If you are a fan of old movies, you are probably aware that for the 1st half of the 20th Century, smoking was considered actually to be cool. Actors pulled out a cig from a chic gold-plated case at the smallest provocation. Holding a cigarette and puffing out smoke rings was turned into a form of art. And one has to confess, it probably did look glamorous. No wonder that millions of men and women, all around the world, got tricked into smoking onyx cigars. This trick was deceptive enough but the con game didn’t stop there. If the manufacturers were to be believed, smoking was basically good for your health. They offered throat protection, an energy boost and a help to digestion. We now know all of the statements to be untrue and that smoking is actually really harmful to your health and it does not discriminate. False advertising and hype is nothing new and goes on even today. While it may be rather excusable to hype one’s product and endow it with non-existent qualities, pushing a way of living as being healthy for you, when the manufacturers knew the fact was diametrically opposite, is terrible. Many companies now specifically target a young audience to get them hooked at an early age. Teens are very impressionable and the tobacco companies know that it doesn’t take much to encourage a teen to smoke, when you are offering coolness, acceptance. To the millions whose elders and grandparents lost their lives to lung cancer, these profit sharks have a lot to answer for. In the end, they will be accountable for misleading millions of people across the world.
