NEWS: Want Gold? Risk Cancer!

CULTURE: Want Gold? Risk Cancer!

Japan Tobacco is starting a "Smart Smoke" campaign to lure Japanese back to smoking, after the rates have been steadily declining.

One-hundred smokers will win LCD televisions. Seventy-five couples will be able to puff away at a preview of Frank Miller's Sin City in Tokyo. Best of all, one Japanese smoker will walk away with eight million yen ($72,795/£40,407) in gold bars!

It is baffling how cigarette companies choose not to reduce health risks, but rather remove offending eau de tar.

Man, those japanese get everything cool.
All I get with my smokes are fucking coupons.

sounds like an effort to thwart their western masters. it was in our plan all along to addict them to tobacco, then tell them it's bad. They must be stopped!

Cant get any better then Sin City a pack of smokes and a shit ton of gold bricks to build a throne for yourself after you take over the world.

V_S

tobacco companies > truth.com/"fair enough"

uber-zealot anti-smokers are gay.

Ridicutastic.

Whatever. Is there anyone left who doesn't realize that smoking is bad for you? So is fatty food, and too much sun, and too much alcohol, etc. If they want to smoke let them fucking smoke.

damn sydney...again

Gay?
As in, "take the cigarette out of your mouth and replace it with a cock"?
That's a new one.

That quote makes me doubt solaris1622's profile a bit. Does anyone besides teenaged (and younger) boys use the word "gay" that way anymore?

It's a habit for a lot of people, and in that connotation it certainly applies to truth.com's ad campaigns.

Yes, yes it does.

-TM

Kei Koro just really wants to be like willy wonka

I like to call things gay in an ironic way, but most people would just assume the worst of me so I rarely do.

homosexuals are gay

You found him, wop.

Truth.com actually = program mandated by court settlements against, and funded by, the tobacco industry.

I think.

I would start smoking if the prize was my weight in gold.

cooool....

I got a coupon for a free pack of cigarettes today in honor of my impending birthday. I've never in my life smoked.

There are plenty of people who have no idea about what smoking actually does. Vague feelings of "I might die from this some time in the future, but hey, I could get hit by a bus" isn't the same as knowing how smoking is harming a person right now.

The money comes from settlements, but the campaigns come from a few ex-ad agency creative types who were hired by the not-for-profit founded with the settlement money.

Anyway, that guy is a marketing genius and his campaigns are some of the most successful branding in recent history.

Did one of your friends make you get them free cigarettes at a bar or club? That's usually where all those smoking coupons come from.

But what is wrong with that thinking? You may die of it sometime in the future. It's not an instant killer. I don't smoke, and will never smoke (I tried when I was younger and it never stuck) so I don't have any ulterior motives here, but are you honestly telling me that smoking is as immediately harmful as getting hit by a bus? If not, that's a poor comparison. I don't understand where this smoking stigma comes from. Why doesn't alcohol have this kind of stigma?

Well, there is always second-hand smoke. It's not just hurting the person who's doing it.