Wedding Dress and Marbreds

Madeleine tries on a wedding dress for Diane, who ties the knot this summer in VT. More to come. Here's something to note: US smoking hotlines swamped, sometimes by four times their usual volulme the USA Today reports, by would-be quitters following the largest-ever increase in the federal tobacco tax - a pack of Marlboros ("Marbreds" back in the day) by $1.01 a pack, for instance. But here's what these poor hackers are up against: 3% have success on their own; with counseling it is 16% and with medication like the nicotine patch - 30%. Not encouraging - how on earth consumers believed this nefarious weed - nicotine added accordingly - not a drug nor addictive? I recall like yesterday the seven Tobacco CEOs '94 testimonials under oath before Congress. They squirmed as much as I did knowing full well they were a lie. Not surprisingly when I was in business school around this time, Philip Morris recruited and the shadiest dude in my class took a summer internship - his comment then: "every company has skeletons in the closet..." Dumb ass MBA. Of more interest, PM presented at Columbia's Presidential suite - not even the Big Investment Banks or Consulting Firms did this - and brought their top-brass from Vice Presidents to the Head of North America who opened his presentation by saying (this the very first thing, mind you): "Ours is a legal product, and as long as it is legal, we will do everything in our power to promote Philip Morris and smoking." There was no mention of the lobbiests in DC or the cancer spread across our country. Well, things have improved and fewer people in the Western World smoke, excluding the French who smoke all the time God bless them. Thank goodness, then, for Asia where >50% of their populations inhale. It is hard to imagine how their health system will cope in twenty years when the health system forced to address the smoking related suffering. It won't be pretty, nor any of us guilt-free.