Listen up smokers!

If you want to quit and feel like you can't, I've got news for you.

Quitting smoking is easy!

Seriously, although I've quit about 5 times, I'm smoking as I write this. The quitting is the easy part. With just a little willpower, the nicotine is flushed out of you system in about three days. No more cravings.

Here is the hard part:

Don't start again!

That's what gets me everytime. Like Charlie Brown running at a football. I know my teeth will turn yellow, my clothes will stink, and I won't be able to get a solid days work done because I'm heading downstairs for a smoke, but I'm only going to have one. Where's the harm in that?

Three days later I'm a pack-a-day man again.

Update: As of 20000526 I have been smoke free for almost 3 weeks. This is the last time I'll quit.

Update: As of 20000724 I've got a cigarette in my hand again. Started a few weeks ago. However, I have finally figured out how not to start again. You see, I can quit and hang out with smokers, it's no problem, I just tell myself, "I'm not a smoker anymore."
I run into trouble hanging out with the casual smokers. You know, the people who only smoke at the bar, when they drink, or after a meal. I always think, "I can do that if they can." But I can't!

Update 20000831: Up until yesterday I had not had a cigarette in about a month. Then my girlfriend tried to give it up. She lasted about 36 hours and then needed to buy a pack. I told her that she might as well get me a pack too, hoping this would deter her from starting again. Well, she bought us both a pack. I was quite surprised at this and opened my pack to have a smoke. She grabbed them out of my hands and decided that neither one of us would start again. That lasted about an hour. I'm going to finish this pack and quit again.
Come now...smoking causes cancer? That's so trite. How about:

Don't get me wrong. I think everyone has the right to do dangerous and lethal things to themselves. I am a steadfast proponent of attrition. The more smokers die messily, the less there are to avoid in my daily life.

Of course, if you would encourage children to stay away from smoking I'd appreciate it. It's so very tiring to keep explaining and asking politely to not have to smell the taint of burned poison on my skin and clothes and hair.

Thank you for your time. I know there's not a ton of it left.

Guess what, friends. Smokers ALL KNOW that smoking is bad. That it causes lung cancer. Heart disease. Low birth weight in children. We all know all of it. We also know that we're stupid to keep smoking but we do it anyway because we like it. That's the whole big reason. It's not a political statement, it's not an intentionally anti-social behavior, it's nothing but an addiction. And did I mention that we like it? And guess what else. We know it stinks. Most of us don't like the smell any better than the rest of you do. So we're polite about it, some of us. We don't smoke in front of non-smokers, even if we're outside. We buy Altoids by the case. We put our long hair up in a ponytail before we light up so that our heads won't stink when we go back inside. (Where it's heated and/or air conditioned.) And while I'm ranting, non-smokers have already pretty much had smoking done away with everywhere but in a smoker's own car or house anyway, at least in most of the United States. We don't smoke in office buildings, restaurants, theatres, hell...ANYwhere lest we wish to pay an enormous fine. For killing ourselves. Which we can't afford because we spend all our money on cigarettes. Nothing like kicking one when one's down, hm?
I know smoking is gross and bad and expensive and stinky and not a good idea. All smokers do. But we like it. We aren't the driving force behind big-business tobacco companies setting their advertising target age-range younger and younger every year. We don't want kids to smoke. We don't want to impose smoking on ANYone, fortheloveofgod. We just want to kill ourselves and go broke and reek in our own homes or cars while we curse ourselves for our addictive personalities in peace. And to heck with people who have never had an addiction who say things like, "so QUIT, you stupidfuckingmorons!" It truly doesn't work like that for most people. And besides, some of us like smoking and we don't want to quit. So shut up already.
You know what really pisses me off. Anti-smoking propaganda. They condem tobacco companies for advertising their product. They say that smoking kills people so they don't have a right to sell their product, they say that the advertisements don't say that smoking can be dangerous. I don't know if I am hallucinating or what but usually when I look at cigarette ads I see a Surgeon General's warning(yes, that person whose position it is to kill all fun in America. They say this even though they live in a capitalist society. I wonder if they have a problem with Tab, you know the diet soda that causes cancer. It has a little Surgeon General warning on it too(I kind of chuckle whenever I see a can).

Recently I saw a TV ad for that truth.com campain.(This kind of a birdwalk but does everything have a damned dot com now-a-days, even nonprofit organizations?) Someone had written them saying that automotive manufacturer's make products that kill people. Truth's response, yea but they issue recalls and tobacco companies don't. Well this pisses me off. Automotive companies don't always issure recalls. They do it only when it is profitable to them.

Example: Ford Pinto

Remember that car that made America love the hatchback, well maybe not. But the thing was that the cheap pieces of tin were blowing up when hit in the rear. The gas tank was being punctured. Well the engineers at Ford must have had at least a little bit of a conscience because they designed this little $3.00 plastic piece that would fix the problem. So, did Ford issue a recall? No, they didn't Ford's bean-counters decided that it would be cheaper to pay all the wrongful death lawsuits rather than actually fixing the problem. Even in later model years of the Pinto the plastic part wasn't standard on all Pintos, it was an option that you could buy.

Ain't capitalism great.

Complaining about the way the government treats cigarettes and tobacco, in the U.S.A. or Canada is so tiresome.

If the only criteria for banning drugs was how much damage they caused, tobacco and alcohol would be at the top of the line. And if harmlessness and medicinal value were the criteria for legalization, marijuana would be at the head of the line.

So those little messages, and maybe pictures, spoil the fun? Advertising works, despite the messages, because, well, advertising works. Children smoke because adults smoke. People smoke because it makes a lot of money for a lot of companies.

And we need to keep that health industry going because it, too, makes a lot of companies a lot of money.

Ain't capitalism great.

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