Five lies that the anti-tobacco industry

Wants you to believe.

So there’s a guy, he’s british, I don’t know if we should hold that against him BUT –
There’s a guy. He wants to make the warnings on the cigarette packs BIGGER.
He wants the WHOLE FRONT OF THE PACK to be the warning,
As if the problem was that smokers just haven’t noticed that they are bad for you.
"Yeah, bill, I’ve got some cigarettes right he- HOLY SHIT! THESE THINGS ARE BAD FOR YOU!
I thought they had vitamin C in them and stuff…"

Anti-tobacco lobbying has come a long way since the days of the flintstones sparking up a marlboro on your kids’ saturday morning cartoons, some say not far enough, some say too far. As a smoker I find it harder and harder to buy just what the general public is eating up, but then I’ve always had an internal cynicism towards any kind of advertising in general. For the most part it’s half truths and I can’t blame them for trying, but for the other-most part the tripe they feed you is just straight up lies.

1. If you smoke, You’ll die! DIE! DIIIIEEEE!!! YOU’RE GOING TO F***KING DIE!!!!!
I’m no doctor, but I can tell you that smoking can kill you. So can buses. And airplanes. And tap water. and a myriad of other everyday household items (that delicious blue juice in the windex bottle under the cabinet). Point is, there are lots of things out there that can kill you, and I don’t see any lobbying for those items whatsoever. When’s the last time you cracked open a beer and noticed the dead liver printed cleverly on the can? Or a nice blood-and-guts photo of a drunk driver victim?
There used to be fun little statistics on cigarette packs (which have mysteriously disappeared) claiming things like some odd 5 million smokers die from smoking every year in comparison to 500,000 people who died of other injuries/etc. The reason you don’t see those anymore? They were made up statistics. A scare tactic, if you will. The anti-smoking campaigns pulled some numbers out of their ass and applied it to your pack of smokes for shits and giggles.
What they fail to mention here is that millions of smokers worldwide don’t die from smoking or related illnesses. The ones who do get all the attention, naturally, because it wouldn’t work if you pointed out that grandma jones has been smoking for 96 years and is still going strong.

2. Cigarettes are full of deadly car battery acid, cadmium, and carginogens
I’m sure you’ve seen that warning label too, or plastered on your high school walls, or the bus stop signage. You know the one? It has a big cigarette with bullet style points extending out from the ember, listing off the chemicals that are contained in cigarettes.
This is false. A blatant lie, straight to your face, your moms face, and everyone’s face your mom has been near.
Saying this somehow puts a mental image in your head of evil tobacco employees splicing open batteries and draining the acid into the cigarette making machines; I assure you, the only thing your cigarettes contain are pure tobacco leaves and government mandated spray that extinguishes the cigarette if not puffed on for a certain amount of time. There’s no lethal injections going into them, no evil tobacco employees, nothing like that.
That said, yes, applying flame to anything and inhaling the burning embers will produce chemical offsets – That’s a given. Carbon monoxide is an odourless, poisonous gas that is produced through burning of any fuel. Therefore, when you smoke, your cigarette produces minute amounts of it. This is unfortunate, but let’s look at some other things that are similar:
Tap water contains lead, bacteria, sulfer, and billions of microbial bacteria. Water itself has hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen is deadly. Shall I go on?

3. If you quit smoking now, you’ll feel better immediately because every cigarette you smoke is damaging your lungs
This one almost had the faint hope of some truth to it.
I’m sure every smoker out there has had to deal with the friend/loved one/family member that has given up the cigarettes for good, and now feels obligated to shout out loud how "GREAT" they feel! 
Ugh. The only reason they feel "great" and "like they can breathe again" is because they’ve been mindlessly spoon fed this horseshit from doctors, associates, and the ‘supporters’ around them. Positive thinking is a powerful thing, and it most certainly can make you feel better when you’re actually not changed at all.
In reality, The very first breath of air you breathe when you are born damages your lungs. As you’re reading this, and breathing in and out, you’re damaging your lungs. There’s more pollution in everyday air surrounding you that is damaging your lungs on a daily basis, since you were born!
While some people will sit and tell you that the damage is undeniable, that smoking kills your lungs with black death, and I won’t deny that doing something like smoking cigarettes will have effects over time, I believe these to be highly exaggerated and overly media hypersized.

4. You’re a slave to your addiction!!
I can’t speak for anyone but myself on this one, There may be some smokers out there that just can’t live without that cigarette and absolutely must spend every cent they have on mountains of them, forever living in poverty because they just can’t get enough of that nicotine; however, I am not one.
I smoke because I thoroughly enjoy it. I enjoy a slow drag on a long day, I enjoy coursing smoke out through my lips as I exhale. I enjoy every little bit of warmth and pleasure I get from a cigarette. I buy cigarettes because I want to, not because I have to. If I didn’t enjoy smoking, I wouldn’t smoke. "A slave to an addiction" is someone who does not enjoy what they are doing and are only doing it because they are addicted. This is not my case, and I’m sure I am not alone. I’m a smoking advocate, not a suffering crack fiend.

5. Cigarettes give you the cancer
Ah, the mid 1990’s slogan that exploded into where we are today, the cancer fiasco.
"Don’t smoke! You’ll get cancer!"
And where are your facts here? Please inform me via oodles of pamphlets and posters just how cigarettes give me cancer!
The reality is, and always will be, that smoking can lead to various types of cancer. Various because cigarettes don’t just hand over the cancer cells and say "good luck to you, sir".
There are fifty billions things in the world today that can lead to getting cancer. Sun exposure. Working in the oil industry. Using a tar based shampoo or soap product. Petroleum based make up. Nail polish remover. Eating at mcdonalds. Living under high tension wires. Excess radiation from your microwave oven.
Chances are, you use or have used several of those products in your lifetime. So, who’s safe from the big bad cancer?
Nobody. No one person has the ability to not ge

t cancer. If they did, we’d have a cure for it. The truth is that smoking can lead to it, sure, but I bet you never hesitated when wolfing down your supersized big mac that it might be cancerous, either.
Smoking doesn’t "give you" cancer, it can only lead to it. If you’re one of the unlucky ones.
Quit blaming cigarettes for your shitty genetics, quit pointing the finger at a habit for your misfortune. That sucks, but hey, life sucks sometimes.
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