Saturday, December 24, 2011

It's almost Christmas, so start smoking

Back in the old days, well probably up to the late 60's, cartons of cigarettes made great Christmas gifts. There old ads in Look, Saturday Evening Post, etc. for jolly looking cartons of Philip Morris, Camel, Lucky Strikes in all sorts of gay festive colors (gay as in happy, their description, not mine) Everybody smoked, they smoked a lot, and they smoked everywhere, cause you can could do that back then. It wasn't looked at some kind of curse by most people, it was just the norm. Sure it still caused cancer, and lots of people died from it (Lon Chaney, Edward R. Murrow) but big news about it wouldn't filter (pun intended) through until the 70's, when it all started going downhill for the smokes industry.

But is this the end for cigarettes and tobacco? No!! Will it ever be?? No!! WHY?? Sure there's the cancer factor, the can't quit factor, and all sorts of places where you can't smoke anymore. But smoking will never be made illegal folks, cause it's called TAXES!! Yes most of your hard earned $$ that you want to give to the tobacco companies actually winds up in lawmaker's hands. Ciggie prices has gone up, well I think several hundred fold, cause of increased taxes. Still pretty much the same cost to grow tobacco and processing and whatever else. But concerned lawmakers have jacked up taxes on smokes. A lot goes into efforts to quit smoking (I'm not gonna try to wrap my brain around that) Rest goes to, well wherever the money is not supposed to go (somebody's pocket) So if everyone quit smoking, tax revenues would drop like a stone and govt. would be freaking out. (Look I haven't done the research as to who exactly, and frankly I don't feel like researching it. I did enough fucking research work in college and I AM DONE!!!!) Go do it yourself if your really interested.

So anyway where I work now sells a lot of smokes, the usual brands, plus a lot of snuff, snus (whatever the hell that is) and cigars (mini ones which are not taxed as much, at least in Maine) I used to smoke, Camel Filters to be precise were my brand. But there is the stinky breath factor which Jessica doesn't like, and the cancer factor too, which neither one of us really like either. If it wasn't for those two things, I might still be smoking. But I'd go to Camel Non-filters. Why?? OLD SCHOOL!! Yes this was the type of smoke prevelent until the 1960's. Which I wondered, why have a filter? Doesn't make it any safer. I don't know if it makes it slower for you to die, vs non-filters. So if both kill you, why not go old school. Helps the enviroment anyway. Filters last forever. What's left of a non-filter biodegrades pretty quickly. So save the earth and go non-filter ok??

I also wonder how overpopulated the planet would be without smoking? Sure it's not easy to deal with family members who die of cancer (And friggin trust me, I have more than enough experience in this dept. IT SUCKS!!) But I always wondered, if there was no such thing as tobacco production of any kind, would there be an overpopulation problem, or would humans find something else to kill themselves with. I think the latter. We are pretty good as hazardous occupations and activities. But it's going to bug me to no end what that would be.

Merry Christmas, and remember L.S.M.F.T (Lucky Strike means fine tobacco!!)




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