Smoking Is Bad (ONLINE X-KLOO-SIEVE)

Here at the Ampersand we can’t claim to everything, but some things we can are responsible research methods and insightful journalism with an eye toward the public’s wellbeing. It is with this higher calling in mind that the Ampersand Editorial Staff spent it’s entire annual budget on cigarettes (and incurred one $3,000 debt in judicial bail), Why, you might ask? Was it the realization that the Office of Internal Studies is both less efficient and more personally antagonizing than the DMV? That a CSS/Film Studies double major won’t in any way convince someone to hire you? That there’s not a thing about a black-light dance party that we actually enjoy? For You. We did it for You. Because Smoking isn’t just bad for your health:

Smoking is Bad1

(Title)

1. Let’s take care of this one immediately. Smoking is addictive. And not in the “OMG How I Met Your Mother is SUCH an addictive show! And now that all 8 Seasons are available on Hulu there’s no way I can focus long enough to take the breath at the end of this sentence! Gotta Go watch NPH KThnxBye!” sense, but more in the “WHAT!? It’sONLYbeen14minutes sincemylast CIGARETTE HOWisthatevenPOSSIBLE? I haven’tsleptin82HOURS andcannot focus ona SINGLEGODDAMN THING” more-addictive-than-cocaine” kind of addictive.
2. People say: Smoking Makes You Cool, and All the Cool Kids Do It, and Johnny Depp Smokes Cigarettes2 and He was in Pirates of the Caribbean; Do not listen to these people because These People are Wrong. The less glamorous truth is that Smoking is a leading cause of fat chicks and friendlessness.3
3. Smoking will NOT make you sound smarter while talking about an Ishiguro novel you only read the back of.
4. Police interrogations are just as terrifying without cigarettes.
5. Cigarettes have caused every California wildfire since 1872.
6. 100% of Smokers die.
7. Also, Stephen Hawking died of cigarettes.
8. Smoking will not cause a harem of hipster princesses to spontaneously materialize around you. See: Cocaine, underwhelming music, greasy hair.
9. ……….
10. (Cigarette break)

1 As in, morally reprehensible. Like state lotto’s. Or cheese from an aerosol can. Or corporate advertisements beamed into Space.

2 Johnny Depp smokes cloves. And it will never matter how wealthy and long-lashed and indifferent you can look while doing so, you will never be cool smoking cloves.

3 Smokers Quarterly, Vol. 19, Num. IV, “Cigarette Replaces Man’s Best Friend: Costs Less, Walks More,” p. 61. Southern Methodist University Press: Corpus Christi, 1987.