Denis Leary - Cigarette Warnings

[Devil_Fish]

[chelsea0011]

1. It has to hurt when hardly anyone in the audiance is laughing at your bit.

Oh, I didn't laugh at all but I don't find Leary funny.

[Tunkamerica]

2. I heard laughs after every line.

[TruthBeTold65]

3. I love Dennis Leary but...

my mother just died from emphysema after many years of smoking so I am not a fan of smoking. I used to have conversations with my mother over the years...she was a great lady...but she would defend the smoking to the last...until she was practically on her death bed. In front of my mother I started a conversation with my sister, who is also a smoker, I was curious what she thought about smoking seeing her mother in the condition she was in. I was not looking to start a fight just a reflective thought on it. You know what she did? The EXACT same thing my mother did when I used to ask her. She defended and deflected. The interesting thing was my mother never said a single word about it during my conversation with my sister. That was very telling to me.

My sister's arugment was "everyone has their vice". My counter was that "everyone has a choice". Do you make the choice to smoke, knowing that every cigarette brings your death faster or not to smoke to live a longer life enjoying your kids, grandkids, etc. as long as you can.

Sure you can argue that...fatty foods are going to kill you...or drinking will kill you...or driving fast will kill you. Yes, they can but making the choice to remove any one of those things lowers the risk. There are tons of "unknown" things that can snuff out a life instantly but you can try to mitigate the "known" things.

I have stepped down off my soap box.

[Devil_Fish]

5. I'm sorry to here about your mother, and sister.

I posted this bit to make a point about the warning labeles. As Denis accuratly points out, You could put a desised lung on every pack, and it wouldn't matter. Smokers know it is bad for them. Making the warnings bigger or graphic is a waste of time when they could be working on more important things.

[rschallack]

4. I understand, but...

just a bit of perspective from an ex-smoker. My mom, too, would have smoked on her deathbed if she had lived that long. She went in for a quadruple bypass at 60 and never woke up. Poor lifestyle choices shortened her life. Ah well...

Anyway, there is a lot of duality in smoking. It is seen as sexy, sophisticated (read: looking older), and the ultimate rebellious thing to do. This will not end. There will always be some who take up smoking for one, or more, of those reasons (or even other reasons). Once you have started, however, that's where the dual nature of cigarettes lie. Once you start, you can only choose to try to stop. I will never expect smokers I love to stop smoking. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances on earth and it's insidious in the psychological ties to the physical addiction (my triggers were drinking and after a meal). With me, it took drugs, a will to quit, and the threat of divorce from my wife to motivate me to finally stick with quitting.

It's a choice we make to start. It's a choice we make to try and quit. Quitting, and staying quit, is a whole other thing entirely.

An aside: The Tracheotomy bit he does is hysterical.