When your friends describe the myriad joys to be had from cigarettes, it's time for you to take a drag. Hold it for a moment. Don't exhale immediately. Are you getting a little dizzy? Aren't you about to cough? Is this really what your poor throat needs?

Tell Joe in the ad, the guy that looks healthy and handsome and popular. Tell him that the smoke doesn't go down like syrup—it stings like you-know-what. Let's break that image, too. Cigarettes aren't honey and champagne and sweet cider and pure spring water all in one. They burn.

When you hear someone say that cigarettes are great, tell them a few things of your own. If ZanaDoo says that it makes you look mature, volunteer your own interesting information such as how people who smoke two packs or more a day have a seventy times greater chance of lung cancer than the those who don't smoke anything. Tell them about that—do you think they know it? Of course they know it, but they don't want to acknowledge it.

People know when they are abusing their body. But they don't want to think about it.

If they thought about it, then they might decide to quit smoking, and that is painful. Cigarettes are addicting and it's hard to quit smoking once you begin. So the easiest thing, of course, is never to start smoking.

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.