I dropped by the Ashtray Blog yesterday.

They posted a series of "most shocking" images put out by our good friends in the Tobacco Control Industry and asked whether they would make us want to quit smoking, have a cigarette or did they have no effect at all.  Of course, like any straw poll I found myself muttering "none of the above".

It is difficult to describe my reaction to those images.  A lot of them are quite clever [such as the bloke apparently hanging himself using smoke] and some are quite disgusting [such as using a dead baby in an ashtray – that is way beyond the bounds of human decency].

I suppose I could sum up my emotions as being a mixture of amusement and disgust.  I am amused because they are so far fetched as to be totally irrelevant. 

A woman shows her hands with apparently [photoshopped?] amputated fingers and I am supposed to recoil in horror at the prospect?  I have been around smokers all my life and have never seen any such amputations.  Or maybe someone forgot to tell her to blow out the match before the flame reaches skin?  Either way it is a nonsense.

A man sits smoking while his leg has apparently become a cigarette and is dropping ash?  What the fuck is that supposed to indicate?  Again, a clever bit of photoshopping but it bears no resemblance to anything in real life.

I am disgusted though at the level to which these pornographers have sunk.  They are actually getting their jollies by implying that smoking is equivalent to oral sex?  Maybe that's their fantasy but it ain't mine.   And what is the point of showing a bloke whose head has apparently been split open by a hatchet?  That is visual porn just for the sake of shock as it has no relevance to smoking whatsoever. 

Of course what these images really represent is a wishlist of things the Tobacco Control Industry would love to see happen to smokers.  They would love to see us with massive growths on our necks, with faces like dried prunes and limbs falling off.  They would love to see us in the gutter frantically injecting ourselves with raw nicotine.  They would love to see our new-born discarded in an ashtray.  This is nothing short of a vivid glimpse into the nasty twisted evil minds of those in the Tobacco Control Industry.  Their hatred knows no bounds.

They really are sick in the head.

Those images say a lot more about the Anti-Smoker, than the smoker.