Monday, August 04, 2003

Nicotine Beer: or Hath Hell No Basement?



An Addicted Customer is a Customer For Life



I've heard of stupid things before. In fact I have written about stupid things. Lots of 'em. In fact I am doing so right now.
But I also did several years ago -- 16 years ago in fact -- when I was writing a quasi-humorous pamphlet called Proper Gander, within which I had a "news item" the headline of which read:

Traces of Cocaine Found in Beer, Cigarettes



The point of the seemingly ludicrous item was to bring to attention the lure of addictive products, and the strange bedfellows who share business models.

Flash-forward seven odd years...

A crooked line of CEOs are all testifying to Congress that nicotine is not addictive. A joke then, and a joke now. A bad joke. A joke that kills and enslaves. Who knows which is worse? And yet here they are again. Double-whammy this time. Alcohol AND Nicotine. Why not cocaine too while they're at it?


Did you know that Blockbuster Video covers their video cases with angel dust?
And that when you touch the video, you become addicted?

Well, that is because they don't do that. It would be heinous, and the perpetrators of such a scheme would surely do time.

Adding addictive substances to products should be illegal...but it is clearly not. Soft drinks contain unnecessary caffiene, cigarettes are super-charged with additional nicotine and lord only knows what other kinds of designer additive/addictives.

Sure it is profitable. But only for a handful, and at the expense of the enslaved.

Slavery has been abolished.

We just need to keep reminding ourselves.

MORE ON NICOTINE BEER:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffiles.html