People freaking out because they can’t smoke on an airplane … how is this still a thing?

Stewardesses smoking on a plane. Nice beehive. I’m guessing about 1967?

Here’s yet another in a long line of nitwits freaking out on an airplane because she can’t smoke.

A woman lost her mind on an airplane because she disabled a smoke detector, then threatened to start killing people on the plane when she was confronted.

Get this, it was a flight from Sacramento to Portland, Ore. Basically a 75-minute flight. She really couldn’t go two hours without lighting up?

Ah the days … when there was no escaping other people’s smoke.

I swear, I come across some article about someone either losing their shit on an airplane or getting arrested for trying to light a cigarette in an airplane restroom at least two or three times a year. At least. Seriously, this isn’t that isolated. Here’s another incident. And another. And another. I could find dozens if I spent enough time.

I don’t get it. It’s been illegal on all domestic flights in the U.S. since the early 1990s and it’s been illegal on ALL flights entering or leaving the U.S. since 2000. So, for the past 17 years, you cannot light a cigarette on any airplane, since 1990 or so, you can’t light up on any domestic flight in the U.S. Smoking has been banned on airplanes throughout much of the world for at least a decade.

So, why is this still a thing? I shrug my shoulders. Some of it, I think it’s some weird phenonenom where people with mental health issues are prone to freakouts on planes and people with mental health issues are often times calmed by smoking so they don’t think about what they’re doing. I’m going to guess the woman on the Portland flight has mental problems.

But, what about the assholes who keep trying to smoke in bathrooms? Knowing they’re in a very confined space with no escape with pressurized air, ie, it’s incredibly fucking dangerous to smoke on a plane which is one of the reasons why it was banned. Is it that hard to get a patch if the nicotine addiction is that bad? (And thank god vaping on a plane is also illegal with vaping pens’ tendency to periodically explode.)

Again … it’s a thing. And will continue to be.

 

Big Tobacco starts airing court-ordered anti-smoking ads

This week, tobacco companies began running ads admitting that cigarettes are unhealthy. This is the result of lawsuit filed by the Justice Department way back in 1999.

A court ruled back in 2006 that the industry had to admit its wrongdoings, but Altria and RJR and British American Tobacco have been appealing that decision for 11 years. They managed to get the language watered down quite a bit from the original ruling that toned down the language.

From a USA Today article:

“It has been a long fight,” Robin Koval, president of the anti-smoking nonprofit Truth Initiative, told NBC News. She added: “Not as much will be seen by young people, who spend less and less of their time watching prime-time television.”

In the ad, fully paid for by the tobacco industry, the industry admits that cigarettes kill 1,200 people every day in the U.S. and kills more people than illegal drugs, alcohol, AIDS and murder combined.

The ad goes on to say that smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and various other cancers such as leukemia, throat, esophageal, bladder, pancreatic and stomach.” It even mentions cervical cancer and low birth weight for children (I wish it had talked about diabetes, arthritis, and erectile dysfunction, too).

I haven’t seen any of the print ads yet; the industry is supposed to put these ads in major papers over the next several months. I bought a Seattle Times looking for one, but no cigar. They’re apparently being rolled out over several months. But, I’ve seen the ads on YouTube that are airing on TV.

About time. Watered down, but making Big Tobacco pay for an ad telling people that cigarettes kill … priceless enough.

Natural American Spirit finally drops “additive-free” from advertising

Natural American Spirit finally drops “additive-free” from advertising

Years of litigation have finally worked. Natural American Spirit has FINALLY changed its advertising.

For years, this RJ Reynolds subsidiary had gotten away with advertising its cigarettes as being “natural” and “additive free.” Natural American Spirit had agreed in a settlement early this year with the FDA to stop the deceptive advertising, yet I kept seeing ads in Sports Illustrated for “natural” and “additive free” Natural American Spirit cigarettes, somehow giving consumers the idea that their cigarettes were safer and more healthy … which they absolutely are not.

Apparently, the whole issue had to wind through the legal process because in last week’s Sports Iilustrated, I FINALLY saw that NAS had dropped the “natural” and “additive-free” from its advertising.

The new ad simply says: “Real. Simple. Different.” No “additive-free” BS. Though the ad later goes on to state that the only two ingredients are “tobacco and water.” (Never mind the fact that tobacco contains roughly 3,000 ingredients in of itself.)

It’s a minor victory. RJR really had to be dragged kicking and screaming just to make this small change in its advertising. Advocates wanted the name “Natural American Spirit” changed, but the settlement allows the brand to remain. Again, to reiterate, Natural American Spirit started out as a Native-owned cigarette company but several years ago it was purchased by RJ Reynolds and it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RJ Reynolds. A lot of people still believe this is a Native-owned brand. It isn’t.

A great and informative anti-tobacco video

That’s 30 packs’ worth of tar

This might be the best anti-tobacco video I’ve ever seen. It’s an experiment using cotton balls in a jar and subjecting them to various levels of cigarette smoke, ending at 30 packs. Then the viewer gets to see just how much gunk and tar the cotton balls collect after just a few cigarettes.

Think, that’s the same gunk and tar that collects on smokers’ lung cells. My favourite part is when the guy squeezes all of the tar out of the hoses used in his experiment.

Think about that. Pretty scary, huh? If this video doesn’t encourage smokers to quit, seriously, I don’t know what can.

Look at this and think to yourself, this is 30 lousy packs. That’s basically a month’s worth of cigarettes for a moderately heavy smoker. That’s 1/12th as much gunk that ends up in your lungs as you get after just one year.

Here’s the video: