Today, make up a little white lie about your past, for instance, when you were nine years old you won the national spelling bee. Odds are their knowledge of past winners won’t be that extensive and you’ll be just fine. If they ask you to spell a word for them be all like, “C’mon dude, would you ask Michael Jordan to shoot a foul shot?”
For years tobacco companies claimed they never advertise to youth, but we now have documents showing they targeted kids as young as 14.
Over 30 children lose their moms to tobacco every day. That means in just one year, 12,000 kids are left motherless due to tobacco-related diseases. So we decided to re-create this scenario with ice sculptures. I mean, why wouldn’t you?
Find someone who thinks smoking is a choice. Present them with scientifically sound facts: Nicotine is addictive and about 70% of all smokers want to quit, but only about 5% do each year. You can’t argue against facts. Well, unless you’re Big Tobacco, that is.
Print and adhere to a mall directory. Practice the line, “I was just shopping for pantaloons. What are you talking about, Mr. Security Person?”
Find someone on the internet who lives somewhere else in the world and see what sort of stuff Big Tobacco is able to pull in their neck of the woods.
Like, for example, in Mexico, where one Big Tobacco company document reported in 1989 that there appeared to be “less restrictions” on the types of activities they could get involved in, for example, ‘”marketing child-size logoed clothing.” According to the report, “Mexico is a huge market where the smoking incidence is high and social/health-related concerns almost non-existent.”
Soups, cereals and other products we consume have to list ingredients on their
labels, but cigarettes are not required to list any of the 599 possible
additives. If it were up to Big Tobacco, we’d never know about these ingredients.
Ingredients
Copy and paste a mock disclaimer into your emails. Or add it to the “signatures” preference in your email application. Send a message, spread the viral love.
Download blinged-out and sparkly icons and desktop wallpaper. Think ICE for your computer, cause that’s what time it is.
The same nicotine that’s used in insecticide to kill bugs, is also used in cigarettes. Save your screen.
Watch as New Yorkers get infected with the knowledge that Big Tobacco’s products kill 36,000 people a month. That’s more lives being thrown away than there are public garbage cans in New York City.
