Advertisers want you to feel that the best people (the young, rich, handsome, beautiful and healthy) smoke his brand. So if you want to be young, rich, handsome, beautiful and healthy you’d better smoke the advertised brand, too.

“Wait!” you tell him. “I’m smoking one of your other brands! An hour ago you showed me that I could be young, rich, handsome and healthy if I smoked ZanaDoos. Now you want me to switch to WakaDoos. That isn’t fair!”

And think about those people in the ads, too. Don’t they ever cough? And why do they smile so broadly at the first puff? Do they like that whiff of phosphorous oxides from the end of the match? (Great! You are asking questions about the image they are trying to portray.)

And listen carefully to the comparisons. Jack (or the model in the white jacket) will tell you that the tobacco in his cigarette is “purer.” Purer than what, Jack? Purer than it was last week? Or purer than the other brands your company makes? Or purer than pure tar? So very pure that the tars in it won’t give a mouse cancer?

Break the cycle. If you don’t start you won’t have to stop smoking. So what that your friends all smoke. You don’t have to. No one “has” to.

Another thing, by not smoking your skin will look healthier and your insides will be healthier. When your friends are dying from lung cancer, you’ll be looking forward to your retirement and traveling the world, or enjoying your grandkids, or whatever.