I saw an article in yesterday's paper that gave me the impetus to speak out in defense of yet another group of assholes. This time, it's Big Tobacco. There was some kind of rally downtown where people were marching against the industry's advertising tactics, which I think is pointless.

The tobacco industry's street cred as the worst kind of money grubbing fucks is well known. They are in business to make as much money as possible, and they don't care about the thousands who die thanks to their products.

The reason why I defend the tobacco companies is exactly for the fact that their reputation is well established. Furthermore, everyone knows that if you smoke, and you keep doing it, you're greatly increasing the chances of serious illness and death. This isn't the 50s and 60s anymore where Big Tobacco is lying and telling us that smoking is actually good for us, either. With all this information, lots of people don't care. And you know what? That's their choice. I could give less than a fuck about what someone else wants to do with their body. Besides, as Chandler from Friends pointed out during the first season, "The bottom line is, smoking is cool and you know it."

Do any smokers out there smoke because of an advertisement they saw? I doubt there are many, if any. No, people smoke for plenty of other reasons - peer pressure, to relieve stress, whatever. Neither Joe Camel nor the Marlboro Man ever showed up at anyone's door or any bars and started cramming cigarettes into people's mouths and fired them up.

Speaking of ads, I saw an ad put out by Philip Morris themselves promoting helping people quit last night, and this offended me. They're actually being forced to help try get people to stop buying their products? To do something that is just bad business? Come on, this has gotten way out of hand.

I have never smoked a cigarette in my entire life, and to be honest, fucking hate being around cigarette smoke in most instances. But you know what? I don't care if anyone else does it, because they have all the information they need, and they're free to make their own decisions. For the most part, I can just avoid smoke if I want to, so everyone's happy.

Continuing with the advertising realm, fuck those stupid "Truth" commercials. You know, the ones where they stack bodybags outside of tobacco company buildings and shit like that. I'm tempted to track these assholes down and light up in front of them just to make a point to those sanctimonious Nazi fucks.

Fuck you, Truth people, and fuck you, assholes rallying downtown. If people really want to smoke, they're going to smoke. Also, it's not like you're exposing some great evil - the evil is already well known. So just go home and get over yourselves already.