I can’t help but be reminded of an old Denis Leary bit about the warnings on the packs of cigarettes:
There’s a guy- I don’t know if you’ve heard about this guy, he’s been on the news a lot lately. There’s a guy- he’s English, I don’t think we should hold that against him, but apparently this is just his life’s dream because he is going from country to country. He has a senate hearing in this country coming up in a couple of weeks. And this is what he wants to do. He wants to make the warnings on the packs bigger. Yeah! He wants the whole front of the pack to be the warning. Like the problem is we just haven’t noticed yet. Right? Like he’s going to get his way and all of the sudden smokers around the world are going to be going, “Yeah, Bill, I’ve got some cigarettes.. HOLY SHIT! These things are bad for you! Shit, I thought they were good for you! I thought they had Vitamin C in them and stuff!” You fucking dolt! Doesn’t matter how big the warnings are. You could have cigarettes that were called the warnings. You could have cigarrets that come in a black pack, with a skull and a cross bone on the front, called tumors and smokers would be lined up around the block going, “I can’t wait to get my hands on these fucking things! I bet you get a tumor as soon as you light up! Numm Numm Numm Numm Numm” Doesn’t matter how big the warnings are or how much they cost. Keep raising the prices, we’ll break into your houses to get the fucking cigarettes, ok!? They’re a drug, we’re addicted, ok!? Numm Numm Numm Numm Numm *wheeze*
Leary, one of my favorites, meant that bit to be sarcasm. Nearly 20 years later, he looks prescient.
Aside from thinking of Denis Leary’s channeling of Nostradamus, I also considered how quickly parody cigarette packs would be up and running. Turns out, they already were.
Is there anyone out there that doesn’t already know that smoking is bad? I can’t help but think that the government is just totally out of touch. I also can’t help but think that the government is attempting to regulate cigarettes out of existence.
Looks, smoking is bad. People who do it are stupid. But we have the right to behave stupid. And anything we do will be used against us.
If government is going to try to regulate cigarettes off the face of the earth, they should do the same with alcohol, fatty foods, sex, gambling and everything else I enjoy. And I pray to God they don’t do any of those things.
