Celebrate Your Independence From Tobacco

To celebrate Independence Day this 4th of July, here are some inspirational stories from our British friends in Cheshire and Merseyside who've successfully quit or cut down their tobacco intake.

The video was commissioned by heart health charity Heart of Mersey for World No Tobacco Day 2011 to support other smokers and remind them of the positive benefits that quitting smoking can bring.

Celebrate your independence from nicotine this 4th of July by following the lead of our friends across the pond in believing that "Today I Can".


Today I can from Heart of Mersey on Vimeo.

Are You A Replacement Smoker?

I say we applaud the intelligent efforts of The SmokeScreen. They use an usual, but effective, approach to inform our youth about the tobacco industry and the consequences of smoking. According to their website -

The SmokeScreen provides an alternative approach to tobacco education by focusing on the wider issues surrounding tobacco through the use of social marketing materials. This enables young people to explore and clarify their attitudes towards smoking and empower them to make informed decisions about their health related behavior.

The network of people and organizations that assist the availability of tobacco is the overarching theme of The SmokeScreen. This smoking education resource focuses on the role of the tobacco industry, executives, producers, manufacturers and other key players, to show young people the sophisticated supply-chain which allows easy access to tobacco in order to recruit new young “replacement smokers”.

The SmokeScreen intervention also explores influences on smoking uptake, illicit tobacco, social and environmental impact on a global scale. This alternative content for tobacco education provides a more engaging method to communicate the wider societal issues associated with smoking with children and young people.

The SmokeScreen @ Leicester College from The SmokeScreen on Vimeo.

Smoking "Blows" Figuratively

I know that you're angry with the tobacco industry for fooling you into becoming a nicotine addict while you were young and impressionable.

I know that you're angry with them because smoking is wreaking havoc on your relationship, and that you're afraid for you and your family's health and welfare.

I know that you're angry with them because you've become addicted, and are now half panic-stricken because you feel like you just cannot quit smoking.

I know that you want to get back at the bastards for ruining your life, but smoking "blows" figuratively, not literally, my friends. You don't have to get all "explosive" and blow things out of proportion like this woman in order to even things up with the people profiting from your terrible addiction.

You can easily beat these demons by never starting smoking, or by quitting ASAP. Simply put, the tobacco industry will cease to exist without your money. That's the smart way to beat them.

And you don't have to go it alone. There are many people like yourself who will help you kick the habit, and with the added support of state-sponsored cessation programs - you can quit smoking.

Don't Waste Your Life Smoking

Nothing good comes from a nicotine addiction. Why not spend that time, energy, and money on other things that make your life more healthy, wealthy, and enjoyable?

Like these smart kids already know, these (conservative) statistics don't lie.


Source: Tobacco, It's A Waste

Who Really Controls The Tobacco Industry?

If you're anything like me, you might have asked yourself - "How in this world could one human being intentionally push addiction, sickness, and early death to another fellow human being without any feelings of shame, guilt or remorse?" Well, I think that I may have found the answer to my question.

It's only logical that you'd have to be from out of this world to do such genocidal things to each other. Of course, no human being could commit such horrors.



Related Link: Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, tragically died at 50-years of age from cardiac complications brought on by years of chain-smoking cigarettes.

Is Big Tobacco Still Marketing To Kids?

Another former tobacco industry insider spills the beans, via Colorado's 9News.com.

Related Link: National African American Tobacco Prevention Network

The Best Graphic Health Warning Label

As we all should know by now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally unveiled the nine graphic health warnings required to appear on every pack of cigarettes sold in the United States and in every cigarette advertisement.

I've written about these graphic health warnings labels some time ago, and since it's been announced in every news source available, I didn't think it was worth mentioning again here.

However, I've recently gotten some bogus negative feedback about these labels from either an already addicted militant smoker, some wacko libertarian, or a tobacco company shill who has no problem selling sickness and death for some pocket change. I mean, what other type of mentally-stable person would be against these graphic health warnings?

This was worth mentioning. Why?

Because these same type of caring "human beings" will also try to convince the uninformed, the ignorant, the gullible, the foolish, and especially - the youth of America, that smoking cigarettes is all about that definingly American word - "choice".

But, it's never about choice. It's always about manipulation.

Multiple studies have shown that over 90% of current smokers became addicted to nicotine while they were in their preteen or early teen years, an age WAY BEFORE their brains and minds were fully developed and they were capable of rational decision-making. It's also an age before they were capable of making a legal decision.. or a so-called "choice" to smoke.

The other 10% started smoking while in their late teens or early 20s, an age where they could make "legal" choices, but were still foolish, gullible and susceptible to peer pressure.

Once these youth continued smoking, they became addicted to the added nicotine, which then limited their ability to make the "choice" to quit smoking after they became adults and fully aware of the consequences of long-term smoking.

So, while it's possible that the FDA's graphic health warning labels may not convince most adult nicotine addicts to quit smoking, they should help prevent smoking in many children, keeping them from ever becoming that manipulated puppet dancing on the end of strings controlled by the evil tobacco industry.

Smoking Causes Brain Damage

Researchers Debapriya Ghosh and Dr Anirban Basu from the Indian National Brain Research Center, have found that a compound in tobacco provokes white blood cells in the central nervous system to attack healthy cells, leading to severe neurological damage, which may cause the insatiable desire towards oral fixations often found in smokers.


Moment 85: Ava, Pornstar / Viagra project outtakes from Ministry of Culture on Vimeo.

Regret Won't Cure Cancer

Like I've shown here many times before, every smoker thinks this won't happen to them. But the chances are it will. So, listen to Ken Newman, a smoker for over 50 years, explaining why he wishes he had never lit a cigarette in his lifetime.


Anti-tobacco insert from Fathima Simjee on Vimeo.

Smoking Kills

Mmm, mmm.. there's nothing like "Old Braiswoods" smoked meat.


Smoking Kills from 3rdEyelander Productions on Vimeo.

You Have The Power To Say "NO"

It's easy to say "NO", my ex-wife did it all of the time. Do yourself a big favor and learn to incorporate this simple word when it comes to smoking, like the following youth.

These smart high school students in Western New York, use their unique method of saying "NO" to speak out against the tobacco industry this past World No Tobacco Day.



World No Tobacco Day 2011 from RPCI Health Behavior-Paul Hage on Vimeo.

Never Give Up Giving Up

Quitting is a process. For many, quitting tobacco may be the hardest thing they do in their lifetime. But never give up. Every time you quit smoking, you get a little better at it, until eventually, you accomplish your goal of being smoke free.

Nicotine and Weight Loss

There's a newly published study in the June, 2011 issue of Science, reporting that nicotine decreases food intake and body weight by influencing the hypothalamic melanocortin system and identifies critical molecular and synaptic mechanisms involved in nicotine-induced decreases in appetite -- in mice. Sounds really scientific, huh?

According to the authors -

Smoking decreases appetite, and smokers often report that they smoke to control their weight. Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the anorexic effects of smoking would facilitate the development of novel treatments to help with smoking cessation and to prevent or treat obesity.

Now I don't know about you, but when I read something being hyped in the media as "new and groundbreaking" by scientists who are seeking an "Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the anorexic effects of smoking would facilitate the development of novel treatments to help with smoking cessation and to prevent or treat obesity.", I see behind-the-scenes efforts likely directed at generating pharma profits, instead of any true concern for smokers' health.

I'm also not sure that I automatically accept the authors' premise that nicotine is fully the cause for weight loss in smokers. According to an article published in The Independent -

British and American tobacco companies deliberately added powerful appetite-suppressing chemicals to cigarettes to attract people worried about their weight, according to internal industry documents dating from 1949 to 1999.

The presence of appetite-suppressing chemicals could help explain why smokers who quit often gain weight, according to Swiss researchers in the European Journal of Public Health. They call for stricter rules on tobacco additives amid suggestions that sensitive documents are being removed from databases by the industry to avoid disclosure.

So, like most people sick of the hypocrisy surrounding smoking, I can't help but wonder why scientists aren't directing their efforts towards removing the cause of the problem, instead of devising ways to treat the symptoms. Wouldn't that seem more scientific?

Southern Smokers

Southern smokers - defending their tobacco heritage since 1865.

Source: Very Demotivational Posters

Marketing Cigarettes To Kids Overseas

We're not marketing smoking to kids, we're only "mildly" marketing it to adult skateboarders.

All I Need Is The Air That I Breath

It's almost always, not until later in life, that some smokers realize the damage that smoking cigarettes has taken on their health, and decide to quit. But by then, the irreversible damage has already been done.

It's not that smokers aren't aware of the risks, they just think it won't happen to them. Just ask lead singer and founding member of The Hollies, Allan Clarke. If only he wouldn't have passed on his own needs early in his career, and quit smoking back then.

Cigarette Graphic Health Warnings

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act) requires that cigarette packages and advertisements have larger and more visible graphic health warnings. The Tobacco Control Act also requires FDA to issue final regulations requiring these color graphics by June 22, 2011.

Never underestimate the deviousness of the tobacco industry. In order to comply with the Tobacco Control Act, FDA hired a company to survey 18,000 smokers to determine which labels might be most effective in getting smokers to quit and preventing adolescents from starting. Here's a graphic health warning label that one of those smokers working for the tobacco industry unsuccessfully tried to sneak through for approval.

Image Creator: FishWhisperer at Worth1000.com

The Sounds Of Lung Cancer

Listen closely as you're sucking on that cancer stick. Sometimes you can hear the whistling sounds of lung cancer in smokers before it shows up on a Chester Field.

Sex, Lies, and Cigarettes

The Smoking Baby - the 2-year old who became a global YouTube sensation in the summer of 2010, has unwittingly become the poster child and symptom of a Big Tobacco-sponsored battle being waged in developing markets.

In "Sex, Lies & Cigarettes," Vanguard correspondent Christof Putzel heads to Indonesia, where he exposes Big Tobacco's successful and deadly expansion into that country, and observes the stage being set for a David vs. Goliath battle, as a small, underfunded group of concerned advocates battle Big Tobacco and a government drunk on profits and denial.

"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Mondays at 9/8c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance.

"Sex, Lies & Cigarettes" premieres on Monday, June 27, 2011 at 9/8c on Current TV.

Stylishly Long, Stylishly Kool

What many young people don't realize is that the tobacco industries single-minded goal is to produce profits. Nothing else matters. And as such, it is one of the first industries in America not to discriminate on the basis of race, age, sex, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and yes, even gender identity.

Truth be known, if you have money, the tobacco industry has a cigarette for you. They've operated like that for decades, but young people don't believe it. So, I've attached this retro video commercial that many smokers mistakenly believed was created to target women.

Listen to the words closely and you'll see that this 1960s Kool cigarette commercial was probably most likely created to target the preoperative transgender community. Smokers found in the LGBT community are some of the tobacco industries best customers.

As a matter of fact, rumor has it that more stylishly-long, and stylishly-cool, transvestites have died from cigarette smoking than from all the people they've fooled, combined.

But, you can't fool cancer - quit smoking or don't ever begin.