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This Halloween, Tell Children About REAL Monsters

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This Halloween, Tell Children About REAL Monsters; Use Holiday to Educate Kids About The Biggest Threat They Face, The Tobacco Companies

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 27, 2020) - Folklore says that vampires, the most frightening of all Halloween monsters, enslave people by biting their necks, and eventually cause them to suffer a lingering death.

When parents assure their young children that vampires are only imaginary, they can also use the occasion to warn kids about the real monsters who do in fact try to enslave them, and cause long and lingering deaths, suggests the law professor who banned cigarette commercials, and helped ban cigarette billboards and kill off Joe Camel.

The Monsters Are The Tobacco Companies

These monsters are, of course, tobacco company executives, who begin enslaving children as young as 9 or 10 to nicotine, a drug we adults now know is a neurotoxin as addictive as cocaine or heroin for many people, including kids, who can become addicted from smoking only a few cigarettes.

Currently, every day almost 2,500 children [over 900,000 annually] under 18 try their first cigarette, and more than 400 [almost 150,000 every year] will become new addicted daily smokers.

While even Count Dracula, the most fearsome of all vampires, could enslave only a few people at a time, tobacco companies enslave hundreds of young children every single day in the U.S. alone.

Of these, about half will die - often a very painful death from preventable cancers - as a result of their smoking and addiction to nicotine.

In addition, many more will endure long suffering while connected to hospital respirators, life support machines, oxygen concentrators, and other devices.

Books and movies rarely depicted vampires targeting children, presumably because it would be much too gruesome or too monstrous to show.

Developing Cigarettes To Market To The Youth Market

But we know - from their own previously-secret documents about cigarette manufacturers planning to capitalize on handicapped third-graders, developing cigarettes specially geared to the youth market and biologically engineered to be especially addictive, and deliberately locating cigarettes near candy displays in stores - that tobacco companies have no such compunctions.

Indeed, evidence presented to Congress shows that they used their clout to have smoking shown in “The Muppet Movie” - a very popular attraction obviously targeting preschoolers - and in the mouths of many of the individual Muppet characters, as well as many other movies aimed at children.

Ironically, says Professor John Banzhaf of the George Washington University Law School, these monsters continue to engage in a wide variety of activities designed to lure children, as well as adults, into becoming enslaved on a magnitude that Court Dracula could not possibly begin to imagine.

Unfortunately, the tactics still seem to be working, because many pre-teens and teens continue to become addicted every week to tobacco cigarettes, or to new nicotine-laden e-cigarettes.

A Very Real Monster That Will Enslave Your Kids

So, suggests Banzhaf, parents, guardians, grandparents, and even neighbors should take this opportunity - and kids' interest in ghoulish topics associated with Halloween - to explain to young children that vampires and other monsters may not exist, but that there are very real monsters who will try to enslave them as they grow older if they don't watch out.

Interestingly, it appears that antismoking messages stressing the theme that tobacco companies are trying to trick children into trying cigarettes are especially effective - especially compared to scare tactics - among today's teens.

So please warn children to watch out for cars this Halloween, but also for efforts to trick them, like smoking scenes in movies, ads showing happy healthy people smoking, and gimmicks like rock concerts and giveaways to entice them - like the victims of vampires - to become enslaved, pleads Banzhaf.

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