One way to do this is through vilification, which has been practiced by the opportunists since tobacco became popular centuries ago.  A great way to earn a living while doing next to nothing, save for spreading misinformation and fallacies regarding tobacco’s negative health effects.  Nobody’s gonna back a Three Thousand percent tax on Cotton Candy but a couple of them a day will kill you quicker than a dozen cancer sticks.  Ironically, these lazy s.o.b.s. would have to get jobs if they ever got what they’re railing for; a smoke-free America!

Potentially aiding this ever dwindling resource of lies, as science disproves theory after theory created by the antis, comes the introduction of FSC, or fire safe cigarettes.  No FSC application will save the fires caused by an ashtray prematurely dumped into the trash (one of the leading causes of fires linked to cigarettes).   FSC is a chemical cocktail containing Napthalene, Vinyl Acetate and poly Vinyl Acetates legislated on the smoking populace with no adequate safety testing.  This could well end up ensuring the smoking mortality rate remains high and a boon for publicity purposes.  Seriously, no testing and it’s legislated upon us for general human consumption?

This chemical cocktail could just as well end up exaggerating the consequences that smokers face.  These alleged health problems are just not coming to fruition in the numbers the antis have been preaching and attempting to achieve.   Manipulated statistics and a scorned public can only swallow so many lies for so long.   The possibility exists that FSC legislation could subsidize the over-dramatized consequences to cigarette smokers and serve to increase the mortality rate linked to smoking.   Modern science and free thinking people are finding it harder and harder to choke down the anti-smoker’s rhetoric.   With the popularity of anti-smokers at an all time high, politicians are jumping on the bandwagon and making smokers as unhealthy and broke as possible.  Ironically, this could turn out to be an effective way to increase personal profits and kill as many smokers before the ruse is up and the suits begin.

You have to hand it to em, between this, being FSC, and the draconian S-CHIP bill, our govt and Big Tobacco might successfully eradicate a whole class of less fortunate smokers and maybe even a slew of mid income smokers to boot.  One way or another, through quitting due to excessive taxation or maybe even through some creatively incurable “side-effects” of FSC.  Of course these are far fetched and paranoid musings that aren’t even close to the truth, the real reason being profits and payoffs.  A surefire way to keep Big Tobacco rolling in the dough and ensure a reliable flow of income despite declining new smoker rates.  So our current admin didn’t wait 30 days to backpedal on promises and tax the poor, it’s a poor group that the majority couldn’t care less about…… ingenious!  The only good smoker’s a dead smoker.  Kudos to the current admin et al, drinks all around  (until alcohol falls on the legislative table).

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Now playing: Dave Matthews – Cry Freedom
via FoxyTunes

The point of these ads is becoming closer and closer to anti-smoking rhetoric.  The general strategy is to quote inflammatory junk science that groups such as ASH use to propagate and increase hostility between smokers and the rest of the world.  The ads that make smoker’s crave a smoke, that’s no joke.   The hostility being used in turn to incite the naive do-gooders and nanny types to raise Cain against smokers (who pay their salaries by the way) and keep on keeping on with the malfeasance.  That these idiots are using this junk science is not surprising, all’s fair in war and marketing.   But, that these new “ex-smokers” take these views to heart  is beyond ludicrous.  Just months prior they were refuting the junk science and propaganda that has recently swayed them to the Dark Side.   Where’s their pride, much less character?   In effect, they’re admitting themselves fools and that anti sentiment has been right all along,  if that’s the case, why quote fictitious studies?  What a bunch of spineless sheople.

Not that their ineffectiveness wasn’t enough to avoid these new toys but the guilt by association with the new ex-smoking traitors is more than I could bear.  When I had quit smoking those seven years, several years ago, I never allowed myself to don the cap of the anti.  That’s an easy temptation to fall for, the superiority over a whole class of people by one’s own act of quitting.  I couldn’t quit using one of these things much less do a 180 in my convictions.  I need nicotine and I don’t relish in the “look” of being a smoker, which is essentially what these things do accomplish.  I remember the kids in smokers court of my youth who would follow their smoking friends into the smoking areas and make a  dramatic show of smoking, to be “cool” I suppose.  Funny that they picked up a little addiction too, serves em right.   I think the e-cig is a great thing for these folks, to keep up the “illusion of smoking” when they were never very heavy smokers to begin with.

Smoking isn’t something anyone takes pride in.  Smoking is a profound addiction that neither candy cigarettes nor faux electronic smoke will easily cure.   Looks like these vendors are trying to swell the ranks of the anti’s with new recruits though.  Wonder how long the probationary period for ex-smokers is before regaining full human status in the anti’s eyes, how much re-education is needed before full re-admission.   Looks like hypocrisy is good for a few brownie points to start.

The transition wasn’t all bad and I credit Copenhagen especially for a comforting replacement, followed by cigars with Nicorette coming in a distant third.  The Patch didn’t, and has yet to, deliver nicotine in a satisfying way at all and I find it to be sorely lacking as an NRT, especially considering the price.   While the gum isn’t the most pleasant intake, at least it’s in a controllable dose form and doubling and tripling doses gives a satisfying boost, albeit outrageously expensive to continu…hello Canada!    For me at least, quitting smoking was going to necessitate copious amounts of Nicorette.   Yep, buying Nicorette in enough quantity to use it in a meaningful way is way too expensive a proposition in the US and Canadian pharmacies online did just the trick for about 1/2 the price, often less in bulk!   That’s one of the few good things I can say about Canada but I do believe in giving credit where it’s due (of course I’m joking as we all love our frozen friends up north).   I understand why Big Pharma’s charging so much as addicts have little choice but to pay these immoral fees but I’m quite sure they’re precluding multitudes by making NRTs so expensive.  In any case, fuck em, they’re as crooked as Big Tobacco with profit being these wolves in sheep’s clothing their only incentive.

As my 30th drew closer I was finding myself able to go longer and longer between smokes with Copenhagen being my primary crutch.  Drinking, as it turned out,  was a significant drawback as I can easily suck down a pack or more when imbibing.  I wasn’t going to let that drug foil my plans so simply quit drinking and somehow a year long sober was achieved much to my surprise, but that’s another story.  My 30th was turning out to be a cleansing period in my life.  Anyhow, I decided around one month before my b-day that cigars had to go too, at 6-10 bucks a pop and the added expense of the needed Nicorette,  I had to trim my quit smoking budget.   By B Day, I was easily able to substitute cigarettes with other forms of nicotine delivery and in fact my vitamin-N intake (and habit) was significantly increased.   I feel that’s the only successful way to quit smoking for the heavier users and unfortunately a strategy few doctor’s will condone.   I also feel that Nicorette, despite it’s poor track record of less than 10% success, can be an efficient NRT.

Big Pharma’s Nicotine Replacement Therapies biggest weaknesses are the expense and the recommended dosages being only a fraction of what’s needed for success, along with little pleasure and general low appeal.  In the last couple years though  Nicorette has released several promising flavors and consistencies but the stuff I used was hard and almost flavorless.   Nicorette should be advertised as more a replacement than a stop smoking aid, as it’s moniker Nicotine Replacement Therapy  actually implies.  This isn’t an aid to quit using nicotine in reality, just a healthier way to dose addicts with their beloved Drug of Choice.   This philosophy is scorned upon by  many so called “health experts” but these product’s effectiveness fell well below expectations.  They do nothing to cure the underlying addiction which is fantastically expected to just go away, well it doesn’t (ever).  Unfortunately, nicotine’s hold on user’s is purportedly stronger than even Heroin, a drug that oftentimes requires lifelong replacement treatment.   That anyone expects to cure nicotine with any less tenacity is unreasonable and ineffective.   Even today though, Nicorette and other NRTs are simply too expensive and unpleasant for many smokers to consider continued use, much less the primary addiction replacement.

Success using this replacement method was foolproof and surprisingly easy, the years ticked by and I eventually considered myself a non-smoker.    I had basically given up on the Copenhagen after a few years due to the paranoia of loosing teeth and the holes being burnt between my cheek and gums.  I was now only using Nicorette and enjoying a cigar or two a year.   I got to a point, as many reformed smokers do, of finding smoker’s as being less attractive people who  stunk.  I didn’t turn my nose at them in the least and many of my colleagues and companions smoked around me with no preaching nor disdain but the habit did bother me to an extent.   I was still an addict too though, and most likely had even increased my nicotine intake.  I can guesstimate that smoking 2 packs of Newports a day supplied me with about 60-70mg of nicotine.  I was using up to an entire box of Nicorette with 40 pieces of 4mg each to add to a grand total of 160mg a day!  This isn’t as bad as it sounds as the body uses inhaled nicotine much differently than orally, a more accurate comparison might be that I was using around 80mg a day as opposed to 60 or 70mg.   I did feel healthier to an extent but no major life-altering changes took place, I had never lost my sense of taste nor developed any breathing troubles.   Even a +two pack a day habit had seemingly little long term effects,  knock wood.

Still, I was satisfied that I could remain a non-smoker which gave me some comfort when considering aging and our bodies relative weaknesses in the latter years.   Whether or not one finds truth in the anti’s misconstrued rhetoric with smoking as The Deliverer  of uncompromising suffering and death.   I doubt anyone will disagree that a seventy year old body could have trouble effectively dealing with the added burden of a lifelong cigarette habit.

Then life caught up with me, seven years as a non-smoker spoiled when the near death of a child put me in the hospital’s smoker’s court once too often for my own good.    Ah well, at least I know it can be done again, and that was 4 years ago.   I just wonder if I’m any healthier now for having avoided inhaling those seven years of inhaling smoke?