Everyone knows that tobacco products are addictive, this should be no surprise by now. Once someone starts using, they’re almost guaranteed to be hooked, but with everyone aware of the effects of tobacco use it has to make you wonder: why do people even start in the first place?

Tobacco companies have always been amazingly good at dressing up their product. Whether it’s made to seem sexy, dangerous or fun, big tobacco continuously and successfully markets a deadly product to a public that knows better but just can’t say no to slick advertising.

Until now.

Big tobacco has already been banned from TV ads, so they’ve depended heavily on print ads but thanks to the FDA and the CTFK , tobacco ads in magazines will be hard-pressed to come off looking cool. A new law going into effect this month will require tobacco ads in magazines to display a bold warning that takes up a minimum of 20% of the ad space. The bold, unmistakable, black and white warnings will caution would-be smokers about the side effects of tobacco use. Refer to the original article about this new law to check out a sample of one of the new ads – there is no way a reader can miss these warnings.

Surprisingly, big tobacco hasn’t been outwardly vocal in opposition (at least not more than the usual legal recourse) but that doesn’t mean that anyone should let their guard down. We all need to keep in kind that these are the folks who have managed to sell people a harmful product for decades and while this is an impressive blow to their marketing efforts, they will go back to the drawing board.

These days, it seems like anything you can buy comes in two versions: regular and “green.” With so many products being made using environmentally friendly items, being planet-conscious is as easy as checking the label at the store. However, that’s not the case for ALL products.

As the state of Vermont celebrated Green Up Day (a statewide effort to remove litter and clean up outdoors), thousands upon thousands of pounds of waste were picked up and properly disposed of.  Volunteers disposed of anything they could get their hands on, with the exception of one item: cigarette butts. The ground was littered with so many that removing them all would have been an impossible task. Being that they are so small, so many and so hard to pick up in any mass manner, volunteers in Vermont had to overlook the butts and concentrate on larger pieces of litter.

According to the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program – a program funded by Philip Morris – about 95% of cigarette butts thrown on the ground are composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that does not easily biodegrade. Oddly enough, even though Philip Morris funds this program (a PR effort to save face) and concurs that the materials they make butts out of are harmful, they have yet to cease using such materials.

They may be small, but they do add up. The tobacco industry recognizes and admits that the materials they use are not environmentally friendly but they keep making the same, non-biodegradable product anyway.

Smoking is kind of a funny thing in that everyone has heard and fully understands the risks associated with smoking but people choose to do it anyway. The general theory on why people keep smoking (other than becoming addicted) is denial. If you can convince yourself that the hazards are old news and it “couldn’t happen to you” then maybe you can justify it.

Now let’s take a look at something that isn’t old news. According to a brand new study that took place in Israel, people who smoke have lower IQ’s than those who don’t. Researchers studied 20,000 young adults and stumbled upon a revealing conclusion. 18- to 21-year-olds who do not smoke have an average IQ of 101. The typical smoker’s IQ, however, was found to average only 94.

To make matters even worse, researchers found that IQ decreases when smoking increases. While typical smokers have an IQ averaged at 94, people who smoke more than a pack a day had IQ’s around 90. Just for the record, a normal IQ range is 84 to 116. So, those heavier smokers are literally just a few points away from having a below average IQ.

Although still too premature to draw a scientific conclusion, many scientist believe that smoking puts the brain oxidative stress, which in turn damages DNA and lowers your IQ.

There has been mass advancement in tobacco prevention amongst teens, from government programs and grants, social media pages, to creatively manufactured media campaigns buuuuuut…the Internet hasn’t played a huge role in tobacco prevention until the early 2000’s.

A recent study showed that though tobacco content only makes up less than 1% of social media content, half of that content was PRO-tobacco. Do the math; this means in that in the cyberwar for tobacco longevity, we’re neck and neck.

The exposure of pro-tobacco content can be detrimental to the mass progress made in the past 2 decades. Think about it! We are always on the net, surfing Facebook, Twitter and even that ghost town we call Myspace. Pro-tobacco messages are underhanded no matter where they are, cyberspace included.  We need to start seeing mass net campaign targeting these online parasites. Tobacco is dying and will hang on to anything and everything for sustenance.

It always strikes me as odd just how far people are willing to go in order to smoke. On one hand, I fully understand that the addiction to nicotine is absolutely crippling and most smokers aren’t strong enough to resist it but on the other hand, I want to just say “really??!!?”

Thanks to a technicality in VA legislation, certain bars in Northern Virginia are exempt from the recent smoking ban – sort of. If a bar has a completely walled off and separate room for smokers with its own ventilation system that is not connected to the non-smoking area in any way, then said bar may be permitted to allow smoking inside. Is it just me, or does this seem like quite a stretch in the name of catering to smokers?

Sure, smokers are people too and they deserve the right to frequent any restaurant or bar they want, they just don’t have the right to expose others to harmful chemicals via smoke. For bar owners, this presents an opportunity to be among the very few bars that can offer indoor smoking but at what expense? I mean, do smokers really bring in THAT MUCH more money where bar owners can afford to add an extra room and a separate (sustained) ventilation system? Not to mention adding staff who are specifically allocated to the smoking section. In short, most bars will not be able to justify spending extra just for people to smoke indoors. For those few bars that happen to already have the required separations, it’s just a matter of time before legislation is reworded to tackle that issue.