'Truth' or Dare

I have always been a fan of those Truth ads that we all have probably seen on TV, in magazines, etc. I first saw the truth ads in my PlayStation magazine when I was younger and they have always stuck, mainly because of the rather disturbing images which sometimes included a body part being sewn shut to emphasize the silence aspect of tobacco companies. Aside from these advertisements, one specific commercial came on while I was watching a show a few years ago that had a rather large group of people in a city environment. With everyone in plain view, a truck starts unloading dozens and dozens of body bags onto the street. This was a shocking display for anyone to see, especially the by-standers in the city. As you can see in the picture, a person holds up a sign that claims that 1200 people die every day due to tobacco consumption, and to emphasize that number, they dump 1200 body bags in the street.

To anyone that smokes cigarettes or chews tobacco, I could see this as being controversial, but I also cannot help but think that anyone who smokes or chews was not forced to do so. People who do tobacco chose to give in to that pressure, and therefore it is my opinion that this image should not be controversial on account that the person's own free will was what decided to get addicted in the first place. I can see this image as being more of a help than that of a discouragement, in that it (excuse my vernacular) is a punch in the face to those who partake of tobacco. I would imagine that if I smoked and saw this add, I would be more than just a little deterred from even the thought of using something that has such potentially life threatening consequences. Of course, the other side of the controversy is from the large scale tobacco companies that allow these products to be manufactured for global use. I often find myself questioning the very purpose of these tobacco products when even the companies that manufacture them acknowledge the harmful effects of long-term use. It simply does not make sense to me that a corporation would mass produce something as harmful as tobacco without any thought to the lives that they would be destroying (according to this, 1200 per day), despite whether it is the user's decision.

This reminds me of a journal entry I made in English class just today, which was a picture of a morbidly obese dog and the McDonald's logo/slogan in the top corner. My professor made a good point on the subject: Do you think that if you put hundreds of cheeseburgers in front of the dog, the dog will know when to stop? Probably not because as long as they are free for the taking, the dog will consume them, as nature dictates. It is all about willpower, of which the dog does not have. To make an analogy, the tobacco companies of America are producing a product of which has the lulling effects that those cheeseburgers would have on a dog, except the dog was not born with the sense of reason which we humans have. I compare the nicotine in tobacco products to the absence of reason in the dog's brain; both of them cancel out the ability to logically understand when something should not be entered into the body and the users of tobacco have an nigh uncontrollable urge to continue use of something that they simply do not need. In essence, the easily accessible market that supplies these products is just like the owner of a dog that continues to feed until the dog's body slowly begins to deteriorate and, ultimately, shut itself down.