It seems strange to me that in 50 years pot will be legal, but cigarettes will not. The cultural pendulum has swung, and smoking tobacco is on the way out.
The truly weird thing about this is that both pot and tobacco have been targets of calculated ad campaigns. My favorite of these is the cigarettes that turn people into fish. I’d buy 17 crates of those.
The reason that the smoking ads have been successful, and the marijuana ads not so much, is probably due to the nature of the drugs and the fact that cigarettes kill and are horrendously addictive. Most people know at least one person battling either cancer or struggling to quit smoking. The message reaches people because it isn’t a lie.
Despite the success of the anti-smoking campaigns, there is a way to kill cigarette smoking and kick the habit once and for all, and it can be done within a year.
Imagine no need for ashtrays, smoke shops selling only Pyrex, no small groups of people huddled against the cold. This solution is so simple that I am surprised it hasn’t been hit on years ago.
Ban retail. That’s right. Much like the one kid with an older brother can bring swearing into the classroom, the retail worker brings smoking to everybody they come into contact with. Retail jobs are mindless, numbing, brain damaging, stressful, low-paying, nightmarish jobs with no benefits that many people get stuck in.
The idea that anybody can work their way to upper management is a lie, and many workers, confronted with this after years of work selling people appliances or clothing or whatever else, finally break and require something to help them cope with the stress.
Nicotine calms.
As far as drugs go, it does this par excellence. Alcohol can “still the demons,” but it only increases stress.
Most places test for pot in unconstitutional drug tests, an ultimate violation of privacy, and more exotic drugs and pills that aren’t tested for are dangerous. Not that cigarettes aren’t dangerous, it’s just that they kill you slowly.
Who wants to live while working retail anyway? After 20 years of getting screamed at by pudgy, greedy, impatient customers while being forced to act in the most unctuous, ingratiating manner, who wouldn’t want to smoke?
The retail worker smokes at work then brings the habit home to his or her children; these children bring the habit to middle school and the cancer spreads out from there.
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I have never been a fan of going after the symptoms; instead I prefer to attack the jugular and take the cause out. If retail stores were banned tomorrow, smoking in the middle class would be gone within a generation.
I would also suggest banning blue-collar jobs to kill both drinking and smoking among the poor, but the economy would collapse, and because nobody cares about the working class, it would never make it past the Senate, much less the House.
So, dear readers, get out the petition-producing pencils and pretend to do something. Write your congressman or congresswoman about this unprecedented plan to do something good for society by removing retail as if with a surgical laser or targeted chemotherapy. Burn the problem out at its base.
Don’t ban smoking, ban retail.
