Commercial or Propaganda? If You Believe The 'Truth', I Have a Bridge I Want to Sell You

One of the truly interesting and strange byproducts of having a career that scoffs at traditional nine-to-five hours is you get to watch some surreal television. Specifically television advertising. And I'm not even talking about the local productions, the guy in his mid-sixties with the bad comb-over singing you a hoe-down on the joys of buying your next mattress from him. No, some of these are national commercials.

Some of them are well-produced enough that you don't even blanch at them until almost the next commercial break. My current favorite is for Match.com. Now, I've never used their product, and it may well be a wonderful and useful service. However, this is their actual guarantee (as seen on TV): If you're not completely satisfied in 6 months (presumably with your dating life through their service), then they will give you 6 months free. Let me see if I fully comprehend this: If, for some strange reason, I don't think your product does what you tell me it'll do, I get to have it not work for me for ANOTHER six months? Talk about delusions of grandeur. Here's a company that figures their product is so good, even if it doesn't work, that I'll want to put my life on hold for a half a year more, their treat, just so I can see that it must not have been their fault I couldn't get a match I liked.

But the ones that are positively Goebbels-worthy, and what this blog is actually about, is a whole series of ads, ones that masquerade as public service spots. The 'Truth.com' folks. Not only can they tell half-truths along with the occasional untruth, there isn't even a venue for rebuttal, since tobacco advertising has long since left the airwaves. Allow me to help. As a semi-public service.

Every tobacco company in the world is a separate company. Certainly they have groups, and they lobby for legislation. Every industry in the world does. If an oil company breaks a law, and/or tries to cover it up with loss of life or ecological damage (think Union Carbide in Bhopal and the Exxon Valdez) the individual company is taken to court, not the oil industry. Were there internal memos circulated years ago to market cigarettes to minors? Undeniably there were. Was every tobacco company indicted? Nope. Yet every single tobacco company was included in the government's lawsuit, and every one of them is paying on the settlement. What do you think Shell Oil Company's reaction would be if the Federal Government sued them to pay an equal portion of the cleanup for the Valdez? Do you think Conoco was sued for negligence on Union Carbide's part?

Take some personal responsibility. The main thrust of the anti-tobacco lobby is that the tobacco industry has perpetrated a hoax on the American people about the dangers of smoking. I've been a smoker for well over 30 years, and before that. as of 1965 in fact, federal law mandated warnings on the every pack of cigarettes sold in America. First they said it was bad for you. Then (still upwards of 35+ years ago), they specifically stated: "...The Surgeon General's Warning: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy." AND...."Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health." AND... "Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight." AND..."Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide." Did those warnings sound indecisive?

Incidently, ask any scientist what the definition of cause and effect is, and you'll find that cigarettes do not 'cause' Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema. According to the definition of cause and effect, as soon as you have a person who smokes that does not get one of those diseases, you can no longer say it causes it. Almost everyone I know has a friend or relative that has smoked for years that never developed any of those diseases. And since the list of known carcinogens in our environment increases exponentially every year (and those are just the known ones), cause and effect does not apply. Does the empirical evidence suggest that smoking can greatly increase your risk for such diseases? Certainly. That is not to say that one causes the other. Another interesting correlation is how drunk driving is handled. Virtually no one, outside of MADD perhaps, says that alcohol kills. They warn that it impairs your judgement, and to 'drink responsibly'. A drunk gets behind the wheel after a couple of six packs, kills a family of five, gets a DUI, and goes home to watch a football game with three beer commercials every change of possession. But no one seems to see a corollary to alcohol ads and DUI accidents. Only cigarettes.

As I mentioned, I am a smoker. Not much, but I've smoked anywhere from a pack a day in my younger days, to the less than half a pack these days, for over 30 years. I am aware they are, at the least, bad for me, and at the most, contributing significantly to any number of respiratory diseases in me. I do not smoke indoors, including at home, and in fact, I have NEVER smoked indoors when I lived or worked with people who didn't, including well before the laws mandated it. I believe (I hope, anyways) that I would have the balls to take personal responsibility for my own smoking if it contributed to lung cancer, and not sue some evil boogie-man in the suit at Marlboro's parent company, RJ Reynolds, who somehow 'brainwashed' me into buying his product, while all the while he rubbed his hands and cackled maniacally. I am reasonably confident that I wouldn't sue because just a few years ago I had a lung cancer scare (that turned out, thank goodness, to be benign), and during the time between first suspicion and the negative result, I wasn't calling a lawyer, nor did I plan to. And yes, I am aware of the 'No Atheists in a Foxhole' theory, and that were I to get very sick I might change my mind. I simply hope I wouldn't.

When the AMA says that no matter how long you've been smoking, if you quit today, you stand an excellent chance of reversing the damage (before the disease is full-blown), I have even less sympathy for people who smoke for years upon years, and then upon discovering they have lung cancer, probably contributed to heavily by their smoking, blame the tobacco industry because they couldn't quit. When a participant in bungee-jumping is injured or dies in an accident, I don't remember hearing about bungee cord makers being fined universally for the inherent danger in their product. Even gun manufacturers have had all such universal suits against them thrown out in court for the danger of their products.

So, you know what? If you smoke, and you're worried about your health, then stop. There are thousands of support groups and aids to help, and hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) in the US today that have successfully quit smoking. By the way, just for the record, I have quit for a year once, and for six months another time, in my adult life. I simply enjoy smoking.