That's the cry I heard on the radio the other day.

DON'T BE FOOLED BY BIG TOBACCO!!!!!!!!!!

At first I didn't really give it much thought, I just kept driving along, looking at all the trash heaved carelessly by the side of the road, and thinking about how proud I was of my fellow Americans. Yet the more I drove along, thinking about the phrase, the more it confused me.

"Fooled" by Big Tobacco?

Now, I am not here today to defend smoking in any way whatsoever. I am a firm anti-smoker, yet I feel that all smokers have the right to smoke all they want. After all, it certainly does a good job of ridding the world of smokers. It's the circle of life, baby. You light up, you scintillate for a brief moment in the spotlight of super-coolness, and then you slowly turn a funky yellowish-brown color, and die.

So light em up, kids. You'll just be out of my friggin' way a little sooner.

But there's that damn "fooled" word, nagging at my brain like a poorly written riddle told to me by someone with a mouthful of cotton.

Are smokers FOOLED into making that great leap into the world of smoking? Apparently, most anti-smoke groups would have us think so. I suppose that fits in nicely with the world we have created, a world where NOBODY is responsible for their actions. "I had no choice, Your Honor. They FOOLED me....... and now I have teeth that look like baked beans. Please give me money".

Ok, so it's not your fault, boo hoo. Whatever. Still, I think we need to probe deeper into this whole business of people being fooled and tricked into becoming smokers. Let's start by looking at the claim that BIG TOBACCO targets children in their advertising.........

One argument is that Camel brand cigarettes targets children by using cartoon camels. BRILLIANT! Kids LOVE camels!!!!! Just walk down the street some day and look at all the kids with CAMELS on their T-shirts! They can't get enough camels! Babies in strollers with little stuffed camels! Then there are the numerous video games that are camel based. Why, they must number by the hundreds! Kids seem to be OBSESSED with camels! Remember that string of successful action/adventure movies, the "Dromedary Park" series, where scientists use DNA found in amber-imprisoned mosquitoes to create ACTUAL LIVING camels, only to have them break loose from their compounds and go on a killing rampage? The kids POURED into the theaters. My GOD, get in with a room full of kids and it's CAMELS CAMELS CAMELS! The Camel cigarette corporation are geniuses, pure and simple.

But of course that is all silliness, and the truth is, kids start smoking for one simple reason.....

They're idiots.

Now, if you are reading this and you are a kid, don't get all in a huff over that statement. Kids look up to adults and want to be like them in every way. From being a sophisticated smoker to having unruly ear hair, the children of the world ache to be more like adults.

And since most adults are idiots themselves, it's not hard to achieve.

Since we are on the subject of children, I'd like to break away from the article in general and tell you a bedtime story. Cuddle up all nice and warm under the covers, little Billy and little Susie, and hold your soft, plush teddy-camels up to your faces. All comfy? Let's begin.........

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Bob. Bob was much like every other little boy, obsessed with camels, and deep down in his heart longing to be a cowboy. The cowboy life called to him. The call of the open plains. The thundering hooves of horses galloping through a dusty valley. The deep, craggy ravines in his face as he stoops over a pot of beans over an open fire, a sparkling white cigarette clenched between his grimaced lips. It's a man's life, and Bob knows it's the life for him.

But, due to a bizarre accident when he was a baby, when he fell out of his mothers arms and into a bin of reduced-price Ted Nugent CDs, Bob is DEAF (or whatever the hell the politically correct term of the week is for people who can't hear a friggin' thing).

But little Bob is one of the lucky ones, because his parents are heavy smokers.

Young Bob learns that his sight is his greatest asset, and because of his useless ears (which at this time, are still hairless), he must rely on what he sees for all communications. And so he concentrates on his parents mouths. Their tightly pinched lips move up and down, mumbling, as they clench tightly onto cigarettes in the corners of their mouths.

Little Bob is mesmerized by the bobbing white shafts. While his parents mumbling and unintelligible speech never reaches his ears, the bobbing white shafts speak out their own language, a language Bob soon embraces. The glowing red ends of the cigarettes serve as a beacon for a child hungry for communication. He studies, he concentrates, and before too long, Bob can understand every word uttered by his parents. The bobbing cigarettes flip and bobble out words only he can understand, and very soon he is much like every other happy go lucky idiot.

And life is good.

But then one day his parents die of lung cancer and Bob grows up unable to understand everyone else in the world and he slowly slips into the realms of madness and eventually hurls himself at a passing Spring Water delivery truck. The End.

DAMN YOU, BIG TOBACCO!!!!! You claimed another life! A life that might have been rich and fulfilling!!!! Damn you! DAMN YOU!

Ok, so now we have all learned a valuable lesson about Big Tobacco. They are everywhere, and they will get each and every one of us if we don't stop them. We are powerless to resist. Yes, we can try to use our great big human brains and say "no, I won't be fooled", but in the end we will all fail. And since none of us are responsible for our actions, we might even make a few bucks in the process.

But since we have clearly labeled BIG TOBACCO as "THE ENEMY", doesn't logic dictate that there must certainly also exist..... SMALL TOBACCO?

Didn't think of THAT, did you?

I can see them now, little 5 or 6 employee fledgling cigarette companies, trying to make it in that dog-with-bad-breath eat dog-with-bad-breath world. With stricter advertising restraints it must be agony trying to make a few hard earned bucks. When *I* (if my brain suddenly stopped functioning, that is) walk into a convenience store to buy my smokes, perhaps pausing to scratch off a handful of instant lottery tickets while some poor shmuck who is late for work stands behind me with exact change to pay for his gas, my eyes are certainly going to be drawn with child-like wonder toward the towering displays and huge selections of those rotten old Big Tobacco bastards. I won't even bother selecting one of the 4 or 5 packs of "Carl's Cigarettes", because Small Tobacco can't get inside me and twist my soul like it's more profitable counterpart.

And so, Small Tobacco is going to have to use a handful of ingenuity if THEY want to take the blame for killing us all (remember, NONE of us are responsible. Be a good American and seek retribution in the form of CASH today). Here are just a few ideas, should you want to start up your own tobacco company.........

First, don't use the name "Carl's Cigarettes". It's stupid, and I just threw it out off the top of my head. But that one is obvious.

Second, change the size of a pack from 20 cigarettes to a mere 5.

Watch smokers sometime. Out comes a wondrous new pack of cigarettes, just purchased and perfect, the cellophane seal yet to be riven and hurled into the four winds. This is a magical moment. Since all smokers started smoking to be cool (I mean, be honest, did anyone enjoy their FIRST smoke enough to want their SECOND smoke for any other reason?), now is the time to draw attention to yourself! And so, they will start to "thwack" the freshly purchased packs against their palms, striking them firmly and repeatedly, over and over, as if to say "Gather 'round all you squares, and take a look at ME! Yes, I may weigh 350 pounds, have 6 hairs on my head that are carefully wrapped to make it appear as if I have 9 hairs on my head, and I may be dressed like a copier salesman, but I am really the REINCARNATION OF JAMES DEAN! I am the very picture of COOL, baby."

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Ok, someone clue in a non-smoker here, please. WHY must we do this before we tear open a pack of smokes? What would happen if, just once, we DIDN'T? Will the pack suddenly erupt in our faces like the old "spring snakes in the peanut can" trick, leaving us clutching our stinging faces, howling in agony as we roll around on the ground, expecting the Nelson character from "The Simpsons" to step around the corner, point at us, and let go with a hearty "HA HA!"? Has anyone ever DARED to open a pack without first drumming out a beat like a Keith Moon wannabe with yellow stained fingers, and a rank smell like an overflowing ashtray?

Yes smokers, you smell positively rancid. And the rest of us talk about it behind your backs.

Imagine that.

So anyway, back to my idea of 5-packs instead of 20-packs.

When a smoker opens a nice, new pack of twenty butts, he must smoke ALL TWENTY before he gets to, once again, bask in that wonderful moment of complete and utter COOLNESS, when he can go thwack happy. Everyone glances in your direction, and then, alas, the moment is gone. Now, if these things came in FIVE packs, you could be in that spotlight FOUR times as often! Thwack your heart out, smoke a mere five cigarettes, and you rise once again as the Incarnation Of All Things Cool And Stylish.

Take notes here, Small Tobacco. This is good stuff.

And finally, an idea that would serve multiple purposes- The Edible Cigarette Butt.

Smokers LOVE attention. "Look at me everyone! My penis is so tiny and pathetic that I must do whatever I can to puff myself up (no pun intended) somehow. SEE how I drive with my cigarette held high for all to see, striking a pose of mock sophistication, for what good is smoking if nobody sees me doing it? Take notice all you plain-belly Sneetches, I've got FIRE coming out of my FACE!!! I am the God of Stinky Hellfire!".

And so, the Edible Cigarette Butt is born.

Imagine the scene. You draw that LAST sweet drag of carcinogenic blackness down deep into your lungs, (you know the one..... that's the one that makes you pull SO hard on the cigarette that your cheeks suck in like a dying carp, as you stand half inside the threshold of your workplace with the door open, hung in that stinky limbo between being outdoors, smoking, and being indoors, thinking about your next smoke break), and when the fire burns down and hits the patented filter that is specially designed to extinguish the flame, it "poofs" out, allowing you to pop that tasty little trinket into your mouth and roll it around your stained lips and gums for a few extra minutes of tobacco chewing satisfaction. Hell, you could be halfway back to your desk and STILL be enjoying your cigarette! As an added bonus, it wouldn't make every sidewalk or curbway outside every place of business look like the confetti strewn floor after a KISS concert.

Small Tobacco, you've got the ball, now run with it.

But I suppose there isn't much more for me to say about smoking today. I will continue to chuckle silently at the middle-aged women who sit at grimy kitchen tables, looking outdoors past a mountain of butts in ashtrays, terrified of EVERYTHING "out there" that might hurt them, yet oblivious to what their precious smokes are doing to their already graying faces. I will continue to laugh openly at the kids who are sitting outside in bitter winter air on their smoke breaks from fast food restaurants, struggling to make minimum wage, yet spending half of each week's pay to smoke, because I can imagine with great clarity how utterly pathetic they will look when they are 50, and STILL standing in those same doorways. And I will continue to guffaw with great howling bursts of derisive laughter at the women who spend hours teasing their hair into perfection, applying just the right amount of makeup to make themselves pleasant to look at, obsessing on every detail of their appearance..... only to sit with a hideous grimace on their faces, tight-lipped, one eye half-shut, with a face that Popeye had down to perfection, a cigarette hanging slack on their mouths. I will continue being me, just as surely as you will continue being you.

So keep on doing what you do best, and one day, when everything you see is obscured by the filmy fabric of an oxygen tent, I'll be that booming laugh you hear coming from outdoors.

And you can't do a thing, because nobody is to blame for what they do anymore. Remember?

I'm completely innocent. And so are you.

Have a nice day.

Dr. Torgo