Thank You For Smoking

I watched ‘Thank You For Smoking’ on Tuesday night. It’s a comedy/drama/satire type thing. It follows a man who works for The Academy of Tobacco Studies, a tobacco lobby whose stated purpose is to research the links between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. Amazingly the group who are funded by ‘Big Tobacco’ find no link whatsoever. He says that their scientist is ‘a genius who could disprove gravity.’

Although I wouldn’t recommend this film due to it’s coarse language, it made some relevant points. The US government in the film are very keen on posting a skull and crossbones on all cigarette packages. The mad thing is that this satirical idea is less over the top than what is actually happening. Currently if you are a smoker in the UK, you get to stare at this every time you fancy a fag:

Nice.

A skull and crossbones is nothing compared to that.

The thing is, if the government really wanted to ditch smoking for good, they could actually ban it. Those individuals who are heavily reliant on nicotine could have prescriptions. That would solve the problem. But the government don’t want to get rid of smoking, because of the absurd amount of tax that they make from it. They want to stop people who smoke from enjoying it, while at the same time still reaping the benefits.

Another thing that the film highlighted was the loss of this sort of classic footage, enjoy.

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