All posts by Pepe Lepew

Chewin’ tobacco in Steamboat Willie

December 2, 2013 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Went to Disneyland last week and for some reason it jarred this memory for me.

The first ever Mickey Mouse cartoon — Steamboat Willie — had a funny scene in it in which the captain of the steamboat takes a massive chaw of chewing tobacco and starts spitting chew all over the place. It’s actually pretty gross.

How times have changed. This is from 1928, a kids’ cartoon showing someone chewing and spitting tobacco. (Of course, the same cartoon basically shows Mickey torturing small animals to make music.). I wonder if they still show this scene at Disneyland (there’s a theatre that shows Steamboat Willie). If I had had more time, I would have gone and checked it out.

cigarettes, Lung disease, quitting smoking, smoking

CNN: Nine powerful stories of smokers’ last cigarettes

November 22, 2013 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

Awesome, poignant article by CNN.com.

For the Great American Smokeout last week, CNN.com interviewed 9 former smokers about their final cigarette. Most every ex-smoker can remember their last cigarette, when they finally had had enough and quashed one out for the final time. Most smokers can remember their last cigarette because it usually takes three, four or even more tries to quit, and when the day comes that quitting finally works is a big event in their lives.

So, CNN collected some awesome quotes from these nine people, citing everything from existentialism to their families as reasons for quitting. Let me share some of them:

A fellow workmate made a profound statement to me: ‘You know, Bob, there is never a good day to quit smoking, is there?’ That hit me like a ton of bricks.

— Bob Miller, last cigarette: April 1, 2006

*****

Now, when I feel that urge, I think about two small faces, and how I’d answer them if they asked me why I was sick or why I was dying. I’d have no one to blame but myself.

— Beth Woods, last cigarette, Aug. 5, 2008

*****

I remember a trip to the ER with a bad case of bronchitis. This was the first time that my husband had seen me that sick. The look of panic and helplessness convinced me that I had to stop.

— Lisa Gonsalves, last cigarette 2005

Gonsalves’ bronchitis was so severe, she had to have tubes inserted into her lungs to drain the fluid and her chest “cracked open” to clean out her lungs.

“I can’t say that I don’t crave it – especially when I am stressed out,” Gonsalves told CNN.com. “I do have to constantly remind myself of the pain and the feeling of drowning because I couldn’t breathe to keep me from running out and getting a pack. It is a very mental game I play every day but I get stronger and stronger every day without a cigarette.”

*****

When I smoked my last one, it was more of a release, rather than freaking out about how I was going to deal with it.

— John Turner, last cigarette 2011

*****

My wife got the news she was finally pregnant. The very moment she told me I crushed my pack of cigarettes up and threw them away.

— Martin C. Grube, last cigarette 1983.

*****

Then the story of Kara Wethington, who quit after her 66-year-old grandmother died.

“I loved smoking. The social aspect of it, the taste of it, the way it made me feel — everything about it was romantic to me.”

But the death of her grandmother was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” soon after Wethington herself was diagnosed with an aggressive form of strep throat, and she hasn’t looked back for 13 years.

“I’ve had smoking dreams that felt so intimately real that the line of reality and fantasy blurred out my memory. I know I didn’t smoke but sometimes those dreams feel really good and sometimes with real regret.”

(Interesting, I never heard of this dreaming of smoking before, but another ex-smoker said the same thing.

“It took me years to stop dreaming about having a cigarette and sometimes I would wake up and not be sure if I had smoked.”

— Linda Parker

smoking, smoking in movies

Disney smoking ban means no smoking for Walt Disney

November 18, 2013 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Here’s quite a weird story. Because Disney has banned smoking in its movies (Ironically, lots of smoking in Pinocchio and 101 Dalmatians), in a new about Disney founder Walt Disney, smoking cannot be shown, even though Walt Disney was a four- to five-pack-a-day smoker who always had a cigarette in his hand.

(Walt Disney also died of lung cancer at 65. Not passing judgement, just passing on the facts.)

The Walt Disney movie, called “Saving Mr. Banks,” stars Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. It takes place in the early 60s, at the height of the Cigarette Empire, during the making of “Mary Poppins.” Supposedly, the one scene where they got away with showing Walt smoking is when someone walks into his office and he is seen putting a cigarette out in an ashtray.

Smoking has been all but removed from PG-13 movies because of pressure put on the MPAA a few years ago to crack down on all the smoking in kid and teen movies (I wrote a few emails myself). There was actually MORE smoking in PG-13 movies in 2008 than in 1998, when the Master Settlement Agreement supposedly abolished tobacco payouts to studios for product placement of cigarettes in teen movies. In my opinion, it was Hollywood simply stuck in a rut with the idea that smoking was cool and smoking made its characters more cool — never mind the fact that Humphrey Bogart died of throat cancer in his 50s, Hollywood still considered smoking cool. The reason this was such an important issue is many studies and surveys showed that where teens got the idea that smoking is cool came from smoking looking cool in Hollywood movies.

The MPAA hem and hawed and obviously was afraid to make a change, and a number of influential Hollywood directors railed against the ruling (James Cameron is one who was annoyed by it), but eventually the MPAA put in a milquetoast ruling that “pervasive” smoking would result in an R rating, unless it was in a historic setting.

As I hoped, that milquetoast ruling was enough to convince most studios to eliminate smoking in PG-13 movies, because they simply don’t want to bang heads with the MPAA over the definition of “pervasive” or “historical.” (Keep in mind how movie ratings work. Ultimately, movie ratings are all about marketing, and studios determine what the rating they want for the movie before production even begins — basically R ratings are avoided at all costs because they limit the audience to adults and parents with kids. Teens unattended by adults are a huge movie market.)

Anyway, I digress (sorry, I find this stuff SO fascinating). Disney likely could have gotten away with showing plenty of smoking in “Saving Mr. Banks,” because Jesus Christ, 1965 was the height of the smoking era, when more than 60 percent of men smoked, and therefore, it would have fit under the “historic” determination. However, this is a studio-wide policy of absolutely no smoking in Disney movies, end of discussion.

As an aside, recently read a story about a study showing that PG-13 movies actually have as much gun violence if not more than R rated movies. I get this a lot when I talk about smoking and movie ratings … “well, why is it OK to show violence in PG-13 movies?” Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re not wrong … there is a shocking amount of violence in PG-13 movies, but that’s got nothing to do with Hollywood’s long and sordid history of pimping cigarettes to the public (and specifically kids.) Totally another extremely valid, yet separate battle to fight, and I can’t fight every battle.

American Lung Association, Lung cancer, Lung disease, smoking, smoking among women, Uncategorized

The stigma of lung cancer — do smokers “deserve” lung cancer? (No!)

October 30, 2013 Pepe Lepew 8 Comments

A very interesting opinion piece that I can personally relate to, about the continuing stigma of lung cancer.

I have on a number of occasions no matter how incredibly hard I try to bend over backward to not attack smokers or act superior to smokers either online or in real life, been accused of being down on smokers. I think part of this is because many smokers deep down inside put up with constant stigma over their smoking and frankly, get understandably defensive about it, because hey, we all have some bad habits and none of us are perfect.

Anyway, that stigma also applies to lung cancer. Lung cancer is the most deadly form of cancer; more people die of lung cancer in the U.S. than the next four types of cancer — combined. Smoking is in fact the primary cause of lung cancer — about 85 percent of the people who get lung cancer are either smokers or former smokers.

But, that also means that 15 percent of those people with lung cancer are nonsmokers (20 percent of women who get lung cancer are nonsmokers). Lung cancer not only has an environmental component, it has a genetic component. There is a reason why only 10 percent of smokers die of lung cancer. It’s bad luck+a bad habit.

Dr. Lecia V. Sequist, (a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, an associate professor of medicine Harvard Medical School. and a member of the LUNGevity Foundation Scientific Advisory Board), writes on CNN.com, about the stigma of lung cancer and the mentality of that people who die of lung cancer “did it to themselves.” The stigma has resulted in a lot of grant monies and donations going toward finding cures for cancers other than lung cancer.

It’s something I can relate to because I have been very guilty of hearing about someone dying of lung cancer, and then immediately blurting out, “were they a smoker?” I really, really try not to do that anymore.

Dr. Sequist writes:

Tell a friend or colleague that your aunt just found out she has lung cancer. Almost always the response will be, “Did she smoke?” Then tell someone else that your aunt just found out she has breast cancer, or colon cancer, or any other type of cancer you can think of. This time the response will be pure sympathy, without any blame attached.

I don’t think people necessarily do this for a bad reason. I think it’s a normal reaction of “well it couldn’t happen to me … I don’t smoke.”

This is interesting, according to to Dr. Sequist, (and I have never seen these numbers before and am still digesting them) 60 percent of new lung cancer cases are among nonsmokers and former smokers — not current smokers. Wow, that a high number (remember that 15 percent number I quoted earlier). What that tells me is a lot of people are acknowledging that smoking is really bad for them, quitting, and then 10 years later being diagnosed with lung cancer. That is one of the cruelties of lung cancer. Even if you do the right thing and quit, your risk of lung cancer decreases … but it is still higher than a person who never smoked.

And as far as how smoking is affecting funding, this paragraph from Dr. Sequist:

Unfortunately, the stigma associated with lung cancer has translated to a massive inequality in research funding. When analyzing the combined 2012 cancer research dollars granted by federal organizations, for every woman who dies of breast cancer, more than $26,000 in federal research funding is devoted to breast cancer research. But for every woman who dies of lung cancer, just over $1,000 federal dollars are invested. The difference is staggering.

So, basically breast cancer is receiving 26 times more funding per cancer case than lung cancer among women. Wow.

As far as the attitude that people who smoke and die and lung cancer getting what they deserve, all I can say is how is your glass house? Are you overweight? Do you drink? Smoke pot? Take prescription drugs? Last perfect person died 2,000 years ago. (Even on this article, there is some snot-nosed troll spending hours pissing on smokers with lung cancer. One of the reasons I don’t comment on CNN stories.)

I watched my dad slowly drown in his own bodily fluids at the age of 49. I can’t imagine a worse way to go, honestly. No one deserves that. No one. Not Adolph Hitler, not anyone. So, no, no one “deserves” lung cancer.

Uncategorized

Another reason to quit smoking? It really does make you look older

October 29, 2013 Pepe Lepew

Twins study shows the aging effects of smoking.

This is really interesting. A remarkable study looking at smoking and non-smoking twin graphically displays how smoking makes people look older. 79 twins were studied as part of this project, one of whom had smoked at least 5 years longer than the other.

The photos (non-smoking twins on the left, smoking twins on the right) show how the smoking twins are more wrinkled. Some of these images are really startling.

Why does this happen? Simply, smoking reduces the amount of oxygen going to the skin.

So if lung cancer, COPD and heart disease (and impotence) aren’t enough reasons to quit smoking … think about this … you will be more wrinkled.

Uncategorized

Jesus, dude, lighten up — man brandishes gun after being told he can’t smoke

October 26, 2013 Pepe Lepew

Jesus, dude, is that cigarette really worth sitting in a jail cell? Chill out!

Some guy standing in front of the Atascadero State Hospital was told he couldn’t smoke and he responded by brandishing a gun in his belt. He’s now cooling his ass in a jail cell on a $50,000 bond. Smart move.

Then again, Atascadero IS a state hospital, so it might have its share of nuts hanging out in front.

This is why most smokers don’t get hassled. You never know if there’s a real asshole standing behind that cigarette.

(I’ve twice seen people throw hissy fits for being asked not to smoke. Many years ago. One, in a bar clearly marked as nonsmoking, she was told, “sorry, no smoking,” and she screamed “FUCK YOU” at the bartender and stomped out. That was about 10 years ago. Ahhh, the good ol’ days before people got used to smoking bans …)

Uncategorized

Study: Yeah, right, tobacco industry, candy-flavoured cigars aren’t geared toward kids

October 23, 2013 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

The Centers for Disease Control just released a report, the first of its kind, on these little candy-flavoured cigars (candy flavoured cigarettes are now illegal, but candy-flavoured cigars are perfectly legal — that makes sense.)

“They’re really cheap, and they’re really sweet, and they have an obvious appeal to kids,” says Danny McGoldrick, vice president of research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “They’re not your grandfather’s cigar.”

Many of these cigars have flavours like cherry, strawberry, chocolate, apple and even bubble gum. Yeah, some 50-year-old 30-year smoker is really going to buy bubble gum flavoured cigars. These are all about appealing to kids, make no mistake about it.

According to this 2011 study, just released this week, by the CDC, one in 10 teens say they have smoked these “flavoured cigars.”

Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the new data “disturbing.”

“Flavored little cigars are basically a deception,” Frieden says. “They’re marketed like cigarettes, they look like cigarettes, but they’re not taxed or regulated like cigarettes. And they’re increasing the number of kids who smoke.”

“We know if they were cigarettes, what they’re doing now would be banned,” Frieden says. “If they were cigarettes, there would be a much greater awareness of their harm. But because they’re seen as somehow different, they’re getting another generation of kids hooked on tobacco.”

What’s interesting is that there is virtually no difference between a cigarette and a “little cigar.”

“What makes a cigar a cigar is that it has some tobacco in the paper. Little cigars — there’s just enough tobacco in that paper to make them cigars,” says Erika Sward, assistant vice president for national advocacy at the American Lung Association. “They really are cigarettes in cigar clothing.”

So just a bit of tobacco leaf in the paper makes a cigarette a cigar, that’s all it takes. So candy-flavoured cigarettes: illegal. Candy-flavoured cigarettes with a tiny bit of tobacco leaf in the paper: legal. Go figure.

dick nixon — Not actually cigars. Just thought it was funny

He’s the truly bothersome part. Little cigar sales have more than tripled since 1997. Again, the tobacco industry is extremely skilled at finding ways around federal regulations and little cigars are their latest little trick to get around the ban on candy-flavoured cigarettes.

Now, the FDA banned candy-flavoured cigarettes a few years ago. They need the next step to ban these little sugary kid magnets. This one is a no-brainer.

smoking

Bill Hicks on smoking and Yul Brynner

August 22, 2013 Pepe Lepew

Two great skits I found from Bill Hicks about smoking. I just kind of stumbled into these (mostly by looking at Yul Brynner’s famous commercial from the grave about smoking).

The first video is a short bit about Yul Brynner doing a commercial “from the grave” about the evils of smoking (Brynner died of lung cancer in his early 60s), and comparing that to health guru and jogger Jim Fixx, who died very young from a heart attack. Funny stuff.

And Yul Brynner’s original commercial in case you don’t remember it. (Lousy quality, I know).

Now, here is Bill Hicks’ bit on cigarette smoking and all the shit he caught as a smoker from non-smokers, especially assholes who coughed around him anytime he lit up.

“I think it’s kind of cruel to come up to me coughing at me … Jesus, do you go up to crippled people dancing, too, you fucks?”

And then assholes who give him crap about second-hand smoke.

“You know what, if I don’t smoke, there’s going to be secondary bullets coming your way, because I’m that tense…”

Interestingly, the person who posted this video had to disable comments because Bill Hicks died of cancer and people were leaving pissy comments about that.

These skits are obviously from the early 90s. Bill died in 1994. Wonder what he would think of smoking bans today?

OK, personally, I have always gone to great lengths to not give smokers a hard time. I hear about the [cough, cough] stuff and the glares, none of which I’ve ever done (OK, I have probably glared at smokers smoking around children, but that’s a little different.).

Anyway, at the risk of coming off like one of the do-gooder assholes Bill Hicks is making fun of, I couldn’t help but watch these videos with a sense of irony. Hicks, a chain smoker, died a very young man — only 32 — from pancreatic cancer, which is known to be one of the cancers caused by smoking.

In his skit, Bill says:

“I’ll smoke, I’ll cough, I’ll get the tumours. I’ll die. Deal?”

That line just jarred me. He did smoke, he did get tumours and he did die. At least he did it on his terms.

So, not passing judgement, not trying to be a self-righteous dick, just pointing out the irony. Which I’m sure at a certain level someone like Bill Hicks could appreciate. I still find his stuff really funny. Honestly, I never heard of Bill Hicks until well after he died — maybe 10 years ago I first started hearing about. He was a funny, funny guy. What a tragedy he lived such a short life. But, he lived it on his terms.

Engle case, RJ Reynolds, Tobacco, tobacco litigation

R.J. Reynolds quietly loses $37.5 million judgement

August 4, 2013 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

This story didn’t get as much attention as I would’ve have expected, I think because it’s actually becoming routine.

A jury last week awarded a family who lost their wife and mother to lung cancer in 1995 after years of smoking a $37.5 award from R.J. Reynolds.

This judgement is part of the old Engle Florida Supreme Court case. In that case, a huge class action settlement — $145 billion — was awarded to a number of smokers for the tobacco industry’s long and sordid history of lying about the addictiveness of nicotine and for marketing to kids.

The tobacco industry filed an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court and the court threw the award out. At the time — 2006 — it appeared to be a big victory for Big Tobacco, but it was a mixed ruling. The Supreme Court threw out the award, but did allow each of the plaintiffs to file individual lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

That has turned out to be a big deal. There were a total of 8,000 individual lawsuits filed in Florida as a result of the ruling, so Big Tobacco is constantly in court in Florida, and repeatedly losing jury awards. $37.5 million won’t break RJR, but multiply $37.5 million by 8,000 — now you’re hurting the industry … big time. So far, $360 million damages have been awarded as a result of the Engle ruling — nowhere near the original $145 billion number, but hurting the industry nonetheless (You know the biggest reason cigarettes are more expensive now than 10 years ago? It’s not cigarette taxes, it’s legal costs.)

R..J Reynolds tried to use the old hoary defence of “it was her choice to smoke,” but that defence has failed time and again in these jury awards, for two reasons A) Big Tobacco was knowingly selling a toxic, poisonous and physically addictive product .. and lied for decades about the addictive nature of nicotine, and B) Because of the industry’s long and sordid history of marketing to teens (R.J. Reynolds are the guys who invented Joe Camel, remember.). It’s interesting reading a lot of the comments on this story about what BS the ruling is because it was her choice to smoke. No, they don’t get it. That defence doesn’t carry much weight with juries or judges, the fact is because they lied and covered up the dangers of their product, the tobacco industry is still liable for damages … “it was their choice to smoke” isn’t going to work. I tried making that point on that thread at HP; I got a few likes but no responses.

The woman who died in this case — Laura Grossman — was only 38 when she died of lung cancer in 1995.

R.J. Reynolds (which makes Philip Morris look like choir boys by comparison sometimes) also made the absolutely despicable defence that Grossman’s death was her husband’s fault because he didn’t do more to make her quit.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company has appealed the verdict, claiming that Grossman’s husband, Jan Grossman, should be held responsible for Laura’s death for “failing to change another person’s course of conduct.” As part of the court ruling, Grossman’s husband and two children were also awarded $15 million in compensatory damages.

That just shows how utterly venal these guys are, especially R.J. Reynolds.

R.J. Reynolds will definitely appeal, the company always does. And they might get the award reduced; Big Tobacco has had some success there, but not as often as in the past.

Secondhand smoke, smoking, Smoking bans

Casper smoking ban battle — petition drive fails after hundreds of signatures thrown out

August 2, 2013 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

Casper, Wyoming a few months ago implemented a smoking ban for all restaurants and bars.

Well, after only a few weeks, bar owners went to the city council and whined about the effect of the ban on their business and the city council, which had a couple of new members from when the ordinance was first approved, overturned the ban for bars .. again after a FEW WEEKS.

Well, a local group was not pleased with the city council caving and turned in a bunch of signatures to put the whole thing to referendum. Their petition fell 61 signatures short of being enough to put it on the ballot … BUT the city clerk rejected 685 signatures … out of about 3,200, making them fall short.

The group — Smokefree Natrona County — is now demanding a recount of those signatures. Sigh, this never seems to be easy (how do you throw out more than 20 percent of the signatures on the petition, anyway?)

Anyway, the city clerk is not required to do a recount, so the bar smoking ban in Casper might be dead for now (not sure what would stop them from doing another petition drive?).