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Smoking

advertising

iTunes Steals Mad Men's Smokes

The image you see on top is a standard ad for Mad Men, AMC's series about hard-paryting admen in the good old days that conveniently advertises itself everywhere. The image on the bottom is what you see when you visit iTunes to purchase the full season of Mad Men. The difference? On iTunes, the man has had his cigarette taken away. Steve Jobs does not understand the point of this show at all. Click to enlarge the Apple-approved scrubbing of our culture.

One Full Pack Of Anything But Newports, Please "In Bedford-Stuyvesant, a glitzy housing complex has risen in a neighborhood where cigarettes often get sold singly. It's a test of coexistence." Yuppies and loosies together? That'll be the day. [LAT]

Classic Ads

Five Ways Camel Cigarettes Are Good For You

Are you aware that Camels are made from finer, more expensive tobaccos than any other brand? And that they stimulate digestion, taste great, and will make you a better swimmer? Failing to teach your kids to smoke Camels is virtually child abuse! All true, according to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. We've compiled five of the most outrageous claims from classic Camel ads of the 1930s-50s, from the peerless archive at the Gallery of Graphic Design. Read them and be educated. Do it for your "T-Zone!" More »

smoking

Poor Smoky Obama Fires Veep Vetter

Today, Barack Obama fired the guy he hired to pick his Vice President. The guy, Jim Johnson, apparently got some cash from Countrywide's controversial "real estate loans for friends of our CEO" program. Countrywide destroyed the entire nation, so Johnson has been criticized. Also he picked Geraldine Ferraro for Veep back in the day, so.... Anyway, Obama now needs to hire someone to vet the guy he hires to vet his Vice Presidential choice. We recommend the crooked NBA ref. (The stress of the campaign has driven poor Obama back to his precious, precious cigarettes.)

smoking

Keep Your Laws Off Our Kools!

Seven former US health secretaries have signed a letter calling on the government to ban menthol cigarettes, which have been exempted from an upcoming bill banning "flavored" cigarettes. Congress, thankfully, isn't backing them on this one. Do you know what we smoked before Kools? Beedies. They're even worse! Soon, shady Astroturf groups quietly financed by Big Tobacco will come together with unscrupulous hustlers posing as representatives of the black community to say: Hands off our bodies, government! [NYT]

not afraid to be servicey

The Top Five Celebrity Cocaine Mistakes

If you're famous, and you want to do cocaine (or smoke crack), our best advice is: don't do it, because you're a role model. Ha ha. But seriously, hopeless crackhead celebrities; if you're going to do it at least don't be an idiot. Coke is hardly even frowned upon in Hollywood, but getting busted while acting like a maniac can seriously impair your image and earning ability in middle America. So learn from your more unfortunate peers' mistakes; after the jump, five cases of cocaine-fuelled idiocy, and how not to reproduce them. More »

corporate america

1947's Desk Of The Future

Ah, the good old days of 1947: a simpler time, when titans sat astride the corporate world, and those titans had desks appropriate to men with superhuman prestige—desks that were acknowledgments of the widespread on-the-job alcoholism that was the style at the time. Modern Mechanix digs up a Popular Science story from '47 about an executive dream desk with everything a man could possibly desire: a 'work' side with a six-tube radio, Teletalk Intercommunication Master Unit, and electronic dictaphone; and a 'play' side with a wet bar and fridge. Oddly, the personal safe is also on the 'play' side, but the cigarette lighter is on the work side. A different culture. The cost of this masterwork? "Well into the four figures." Larger image of the story, after the jump. More »

health

McCain Healthy, Barack Obama Doomed

John McCain is in mostly good health. He's had melanoma three times but now "appears cancer-free." He's arthritic and takes cholesterol meds and has precancerous lesions removed periodically, but his heart is super-strong! He also has vertigo. The cancer probably won't come back within the next 8 years, though there's a chance of it. Also, "aides said McCain has had no mental evaluations in the past eight years and none was included in the documents." Meanwhile, have you heard that Barack Obama is terribly unhealthy? It's true, some guy at HuffPo says the Senator is totally unfit for duty. More »

smoking

Menthol Cigarettes Are Not 'Flavored,' Says Dr. Kool Newport

How popular are menthol cigarettes? Popular enough to reverse logic. The government is set to pass a bill that will ban "flavored" cigarettes, but menthols will be excluded. Because menthol, of course, is not a flavor. What menthol is is close to $20 billion in sales for the tobacco industry. As well as an important part of African-American culture! Tobacco companies advertise menthol brands disproportionately to minority communities, and it obviously works, although nobody really knows why. What we do know is that this bill is perfect—it protects my precious Kools, while saving America from the strawberry menace: More »

the internet

Cop-Gun Cameras Presage Most Twisted Viral Videos Yet

It looks like New York might become the first state in the country to mandate that special video cameras, accompanied by a bright spotlight and laser, be attached to police handguns to provide a visual record of shootings. In the state legislature, former cops from both major political parties are supporting at least a pilot program for the technology. Certainly the devices, which can optionally record audio, could help answer critical questions in the wake of killings like the one involving Sean Bell. But of course there's a downside: Imagine what a media huckster like TMZ's Harvey Levin would do with the footage from one of these things. More »

nightlife

Hot Club Bans Fun

Beatrice Inn, the "babe central" Manhattan nightspot that already cracked down on sex and drugs with a sternly worded bathroom sign, has now also banned smoking and dancing. All that's left is for them to ban pretty women and young horny celebrity guys, and they can shut down in peace! Of course, Emily Brill knew about this months ago. [DBTH]

magazines

David Sedaris: Do You Remember Smoking?

Remember when you could smoke, like, everywhere in America? David Sedaris does in this week's New Yorker: "When I was in fourth grade, my class took a field trip to the American Tobacco plant in nearby Durham, North Carolina. There we witnessed the making of cigarettes and were given free packs to take home to our parents." Sedaris goes on to helpfully explain which kind of cigarette goes with what kind of person: "Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites..."
More »

advertising

Smoke And Have Your Fingers Hacked Off

The City of New York has always run anti-smoking ads that are pretty great, in the sense that they're disgusting and make smokers jump up and change channels as quickly as possible. The city's newest campaign features "Marie," a 58 year-old who has smoked for 40 years, even as bits of her body were constantly being amputated because of her poor circulation [NY Sun]. This could backfire, though, because it just makes it easy to say "I'll stop after my first amputation." The ad is below—I particularly admire how they slipped in a picture of a bone saw. Something to think about on my smoke break. More »

journalismism

The Smoking Gun Is Just Three Guys

With just three guys in a plain office building on Manhattan's East side, investigative website TheSmokingGun.com revealed the LA Times' Tupac Shakur story was based on fake documents, exposed lying memoirist James Frey and found out that Fox News host Bill O'Reilly is into loofahs. The site modestly attributes much of its success to the recent digitization of court records and such, but it probably helps that its editor is a "veteran Mafia reporter" who knows where to look, and when, for the juiciest records: More »

smoking

Smoking Bans: The Silent Killer

The Economist—the most serious magazine in the world—argues today that America's smoking bans have killed untold numbers of innocent people. While bans on smoking in public places are in place theoretically to save us from ourselves, the piecemeal approach America has taken to instituting them has led to huge leaps in fatal accidents involving alcohol. More »

cigarettes

$5 Bootleg Newport Packs Bought On The Street Looking More Attractive

Bad/ good news: New York is attempting to double its cigarette tax to $3 per pack, which would bring the overall cost of a pack to almost $9, the most in the nation. But the New York Association of Convenience Stores is lobbying hard against the increase, saying it will only drive smokers to bootleggers and Indian reservations to stock up. Gosh, how evil of these cursed Convenience Store lobbyists to oppose this vital public health measure! Also, does anybody know where I can send contributions to the Convenience Store lobby? This is tearing our society's fragile smoker-nonsmoker peace agreement apart! Luckily, the crack New York media found one smokin' teenager to put this difficult issue in perspective: More »

smoking

Smoking Ban Making New York Dangerously Fat, Uncool

Except for dry cleaners, almost everyone likes the New York City cigarette ban. People smell better, smokers have an excuse to leave a bad conversation and non-smokers feel left out, as they should. But oh no: we're getting fat without our cigs! From 2002, when the law was enacted, through 2004, New Yorkers gained 10 million pounds collectively. Imagine how fat we are now! The island will surely sink if we can't smoke indoors. Manhattan will become a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited only by Will Smith and roving hordes of zombie fatties, unless you give us back our cigarettes. What's a little cancer compared with looking good in skinny jeans? [NY Sun]

bias

They Want Us to Die

So some scientist did some study that showed that many fewer people would die of the lung cancer if we all got CT scans, or something, and they printed the study in the New England Journal of Medicine. But now the New York Times has revealed that the study was funded in part by a foundation that received four grants from Liggett Tobacco, so none of it counts. "In the seven years that I've been here, we have never knowingly published anything supported by" a cigarette maker, the editor-in-chief of the journal said. Because he wants us to die. They'll take all the studies in the world funded by groups whose raison d'etre is proving that cigarettes are bad! But one little giant tobacco company tries to come up with a way we can safely journey into the country of the shadow of flavor and suddenly its a big ethics crisis. Now they'll ban the cigarettes, again. [NYT]