In case you are too thick to see it…..this is kids weeks here at Montesano Today.
I remember them quite clearly. The same size as a pack of real cigarettes with different brand names. You would open the pack, carry it around in your shirt pocket the whole bit. A choice between filtered, or unfiltered as well.
Sure you ate them. But you took your time. Holding them right, pretending to smoke them. We were very polite with them as well. It was common, almost expected when taking a candy cigarette break at school in the yard to offer the pack to your friends. Very social actually.
Oh yes, we were being groomed. Oh boy were we. The tobacco industry couldn’t/can’t exist without bringing along the next generation. Adults were already hooked. Advertising wasn’t geared to them, it was to keep it in the face of children and normalize the behavior.
When all this marijuana stuff hit a few years ago I wrote an article that said our kids would be targeted. Oh pooh pooh I was told. Repeatedly. There won’t be any advertising. This will be very controlled. You won’t even know it is there.
Remember?
Now we have nothing but giant 40 foot billboards every few miles on the freeways….everywhere. They aren’t geared to the adults and if you think they are, you truly are as stupid as I think most of you are.
The industry learned from the candy cigarettes, the optics were bad. It has evolved. Now there is THC laced gummy bears. But not just gummy bears. That alone won’t do the job.
Now they are selling laced chocolate syrup. Chocolate syrup and ice-cream. Yum yum.
I think my favorite is the THC laced little bags of flavored potato chips. As they proudly advertise ” to be able to micro-dose”
Micro-dose. Let that sink in for a minute. Great for getting through 4th period English class. Wouldn’t you say?
Now I know what you are thinking about now. “Who cares if the kids do a little pot?” In Oregon now and soon here in Montesano as well, that will change to “who cares if they do a little meth?” It’s legal in Oregon now and if you think Inslee is going to be left out of that….keep dreaming and lay off the potato chips.
The reason I know you are saying this is that you allow it.
I keep going back to our elected officials here locally. Crickets.
Parents are delusional if they think all this stuff isn’t in their children’s faces and hands constantly now. If they don’t think the little kids are being blasted with it from their strapped in car seats as they suck on their pacifiers going down the road you really are blind.
The next generation of customers assured, the right people taken care of.
Sounds a lot like the tobacco industry doesn’t it?
What we as adults are doing to this generation of children is monstrous. It shouldn’t be me writing about it. I should be writing about pitchfork and torch carrying parents. But I don’t, because I can’t.
Most of them are too couch-locked from a big bowl of Ice Cream and chocolate syrup to cause much of a fuss.
No, we have failed these kids horribly. The bill coming due will be massive and not just financial.
Montesano Today 