Editor:

The truth is that anti-smoking advertisements are misleading and inappropriate. I am not a smoker, but several times I have considered taking up smoking as a protest against the anti-smoking campaign.

Lately my annoyance has turned to anger. Today’s anti-smoking campaigns are filled with bad science and blatant lies. These advertisements contain very misleading statements based on a seemingly scientific foundation. For example, these commercials tell us that there is urine and rat poison in cigarettes. While it might be technically true that urea and trace amounts of Arsenic can be found in tobacco, this is a long way from urine and rat poison. How can we take them seriously if they are going to be so ridiculous? There is Arsenic in many things we eat and most certainly in our drinking water. Urea can also be found in baked goods, gravies, and meat products. Nearly every anti-smoking commercial I have seen lately contains similarly misleading information.

Since I cannot stop them, I have decided to join them. Here are some misleading and irresponsible statements of my own. Rather than testing for the presence of feces and fecal born bacteria (like e coli), the beef industry tests for tolerable levels. What is a tolerable level of feces in your food?

What about radioactive isotopes of Potassium? There is a lot of Potassium in bananas which means there are radioactive isotopes in the bananas you eat. You might as well be eating nuclear waste. I am sure that the consumption of bananas and beef is also somehow linked to support of terrorism, but I will save that topic for another day.

If they want to get our attention, the “truth about tobacco” people should try mixing a little unbiased truth into their campaign.

Ryan Wixom

Graduate Student, Materials Science and Engineering