As I’m sure you can’t have missed, we are currently approaching the squeaky clean winge-athon that is Stoptober. Whether these self-righteous and rather patronising health pushes from the NHS work or not is up for debate, but I can’t fault them for trying: smoking is the devil’s sperm and it’s quite amazing that us retards still get involved.

As if we really need to be told, here are a few more reasons why smoking is just about the shittest idea in the solar system, nay, the entire Universe. First up, the obvious:

Health Beefs

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The negative health implications are almost too obvious to include, and there’s no one with even a smidgen of brain matter who doesn’t admit that smoking fags is bad for you. They might say “well, at least it’s not Krokodil”, but that’s not really the point.

I’m not going to bang on about the health side of things too much, because, after all, we aren’t stupid (allegedly). So here’s a list of health hinderances taken from peer reviewed journals and proper scientific studies (i.e. NOT the Daily Mail):

So, deep breath:

Fags increase the likelihood of cancer in the lungs, throat, mouth, oesophagus, liver, stomach, pancreas, kidneys, bladder, cervix, bone marrow, blood, colon and rectum.

Smoking also causes several autoimmune diseases, including Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. It doubles your risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis and is linked to type 2 diabetes.

Tobacco decreases bone density and can lead to osteporosis. It’s no walk in the park for your blood either, smoking increases your risk of atherosclerosis, aneurysms, cardiovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease and everyone’s least favourite twitch: strokes.

Other than cancer, smoking frigs with your lungs and causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma and the old school killer — TB.

So that covers everything… oh wait, no — eyes. Smoking is linked to an increased risk of developing age-related macular degeneration, cataract, and optic nerve damage, all of which can lead to blindness. Excellent.

And that’s just a snapshot. Quite a bargain when you consider they’re just £8 a pack. But health issues are just the start.

Cigarette Litter And The Environment

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We all know full well that smoking has a literal butt tonne of negative health impacts and we clearly don’t care, so let’s try a different tack: the environment, i.e. where we all live and breath.

Although most people don’t really care about anyone except themselves, the environment takes a hit from tab-related shit too.

Tobacco and the paper it is wrapped in biodegrade nicely(ish). But the filters, despite what some people claim, are not biodegradable in any real sense. They do breakdown but it takes decades which is plenty of time for them to enter animal’s guts and gills and fuck with the ecosystem some more.

In America, cigarette litter is the most numerous type of litter. Apparently around 2 billion butts are dropped per day on a global basis which is a number that’s hard to get your head around. I’m not even going to bother multiplying that number by 365 and then 10 to see how many that would be in a decade because the answer will be SHIT LOADS.

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On top of the massive amount of these little white devils, there are also the chemicals within them to consider, obviously from the tobacco itself (which as we know only too well, is a poison) but also heavy metals in the tips themselves which can kill fish when they leach into the waterways.

Here’s a quote from a New Scientist article on the problem:

We have found that one cigarette butt soaked in a litre of water for 96 hours leaches out enough toxins to kill half of the fresh or salt water fish exposed to them.

So that’s some more shit news for fishies.

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Sure, one Swan filter isn’t going to end the universe, but billions per day is going to make quite a nasty cocktail.

Interestingly, filters were first brought in by big tobacco firms to stop the tobacco from getting into smoker’s mouths. It was only later down the line when health issues were being raised that they changed tack. They started marketing them as lung protectors. Recent research, however, has shown that filters don’t seem to have any effect on the levels of cancer any way. So that’s a kick in the balls.

The smoking execs also had the genius thought that filters would help make ciggies more palatable to younger smokers, more on that bleak note on the next page.

If You Smoke You Are Funding Cunts

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Everyone knows fags kill. It’s not even up for debate any more. So these companies that make, promote and sell cigarettes are profiting from knowingly poisoning millions of people per day.

You can argue about freedom of of choice as much as you like but that’s still a pretty cunty maneuver, right? How do they sleep at night? Very fucking well, thanks, they’re minted. Here’s what some genuine tobacco big boys had to say about pushing cigarettes on the youths.

First up, this is from an executive at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company when asked why he doesn’t smoke:

We don’t smoke that shit. We just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and stupid.

In 1990, Terrence Sullivan, a sales representative for R.J. Reynolds, was asked whether they were targeting junior high kids or even younger. He said:

They got lips? We want them.

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This comes from a memo written by a Lorillard Tobacco executive in a memo to the President of the company:

[T]he base of our business is the high school student.

R.J. Reynolds, February 29, 1984:

Younger adult smokers are the only source of replacement smokers… If younger adults turn away from smoking, the industry must decline.

1973 R.J. Reynolds draft paper, “Some Thoughts About New Brands of Cigarettes For the Youth Market”:

The fragile, developing self-image of the young person needs all the support and enhancement it can get. Smoking may appear to enhance that self-image.

So not only are they selling cigarettes to older people who should know better, they are pushing them on kids who definitely don’t know better. That’s fucked up.

It Isn’t Even Cool Anymore

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In the early days fags were awesomely cool things. They were healthy for your lungs and they made sure that every single girl in the room found you debonair and irresistible. Then it came crashing to light that they killed you slowly, but somehow they were still cool, cool and dangerous.

Today, only models and shit rock stars smoke in public because that’s the only way they can appear “edgy” and “rebellious” and it’s not really cool anymore.

The main problem is, cigarette smoke looks cool in photos and on film, and it probably always will. In interviews with fashion photographers they often say things like “it fills the space”, “it plays in the air”, “it gives the photo life”. But the reality is totally different.

Smoking used to be cool like this:

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Now it’s portrayed more like this:

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Cigarette ads used to be like this:

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Now they are all like this:

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Ex-Malboro man Eric Lawson dies of smoking related diseases, no one bats an eye lid.

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All round super hard man Yul Brynner even took the time to post a video to YouTube after his death to tell us to stop being such divs about smoking:

But for some reason no one seems to care whether it is cool or not. We just crack on any way.

Nowadays smoking’s biggest poster boy is Nigel Farage, and if you want to be associated with him, I advise you to double your nicotine intake immediately. Oh, and Clarkson. So it’s obviously a hit with old school sexist racists. Ace.

All in all smoking is gash. My recommendation? Buy yourself a massive bong.