TOBACCO LIES CREATE LASTING TRAUMA

Tobacco lies are an example of an industry working to keep their customer base while killing them off at the same time.

Even worse is the suspicion and doubt the industry wove into the fabric of farm life in a region dependent on tobacco.

Tobacco and education are not friends. Who doesn’t see someone spark a cigarette and thinK, ‘You know better, pal.’

Is education a priority in the big tobacco growing states?

What are those states?

The World Atlas reports in:

Tobacco farms in the US produced approximately 800 million pounds of tobacco in the year 2012. To reach this total, tobacco was grown in about nineteen states in the US. Of these, the states of North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky combined to account for almost eighty percent of the production.

North Carolina is in the top ten for education based on a list compiled by US News, so something’s going on there besides paving Tobacco Road with fresh tar harvested from dead smokers’ lungs.

Try not to think of education as a hobby in the Southern states when you hear citizens interviewed for their opinions on topics of the day at a rally.

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Go ahead and ignore the backward trends of their politics, their yearning for an authoritarian leader, and their willingness to allow dimwitted men autonomy over women’s health choices.

Take a walk on Tobacco Road for better understanding.

There were and are many roads of this name in the American South. The meanings are derived from the 1932 novel, Tobacco Road, by Erskine Caldwell and the 1933 play and 1941 movie derived from it. Caldwell does not use the term “Tobacco Road” to refer to the region or place, only to the roads themselves.

According to Caldwell, the roads were created by rolling thousands of tobacco casks over them, over many decades. In the Savannah Valley of 1932 there were “scores” of these roads, ranging up to 30 miles in length. The casks were known as hogsheads, were roughly 48 inches by 36 inches and weighed about 1000 pounds once filled with leaves.

Tobacco Trauma Generation

Before science cleared up the misconception of smoking for good health and weight loss, lighting up was common.

Besides, tobacco farming supported families and towns and cities and states. Economically it’s was a great crop with a solid customer base.

People want to quit smoking?

Other people want you to mind your own damn business and breath their second hand smoke like a normal person living tobacco lies.

Boomers didn’t invent cigarettes, but like generations before them, they smoked them if they had them. Boomers took the streets in San Francisco during the 60’s with habits long ingrained.

(Who rode to school on a cold day with the windows rolled up while the old man burned a heater and thought nothing of second hand smoke?)

Talk about cigarettes and you’ll hear stories about sneaking them out a parent’s pack and lighting up in the woods. The groovy generation bought cigs, or rolled their own. Some added weed to the line up.

Tobacco trauma started when we learned how Big Tobacco manipulated their product to keep smokers hooked.

Big Tobacco has been lying about the deadly effects of cigarettes and manipulating the American people for decades. In 2006, the tobacco industry was found to have violated civil racketeering laws, and as a result, was ordered to tell the truth about the deadly and harmful effects of cigarettes.

That’s a pretty big lie for southern farmers to choke down, but the crop in the field still paid the bank. It was a big lie they could live with.

Tobacco Lies Help Digest Other Big Lies

There is a region in America known for their independence and character.

The problem is the region is more on the gullible side of things, believing the bullshit spooned up by manipulating leaders who have taken their eye off the ball.

Have you heard this:

“I like my ACA Affordable Care Act health insurance, but that damn Obamacare is socialism.”

That’s the field another big lie, bigger than tobacco lies, grew.

Stolen election, fake news, make American great again, “Only I can fix things.”

If you need to take a moment to put on your boots after reading that, go ahead.

These are folks who want their freedoms back, their ‘Way of Life’ back, and support their wants based on the Pocket Constitution they keep handy.

Their go-to data is based on Fox News liars who keep stirring the pot for television ratings and church leaders who keep stirring the pot when they pass the collection plate.

It remains surprising that so many folks stay attached to a washed up television guy ranting about himself, his needs, his feelings, his ideas, his accomplishments, and how he was unfairly treated.

Their love for the self-proclaimed pussy grabber is odd because of the sanctity they hold marriage in. Somehow the notion of a grown man talking about violating women is not a problem.

Neither was his stream of daily lying.

Then came the corona virus, COVID19, with Georgia and North Carolina in the top ten for total deaths.

Death Don’t Lie Like Tobacco Lies

From theconversation.com:

Tobacco use killed an estimated 500,000 Americans in 2020, about the same number the pandemic killed in one year. Although education efforts by government and nonprofits have helped to curb tobacco use, 14% of American adults still smoke, even with warning labels on the packages. Tobacco deaths are so high that the World Health Organization calls smoking an epidemic.

Go to the page for links to support the numbers. It looks pretty authentic except the WHO link.

Getting lied to over and over ought to give rise to healthy skepticism, but the anti-vax and anti-mask sentiments from a large swath of people folds neatly into the other lies sucked up by decent people.

There’s an unwritten rule and a written rule. The unwritten is don’t be a f*cking liar and keep company with the same. If you know you’re being lied to yet continue doing the liar’s bidding, you’ve got a problem.

When the lies come from a news source that requires their on-air talent to be vaccinated, but tell you it’s a hoax and dangerous and will turn you into a magnet, you’ve got a problem.

The written rule? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

It’s called The Golden Rule from Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount.

“Whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to any other person.”

Get vaccinated, wear a mask, and back away from the carton of Big Red in the freezer.

And don’t spread someone else’s crap, you’ve got plenty of your own.

So do you, and you, and me.

Call it The Russet Rule.