This Halloween, Tell Children About REAL Monsters

Oct. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- While parents assure their young children that vampires are only imaginary, they can also use the occasion to warn kids about the real monsters who really do try to enslave them, and do cause long and lingering deaths.

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.

While even Count Dracula, the most fearsome of all vampires, could enslave only a few dozen people at a time, tobacco companies enslave thousands of young children every single day.

Of these, about half will die as a result of their addiction to nicotine, and many more will endure long suffering while connected to artificial respirators, life support machines, and other devices.

Books and movies rarely depicted vampires targeting children, presumably because it would be too gruesome or too monstrous to show. 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 deliberately locating cigarettes near candy displays in stores - that tobacco companies have no such compunctions.

Ironically, says Professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), 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, their tactics seem to be working, because many pre-teens and teens continue to become addicted every day.  So, suggests ASH, parents should take the opportunity and interest afforded by Halloween to explain to young children that vampires and other monsters do not exist, but that there are real monsters who will try to enslave them as they grow older if they are not very careful.

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III
Professor of Public Interest Law at GWU,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
FELLOW, World Technology Network, and
Executive Director and Chief Counsel
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
America’s First Antismoking Organization
2013 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006, USA
(202) 659-4310 // (703) 527-8418
Internet: http://ash.org/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AshOrg

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Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America's first anti-smoking and nonsmokers' rights organization, serves as the legal action arm of the anti-smoking community. It is supported by tax-deductible contributions.