walks into a dairy barn and begins talking to the farmer about milk. He then pops off an out of context statement made by a cigarette company relating cigarettes to milk - Notice in that commercial though, they never said that particular statement, made by a cigarette company, was FALSE.

A seasoned adjunct to the Nazi Book Keeping strategy, when faced with TRUE statistics or numbers that do not support your position, feign disbelief and repeat the quote as an attack.

Raw Milk IN FACT DOES HAVE 50 times more toxins, carcinogens and biological pathogens in it, than cigarette smoke. ( It's the basis of the research work and process development that gained Louis Pasteur the fame of Pasteurization. There's the Truth in THAT commercial )

Here's some more real numbers for you that may or may not show up in future commercials:

* Automobiles kill more people, in a week, than any individual's disease or individual's condition that can be fully attributed to cigarettes, in a Decade.

* You stand a 10x greater chance of getting lung cancer, if you keep a caged bird in your house, than if you smoked a pack a day in the same house, for the same amount of time.

* More heart disease, lung disease, and liver damage, in individual cases, can be directly attributed to fast food chain hamburgers, fries, and diet drinks, than cigarettes.

* To get the same levels of toxins in your system, that you would get from standing next to a modern car with it's engine running for 20 minutes, you would have to stand NEXT TO a pack a day smoker for 20 years, or be a pack a day smoker yourself, for 10 yrs.

All of which leads us to:

DON'T PASS LAWS THAT INVADE MY PRIVACY

Yes, I will smoke in my car. Several States are proposing or already have on the books, a law that will prevent smokers from smoking in their personal vehicles on public property such as public roadways and parking facilities. By the same token, there have been attempts to prevent smoking inside a private vehicle in some federal parking garages and even inside private residences of families with dependent children.

The Supreme Court of the United States has already determined that a car is private property and any search of that property requires a warrant. Since smoking is legal on private property, and my car is my private property, it is legal for me to smoke in my car, even if that car is on a public roadway or in a public garage such as a federal parking facility. The Federal Laws can not reach into my car and violate my rights, even if the officer has reason to believe I am doing something illegal, let alone the otherwise legal act of smoking in my own property. Local and State laws and the lower courts, can not transgress the Supreme Court's demarcation on what is personal property and what is public property, no mater how they word it.

Law suits aside, here's the last straw:

DON'T JUDGE ME, HELP ME

Heroin is Illegal. yet if you are addicted to heroin, there are federal and some state programs to assist addicts to get clean. Every smoking Nazi I have met already knows that nicotine is more addictive than heroin, but try to quit smoking on your own, products and services that help nicotine addicts are not covered under drug addiction programs.

To make matters worse, a pack a day smoker will be forced to spend 3 to 5 times more to quit smoking, than to buy cigarettes to cover the same time period the programs, tapes, patches or gums take to work.

So... I do something legal, and I get the cold shoulder from drug rehab programs... but if I break the law, The Federal Government will give programs money if I attend, they will give me free treatments with medical technologies and alternate, non-addicting drugs to help me quit, in some cases there is money available to me directly to offset housing, food, or child care costs.

What seems fair about that? Double standards and bigotry against the smoker in favor of the heroin addict. That's what your tax dollars are going for.

Every time a smoking Nazi pops off with one of their propaganda exercises, I'm going to ask them for $100 to help cover the cost of my recovery. It's the least they can do, seeing as how their little bigoted hate speech was directed at me personally, and I don't have time to take them all to court.

I'm going to end this here, I'm feeling a little bit irritable at the moment. I don't know if it's the subject, or the fact that I haven't had a cigarette during the whole time I've been writing this, while at the same time, the guy sitting next to me is allowed to eat his fast food burger, fries and diet drink, in his cubicle.

Don't bug me about my smoking, it could be hazardous to your health.

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