Warnings wasted on me

By Matt Draper

Has anyone else seen the new and improved cigarette packages out now? The ones with the full colour pics of hospital patients, diseased organs and other tissues, pregnant women smoking and my personal favourite: the limp smoke. Does anyone else think this is a monumental waste of time?

As Denis Leary put it, "Yeah, like the problem is that we haven't noticed the warnings yet." Come on, gimme a break.
Look. Smokers know smoking is bad for us. We really do. We don't need the government to tell us and we really don't need to be told by the holier-than-thou health crusaders who find it necessary to reiterate whatever tidbit of anti-smoking propaganda they recently saw on television.

As Dennis Miller said, "Any smoker who says they didn't know smoking was bad for them when they started is lying through their tracheotomy hole."

How in the hell could we not know? Everytime I have seen anyone take their first puff of a smoke, they come close to coughing up their lunch. Anyone who reads this as a good sign is obviously a bigger moron that the rest of us addicts.

That's right. I called smokers morons. It takes a deep seeded, dumber than dirt kind of stupidity to want to smoke. And yes, you have to want to at first. It is not like it is forced on people. The addiction doesn't come until later. You don't get hooked the first or even the tenth time you smoke.

My dad once joked, as he was lighting up, that it takes a brave man to stare cancer in the face. Well, he wouldn't be the first person to confuse courage with idiocy.

Don't get me wrong, I love smoking. I don't intend to stop any time soon. That being said, I also realize it is a bonehead thing to do. I also appreciate and respect the rights of the nonsmoker.

I just don't need to be told again and again that it's bad for me.