There was this outfit several years back that used to buy a lot of prime time ad spots to run an anti-smoking campaign. It was, and still is, called the Truth or the Truth dot com. It was difficult to fault their intentions, the tactics though, were almost a parody of the truth. I mean their statistics seemed grossly bloated.
This may be old news to those of you who watch TV on a television. They have at least two new commercials. One about pets (meaning cats AND dogs) and one just about cats. The one just about cats shows a series of viral videos and besides suggesting there will never be another viral video if smokers keep giving cats lung cancer, they list as a FACT, that cats that belong to smokers have a fifty percent higher rate of cancer.
I’ve known a lot of vets in my time, professionally, personally, and, well, I grew up in a university town with some ok colleges but a great Veterinary college. There is one thing that every vet I’ve ever known expected me to do and report on; Check my pets shit. There is one thing no vet has ever done; asked me if I smoked. Now, sure, my personal expierence is limited to … um, my personal experience. I still have a hard time believing even a sample group of vets not only being specific about cat cancer but chasing down the cause to the owner. It just doesn’t seem probable, so I have to wonder where that fifty percent FACT actually comes from.
I am not advocating smoking in front of your cat. I can’t imagine that’s good for the cat, but, there’s so much many actually bad FACTs about smoking it seems ridiculous to make one up and make one up under the auspices of protecting viral videos (half of which are putting cats in costumes which is kind of like torture).
Um, and if cats stood still for smoke you and your roomates wouldn’t have had to put the cat in the bag to blow bong hits in.
The one with the dogs had this video of a guy smoking near a dog, then it went to showing a bad cartoon cut-away where the smoke gathered in the dogs mouth as a blue blob, sort of like a simulation of a Doppler and a storm front.
I don’t know that many dogs get lung cancer either, but, it’s bad for a dog’s sensitive sense of smell. I don’t think that’s sensational enough for The Truth. Certainly not as scary as blue blobs.
I wondered years ago as I wonder now, where do these guys get all the money it takes to run prime time ads and internet ads on prime time shows (which I assume is a different contract. Why? I don’t know, I just assume.)
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