The Future of Tobacco

I’m going to put on my lawful evil cap today to describe where big tobacco is today and where it will be tomorrow.

For years big tobacco has faced declining sales in the developed world. To offset this they have increased sales to the developing world. It is easy to be lawful evil there, especially when enough money given to the right hands can craft the law there.

Still, there will always be developed world “seep”. Important health information will eventually find its way to the developing world. So I only give big tobacco 100 years before they will be accountable enough to face shrinking sales there.

So what’s next for big tobacco? Of course finding aliens is perhaps the ultimate goal of big tobacco. But let’s face facts – alien brains will be unlikely to produce an addiction response when on tobacco.

So I say it will only be natural for big tobacco to go after the only untapped earth market I know about – animals.

In more than one developing world zoo, there have been cases of primates getting addicted to cigarettes. I gather that customers give the cigarettes to the primates. This link shows a chimp smoking in a South Africa zoo. Unlike aliens, it looks like these beasts can become addicted, too. This is just the start.

It is my opinion, in the desire to do evil and shorten already short lives, big tobacco will do some possible good by developing prosthetics so more than just primates can smoke.

Do you have an indoor cat? With the proper smoking prosthetic it can smoke. Prompting you, developed world reader, to make it go outside to smoke.

Other cats in the neighbourhood will see your Fluffy smoke and get to go outside and thus more cats will take up smoking in an avalanche of new sales for big tobacco.

Big tobacco will not stop till every type of animal becomes addicted. They will develop even more prosthetics so these animals can pay off big tobacco.

And big tobacco will cross their collective fingers and hope that most animals are too stupid to realize they are collectively shortening their lives.

And maybe, just maybe animals have been waiting for the chance to get proper prosthetics so they can rise against human overlords. Maybe when they rise up, big tobacco will finally die once and for all.

As for me, it’s been 5 years since I kicked my tobacco addiction. I’m never going to try a cigarette again because I think I’ll be just as addicted as I was for 25 years.