I lost my faith in the anti smoking commercials after I smoked weed and made the revelation that marijuana isn't the menace its respective ad campaigns make it out to be. Or the classic "this is your brain on heroin" (not that I'm advocating heroin use, but I've never felt like my brain is a trashed kitchen while under the influence of opiates- you just feel really good). Silly, perhaps, but once you realize you've been lied to regarding some of the "harder" drugs, it doesn't seem that absurd to smoke a cigarette.
Ironically though, after parading through pretty much every drug class available to me (I've still never come across PCP or crack rocks, white suburbia ftw), I'd have to say tobacco is probably the substance most truthfully and realistically portrayed in anti-smoking/drug campaigns. It really is a comparatively stupid substance to use; chain smoking in particular is a magnificent waste of health for very little satisfaction. I don't understand how I ever got up to a pack a day (until I started hand rolling to minimize the cost), or how other people can so easily surpass even that quantity. So naturally, society continues to romanticize tobacco use and allow it to remain an easily acquirable substance regardless of age. Personally, I find it mind boggling.
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