Life

Buy Cigarettes, Get a Lung Cancer Patient?

by Emma Cueto

The efforts to get American kids to not smoke have reached such a fever pitch that I would not be surprised to hear someone had invented an anti-smoking message you could play to your unborn baby instead of Mozart. And, as College Humor observes in their new video "Even Worse FDA Cigarette Warnings," the efforts to get Americans who do smoke to quit are no less vehement. Funny as it may seem, the video actually touches on a lot of aspects of the anti-smoking mentality of America.

For one thing, the fact that anti-smoking efforts keep getting more intense is interesting considering the fact that the number of people who smoke is decreasing (currently, about 18 percent of American adults smoke). Yet, we are so bombarded with messages about how awful it is, you'd think that we were facing an epidemic. That's not to say smoking isn't terrible. Yes, tobacco companies knowingly put out a product that, when used as directed, can kill you — that's how they make their money. Still, the intensity of some anti-smoking ads can feel a little out of place (though at least most ads aren't as strange as anti-pot PSAs).

On the other hand, though, the fact that so many Americans know the risks of smoking — and I challenge you to find a single person past the age of five who doesn't know the risks of smoking — yet still choose to smoke and risk lung cancer is equally bizarre. That's the driving impetus behind anti-smoking campaigns: to make people really confront the awful effects of smoking. And, as ridiculous as they may sometimes seem, studies suggest anti-smoking efforts are working.

And so to that effect, College Humor has a new idea for an FDA rule: anyone who buys a pack of cigarettes also gets a real, live lung cancer patient to take care of as well. It combines over-the-top anti-smoking vehemence with the resistance so many smokers have toward quitting. See it for yourself.

Image: College Humor