Easy Way To Reduce Smoking

There have been plenty of antismoking campaigns conducted over the years but little, if any, effects can be seen. Smoking is still popular. Fortunately I've found out an easy way to reduce smoking on a national, nay, global level.

Here's the lowdown:

Cigarettes contains chemicals, plenty of which are poisonous to the human body. In fact, there are 599 additives in a cigarette which you can read the full list here. Upon burning, cigarettes create more than 4000 chemical compounds. In short, cigarettes are poisonous, and everybody knows that (even the smokers).

My proposal thus is simple. The government should order cigarette manufacturers, on pain of imprisonment, to create a batch of special cigarette, identical in appearance and taste, except that this special batch contain a fast-acting and highly lethal poison, such as dimethylmercury or ricin. Anyone unfortunate enough to smoke this special cigarette will instantly die of poisoning.

These poisonous cigarettes would then be randomly inserted into packets of normal cigarettes, which are then distributed across the country. The packets containing the poisonous cigarettes shall not be marked in any way to indicate its 'special' content. In other words, it should look like a normal packet. Remember also that the poisonous cigarette will look identical to its normal counterpart, so there's nothing to give the secret away. Thus the average smoker, upon opening a packet of cigarettes, should not be able to tell which cigarette in the pack is the poisonous ones.

I postulate cigarette consumption to drop drastically after this strategy is introduced, as smokers wouldn't want to gamble their life by smoking a poisonous cigarette by accident. This should prove to be a huge incentive towards quitting smoking, and hopefully it would deter the newbie smokers as well.

The way I see it, cigarettes already contain poisons, albeit slow-acting ones. Therefore I see no harm in putting fast-acting poisons for a change. At the very least, it would lend the act of smoking a little bit of risk and adventure, as the reckless smoker pulls a cigarette out of the packet, not knowing if this is the one that would end his life. It's a lot like Russian roulette, only with cigarettes.

Some variations on this poisonous cigarette strategy are radioactive cigarettes and exploding cigarettes. Instead of fast-acting poison, the special batch could be exposed to radioactivity, which would inflict the hapless smoker with radiation poisoning. Or special cigarettes could be formulated to explode upon ignition. Its effectiveness can be spectacularly improved by having the cigarette explode a few seconds after being burned, so that it would explode while being inhaled.

I will forward this idea to the appropriate authorities.

Thanks for reading

Botak

P/s: I'm just playing, smokers; you know I love you.