What idiot head decided that the best way to keep kids from smoking was to make smoking as attractive as possible? Don't they remember being kids themselves?
The more a thing is forbidden, the more attractive it becomes. Oh, there's been some improvement, to be sure. When cigarettes were the mainstay of television advertising and tobacco was touted as good for you it must have seemed foolish to complain of the smell and mess.
Even when health hazards were discovered they were distant threats. Lung cancer forty years down the road. Heart disease fifty years down the road. There just wasn't enough
immediacy to have much impact. What we need is something that hits them where their hearts are -- their attractiveness and their "manhood" or "womanhood." They need to see the difference between a smoker's complexion and that of a non smoker. The difference in their teeth, the difference in their -- OK -- smell.
Biggest thing of all, they have to see the changes in blood flow. Orgasm depends on blood flow. So there.
It is pretty well known that if a person hasn't started smoking before the age of twenty he probably never will smoke. It is also unlikely that he will marry a smoker. Smoking narrows the field of people to choose from when picking a mate. No doubt about it.
Even if "love" overcomes the problem, it will crop up constantly. The non smoker will tire of the odor that clings to the smoker and chances are the smoker will either be confined to one room in the house when he wants to light up, or he will have to smoke outside, rain or shine. It is going to be a problem.
BUT
The current policy of imposing ridiculously high taxes on cigarettes and punishing the tobacco companies is useless. The price of cigarettes has no impact on teen smoking. The place it has impact is the older population. People who have been smoking for fifty years are not likely to quit smoking. They are more likely to quit eating, going to movies, taking trips and even buying prescriptions. I am so angry over the issue that I can barely keep calm enough to type.
I saw a man who appeared to be about 75 years old being arrested for shoplifting a pack of cigarettes. I'm almost positive he wouldn't have tried to steal a steak if he was hungry.
The only solution I can think of is to make the stop smoking aids much less expensive. It's fine to point out that stopping smoking saves money in the long run but when a person is on a limited income the patches and gums are prohibitively expensive. They can cost ten to thirty dollars a day for months. Very few retired people or ordinary working people can afford that. I certainly wouldn't be able to.
If the government would choose to spend some of its ill-gotten tobacco tax money on subsidising Nicorette or Nicoderm I'd consider their current piracy a good thing. Otherwise, it's just plain mean.
