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3-05-01 - The Smoking None

As a smoker, I'm concerned with my health.  Oh, wait.  No, I'm not.

But everyone else is!  There seems to be a nationwide, concerted effort to get me to stop smoking, mostly in the form of public service messages and ads for programs that will help me quit.  Of course, none of them make me want to quit smoking in the slightest, and here's a few reasons why.

Giant Flying Cigarettes

There's a commercial for some sort pill that will stop my cravings for nicotine.  The ad features enormous, zeppelin-sized cigarettes floating in slow motion through the air and crashing into each other.  It's kind of like that "don't drink and drive" ad where they had glasses of beer smashing into each other, signifying a violent accident.  But, while I get the message, I am simply mesmerized by those giant, graceful ciggys... slowly floating through the air... colliding... it's beautiful... must smoke now.

That should be the number one rule in these ads.  Never show cigarettes...

Neck Holes

... no matter what.  There's an ad where a woman tells you how horrible smoking is, right before she smokes through a hole in her neck.  Ewwww.  This, I have to admit, is horrifying and revolting, and definitely shows a downside to smoking.

Still... it shows someone smoking a cigarette.  Granted, it's being smoked through a tracheotomy hole.  But still.  Makes me reach for my pack every single time.

Cute Kids

There's that one ad that shows a heartbreakingly cute little girl whispering to her mommy "please don't smoke."  Even I'm affected by this one; that tiny tot is darn cute.  Too cute, perhaps, which is really the problem.  See, this isn't a real child suffering from smoke-related side effects, but a tiny actress.  You know next month she'll be hawking Pepsi or Doritos or starring in Curly Sue Two: Quest for Fire, and the fame at such a young age will drive her to drinking and drugs and horrible movies of the week, and soon she'll wind up showing her breasts to David Letterman and hanging out with Fiona Apple and dating Marilyn Manson and, eventually, smoking.  At least, that's how I justify it so I can continue to smoke with a clear conscience.

People Looking Like Schmucks

Okay, smoking may not make us look as cool as it once did.  In fact, it makes us look really stupid!

(Note:  that was just for all the kids who might be reading.  For you adults:  smoking makes us look really cool.)

So, giving up smoking makes us less cool, but we have our limits.  I'm talking about the commercial for the Nicotrol inhaler.

This is, essentially, a white plastic thing that one can suck on.  This device delivers some chemical into one's lungs, which somehow stops one from wanting to smoke.  Whatever.  The technical aspects of the device are to be ignored, because the guy on the commercial looks like the biggest moron in the history of creation.  He is sitting in a convertible, taking drags... off a plastic tube.  He looks like an absolute idiot.  I'd rather be seen in an iron lung than sucking on that thing.  The only way he could look more like a dope was if the plastic tube made the fweeeeee-FWEEEEEEE noise of a novelty whistle, which is what it really looks like.

The Insider

First of all, The Insider is a great film with some remarkable performances.  Russell Crowe really becomes the character he plays, Jeffery Wigand, the corporate whistle-blower, by putting on a lot of weight, adopting Wigand's mannerisms, speech patterns, body language, and so on.  It's quite remarkable.  Christopher Plummer is Mike Wallace.  He simply is.  Just a brilliant performance.  And Al Pacino is incredible as Al Pacino.  Sure, he plays the role of Lowell Bergman, the 60 Minutes producer, but he didn't bother with any of the rigmarole of trying to slip into character or anything.  Still, it's about the only movie Pacino has been bearable in over the past decade.

As an anti-smoking device, it works on a few levels.  First of all, it makes you hate Big Tobacco more than you probably already do.  Also, they don't show a single cigarette being smoked, or even just sitting on a table.

Where it fails is in the running time.  It's a fairly long movie, and by the end, I was clambering for a cigarette.  Mistake!  If they'd given the movie a running time of about fifteen minutes, every smoker would be thinking "Hey!  I just sat through a movie about cigarettes without needing to smoke a cigarette!  I can kick these cancer sticks!"  Of course, this thought would be gone a mere fifteen minutes later in a few puffs of chemical-soaked tobacco, but for a moment, anyway, it would have delivered a convert.

The Answer

So, what does make me want to quit smoking?  The cough.

Every so often, I'll be standing outside a building having a cigarette, usually out in the pouring rain, or perhaps near an busy intersection, where I can absorb some automobile fumes as well as my tobacco, and someone will come out to smoke.  A real smoker.  A two-pack-a-dayer.  A lifer.  And they'll light up, take a drag, and cough.

It's that horrible, rattling, phlegmy cough that does it.  The cough that sounds like their lungs are filled with ball-bearings and about a gallon of vanilla pudding.  If anything were ever going to make me actively want to quit smoking, that would be it.

So, I figure I'll start up a "quit-smoking" business.  If you've tried everything else, and nothing works, get in touch with me.  For a small fee, I will call your house every day and have someone cough that horrible cough into the phone.  I'll call you at work.  I'll leave you messages if you're not in.  Long, coughy messages.  I'll hire coughers to sit behind you at movies and weddings and Anthony Robbins seminars.  I'll call it the Lung Distance Plan, and charge $2.99 a minute!

I could buy a lotta smokes for that.

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