There's a wonderful old song by Tom Leherer called The Old Dope Pedlar. It contains the line:
"He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well
that today's young innocent faces will be tomorrow's clientele."
There are many ways to promote your product without television ads. In Latin America there are popular songs extolling particular drug lords. And here there is popular music extolling drug usage. Of course, the main consumers of hard drugs are in countries affluent enough to afford them, so in Latin America the cartels are probably going to focus more on recruiting employees than customers.
But it's just common sense that when you are selling an addictive drug it's important to get your customers addicted before they reach an age where they have enough sense to see the folly of using the drug. It's a small minority of smokers who began smoking as adults, and while I have no friends who are cocaine addicts that I could ask, I'll bet it's the same there. People start using a drug because something has convinced them that it's fun or enjoyable, or in the case of tobacco, it's a "grown-up" or "glamorous" thing to do. The pushers of drugs, both legal and illegal, exert themselves to promote these misconceptions so that they will have customers, just as junk-food companies use highly scientific methods of convincing children that these "foods" are fun, or deodorant companies bombard us with propaganda saying that we smell bad and implying that we will not be successful in romance unless we use their products. All vendors push their products, but when your product is addictive and kills people, you need to target kids because they are more easily lured in.
Sadly, laws are passed by legislators and written by lobbyists, and the tobacco industry has a very strong lobby, and gives a lot of [-]bribes[/-] (sorry: campaign contributions) to the legislators, so tobacco remains legal, and laws against selling to minors are weak.
Cancer is a probabilistic disease: Smoking increases your chances of getting it, but does not guarantee you will get it. But smoking does, always, damage the lungs and reduces your ability to absorb oxygen and vent CO2. This reduces your aerobic capacity, and I'm going to speculate that it will also affect the off-gassing of N2. Of course, once you get emphysema you won't be able to do much of anything, including diving. Carbon monoxide is short-term. It binds to hemoglobin and reduces oxygen transport. But smoke also does long-term damage to the lungs, not to mention all the other organs affected. Even after the CO has dissipated, the lungs operate at reduced efficiency, and this will affect your performance both above and below the surface of the water.
People can smoke if they choose. But it is preposterous to assert that it does not affect their diving or their safety while diving. A well-trained, careful smoker may be a safer diver than a reckless non-smoker, but other things being equal, smoking increases your risks. And the people who market tobacco are criminals by any common-sense definition (the law has never been common-sense) and belong in prison.
"He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well
that today's young innocent faces will be tomorrow's clientele."
There are many ways to promote your product without television ads. In Latin America there are popular songs extolling particular drug lords. And here there is popular music extolling drug usage. Of course, the main consumers of hard drugs are in countries affluent enough to afford them, so in Latin America the cartels are probably going to focus more on recruiting employees than customers.
But it's just common sense that when you are selling an addictive drug it's important to get your customers addicted before they reach an age where they have enough sense to see the folly of using the drug. It's a small minority of smokers who began smoking as adults, and while I have no friends who are cocaine addicts that I could ask, I'll bet it's the same there. People start using a drug because something has convinced them that it's fun or enjoyable, or in the case of tobacco, it's a "grown-up" or "glamorous" thing to do. The pushers of drugs, both legal and illegal, exert themselves to promote these misconceptions so that they will have customers, just as junk-food companies use highly scientific methods of convincing children that these "foods" are fun, or deodorant companies bombard us with propaganda saying that we smell bad and implying that we will not be successful in romance unless we use their products. All vendors push their products, but when your product is addictive and kills people, you need to target kids because they are more easily lured in.
Sadly, laws are passed by legislators and written by lobbyists, and the tobacco industry has a very strong lobby, and gives a lot of [-]bribes[/-] (sorry: campaign contributions) to the legislators, so tobacco remains legal, and laws against selling to minors are weak.
Cancer is a probabilistic disease: Smoking increases your chances of getting it, but does not guarantee you will get it. But smoking does, always, damage the lungs and reduces your ability to absorb oxygen and vent CO2. This reduces your aerobic capacity, and I'm going to speculate that it will also affect the off-gassing of N2. Of course, once you get emphysema you won't be able to do much of anything, including diving. Carbon monoxide is short-term. It binds to hemoglobin and reduces oxygen transport. But smoke also does long-term damage to the lungs, not to mention all the other organs affected. Even after the CO has dissipated, the lungs operate at reduced efficiency, and this will affect your performance both above and below the surface of the water.
People can smoke if they choose. But it is preposterous to assert that it does not affect their diving or their safety while diving. A well-trained, careful smoker may be a safer diver than a reckless non-smoker, but other things being equal, smoking increases your risks. And the people who market tobacco are criminals by any common-sense definition (the law has never been common-sense) and belong in prison.
