Opinions: Truth.com needs to butt out

 by Chris Ogino
 published on Tuesday, April 8, 2008

When did not smoking turn people into babbling retards? I am, of course, referring to the Truth.com ads — ads that get progressively dumber with time.

They seem to have woken up one morning and decided that nobody but them knows that cigarettes harm your health. Maybe someone should have told them that that information is printed on every box. That probably would have saved a lot of time.

Truth.com should be thanking the cigarette companies for being so forward. Imagine if other companies followed their lead. Toys saying "Warning: Made in China by children who will never be able to afford the toy they make. And it's full of lead." Or DVDs of "Crash" with the label "Warning: Watching this movie teaches you nothing about real race relations, but it makes you feel as if you did. And it was written by a white guy."

Maybe they could get people to stop smoking if anti-smoking ads did not present that air of "I am better than you" all the time. That's basically like sarcastically singing, "It must have been a typo, a typo," in front of a list of people who died from cigarette smoking.

You know, after a decade or two of this, I think most of America gets the message — some of America just does not give a damn.

The uneducated ones probably won't listen to a singing typewriter telling them how stupid they are for buying tobacco. Or a unicorn. Or a teenager. When did kids my age become the authority on quitting smoking? Maybe smoking does start at a younger age. I've seen studies showing that most smokers are people ages 18 to 24. But I can't remember the last time I listened to Hilary Duff talk about anything. Get Morgan Freeman; hell, I'll listen to him talk about penguins for a few hours.
Here's an idea: Stop handing us information that goes straight into the "Things I already know folder," and focus on how expensive those little sticks are.

Tobaccofreekids.com has a study saying that it costs $5.62 a pack in Arizona to be a smoker.

But it's not just that — life insurance premiums increase for smokers. If I was 38 years old and I took out a 20-year insurance policy with State Farm, it would, according to a rate quote on State Farm's Web site, cost approximately $600 more a year.

Or what about cleaning costs? After a while, Febreze is not going to cut it. People are not going to want to ride with you anywhere.

And then there's Social Security. If you die earlier, you won't get it. OK, you may not get Social Security money even if you don't smoke, but the probability of me as a nonsmoker to collect is better than a smoker's, even if only in theory.

Then there's the cost of teeth whitening. And the money taken off your Hyundai trade-in because it smells like San Bernardino. And the cost of paying for your girlfriend's/boyfriend's cigarettes — you know, because you don't smoke, so you must have lots of money and because it's not even that much, you can do this little thing for them because you care, right?

Anyway, Truth.com and overzealous ad team, we all understand that smoking is bad for you. Fast food is bad for you, too. But hey, at least McDonald's has a dollar menu. And at least Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" was funny.

Chris can be reached by e-mail at cogino@asu.edu.