If true, it would mean that all the lifestyle marketing, product placement, package design, and all the related activities of the tobacco companies were meaningless. As in, they generated no value whatsoever to the companies funding their marketing campaigns. It might even go further and indicate that all commercial marketing activities everywhere are pointless!

While this mathematically possible, self-interest for said companies would indicate that a useless expense avoided goes directly to the bottom line. That’s a powerful incentive to find the effectiveness of marketing. We’re talking about the commercial equivalent of natural selection.

If positive marketing works then negative marketing also ought to work.

Something does not add up here.

Tobacco for many is a way to self-medicate. Yes, tobacco pills are used to treat OCD but in the stomach, tobacco doesn’t readily hit the brain. Tobacco is the best anti-obsessive for OCD folks and for Bipolars, the latter who smoke at a 60% rate, far higher than the 21% quoted for the general population.

Antidepressants didn’t work with me. Nothing really does for severe OCD, especially the obsessive-dominant type. I suspect the hard-cores may be medicating and may not even know it. Ditto for alcohol and pot.

I had to laugh when I read your comment about the “two ton tessies”. It reminded me of my older sister who once told me that smoking was stupid. I bit my tongue and refrained from telling her that being 100 lbs overweight isn’t to damn smart either. It would have been a waste of breath to say anything to her. Her arrogancy level is so high that while flowing out of her mouth like water in a spillway, it also plugs up her ears. LOL Thanks for the laugh, I am glad to know I am not the only one who has experienced the insipid arrogance of the “two ton tessie”. (Maybe some day we can get together and gripe about how these same women are sometimes the worst ‘tail-gators’ and rudest drivers on the highways. I mean, behind the wheel of a car seems to be the only place they can move fast in life and they get really obnoxious with any one who slows them down)

Good comment. I would like to add one of my own: How about graphic pictures of people dying of aids on condom packages and a government enforced statement “Warning: condoms fail 13 percent of the time while abstinence works every time it is tried”. Or maybe graphic photos of gay guys making love and a government statement like this: “Caution: HIV and the AIDS virus are predominate in the homosexual community.” Maybe every thing that contains sugar should have graphic pictures of grossly obese dead bodies and labeling that says “Caution: Diabetes rates are progressing at a pace that will soon eclipse the number of people killing themselves with Tobacco products”. Here is a good one: Graphic pictures of people killed while trying to escape communism, from behind the Berlin wall or Cambodian and Vietnamese people drowning, getting hacked to pieces by pirates, or raped and a warning label on both paper and electronic voting ballots that say “Caution: Voting for nanny state politicians leads to communist oppression.” I mean if the govt is going to insist on being mom and dad to us all, why not make it really count.

All of the above examples are offensive, of course, but then, the heart and soul of political correctness is outrageousness, offense, arrogance. Do-gooders trying to tell every one else how to live, so, as ridiculous and offensive as those things might be, why not? If a little do-gooderness is good enough for the goose, it’s good enough for the gander.

Also, as an on-again off-again smoker, seeing “No Smoking” signs, information about quitting on billboards, other people smoking… (let alone the same “graphic” pictures of smoker’s lungs I’ve been seeing since grade-school health class) DO make me want a cigarette. I can go hours and hours without smoking. But as soon as it occurs to me that I could smoke… I do. If we want more people to be able to quit we have about 50 billion “no smoking” signs to remove.

Hey asshole, shut the f*ck up and learn something. Quit parroting what you’re told to say and think and figure it out for yourself. I’m warning you: it will be frightening when you’re able to see the truth as it really is, and you won’t be able to make total sense of it because choosing to live is not a logical choice, but you’ll still want to anyway. You might even discover why some people are liberal and some are conservative but most are actually shades of both if you take those words for their literal meanings. You want freedom, huh? You really want freedom? Then free your f*cking mind from the lies you let yourself believe.