The Family Foundation School graduates are preparing to leave. As early as their exit seminars, however, a voice calls to them: a voice from their past.
“I’ve got an offer for you, my friend; an offer you can’t refuse.
You already see my products every time you go to a gas station or convenience store. I advertise in the magazines you read and on the billboards you drive past. You see people from cowboys to bikinied women consuming my products in full color. They look happy, and you can too.
I’m going to charge you anywhere from three to eight dollars a day. You’re going to have to plan where you go, what you eat, who you spend time with, even when you can get off work around what I have for you.
By partnering with me, you’ll bring your friends and family along with you. Some of them won’t want us to be paired up, but that won’t matter to you. Some will be too young to say anything.
You might feel pains in your chest. You might have a hard time walking up stairs. You might wake up in cold sweats if you break our partnership for only a day.
Some people will say you smell bad. Your lover might not want to kiss you. You’ll get over the stink after a while. In fact, you won’t be able to smell or taste much. Small price to pay: with my products, you’ll be cooler than cool, a regular tough guy.
Just ask some of my partners who I’ve been with for a while. They’ll tell you all about our glory days together.
Of course, I took some of their voices.
Some of them, I took their lives.
Not you, though. When you partner with me, you’ll feel invincible. Thousands of your dollars will be spent lobbying the policy makers in Washington, D.C. for my interests – and my interests only. Sorry, I can’t promise to represent you there. My dollars helped make slavery and the Civil War. I have one of the most powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill. Don’t you want to be a part of my empire?
Just go out and buy some of my products. You’ll be begging for more soon.”
This is the true call of the tobacco corporations. Of course, if they had this level of honesty when they promoted cigarettes, would we still smoke?
Perhaps this is too much to hope for. Still, Family School seniors know that smoking is an addictive habit that many Americans find nearly impossible to break, and they know the risks of the deadly vice, but many freely proclaim their plans to pick the butt back up when they graduate. Their voices echo the lies of Big Tobacco that have caused irreparable damages to millions already.
“I never made the decision to stop.”
“Even though I know all the facts, I still want to smoke.”
“Honestly, I just want to smoke. What’s wrong with that?”
Many high school seniors have similarly glib attitudes. However, most have not been in a nicotine free environment for eighteen months on more, nor have they even focused on recovery or addiction. One would think their perspective would be unique.
All the graduates will have to make their own choices. What they decide to do on or after December 13, however, will affect people who aren’t even born yet.
