<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Europeans smoke the FUCK out of some cigarettes.\n\nIn American airports you still occasionally see the hilariously titled \"smoking lounges,\" and if you've ever witnessed this disturbing phenomena you know there's absolutely nothing \"lounge-like\" about these places. They're just junkie bos. The sick and addicted huddled up together in these things behind greasy, nicotine-stained glass giving them a place to take a swig off the evil tit, and at the same time keeping the infected and their poison away from the general population.\n\nI think these things are one of the most bizarre artifacts of human chemical addiction. In American airports these designated places are not as common anymore, but in Europe it's really shocking how many of them exist.\n\nThey have these glass cubes with cigarette company logos on them in almost every terminal, and they're just packed full of junkies sucking on coffin nails.\n\nI've always been terrified of addiction. The first encounter I ever had with it was when I was in high school. I had a friend that grew up with this kid that was selling coke. I had met the guy a few times with mutual friends, and he had always been a normal, friendly dude. All of a sudden after he got out of high school he \"lost his way\" and the word around town was that all he did with his time was sell and do coke. I ran into him once after I had heard this, and I barely recognized him. He had always been a fairly thin guy, but he had lost a disturbing amount of weight and his skin was so pale it was like he had lost blood. The physical condition of a man for the most part will represent what he's demanding of his body on a regular basis, and this dude had the body of a guy that was telling his body to snort coke and hide from the sun.\n\nThe whole experience really freaked me the fuck out. I felt as if I had known a guy that got bitten by a vampire and turned into a slave. Like I knew a guy that was a victim of a monster. I didn't know him well enough to talk to him about it, and when I brought it up to his friend, he said he couldn't get through to the guy and that he felt the situation was basically hopeless. This \"thing\" had gotten a hold of him and completely mouth raped his life. His friends were helpless watching a horrible demon hold him down, punch his teeth in and fuck his face\u2014all in plain sight. I was 16 at the time, and the memory of the whole scene was drilled into my head like a psychic tattoo. I have met a bunch of junkies in my day, including amongst them some of my favorite people ever, but like they say, you never forget your first.\n\nWhen I was younger I was very insecure and I was always terrified of being a loser. The only thing I had to look forward to was that hopefully someday I could be really good at something so that I could redefine the way I felt about myself. That was my driving hope; that if I really worked hard enough I could eventually not suck at life. Seeing this dude all fucked up on coke, wasted away to a shell when I had known him before to be a nice guy and completely normal was just the message I needed to stay away from drugs. It actually delayed me from discovering how amazing cannabis was until I was 30 because I had lumped all drugs into the same two categories; shit that will ruin your life, and shit for losers.\n\nI would occasionally indulge; have a little booze, rarely take a hit off a joint if I was hanging out with seedy company, and if I did that, I always felt guilty like I had just done something stupid. Learn from that fucking guy. Drugs will make you a loser. I've known guys that were hooked on crack, guys with heroin problems, pill junkies, I've even known guys that were addicted to cough syrup, but without a doubt the most common drug that I've seen people helplessly addicted to in my life has been cigarettes. I would say \"nicotine\" but one you research the ingredients of cigarettes it becomes VERY apparent that they're adding a bunch of other shit into those things that makes them even more addictive. It turns out that the reality is that there are 500 and fucking 99 additives that the US government allows in cigarettes.\n\nWell, at least we know the government is clearly looking out for our best interest on this one. It certainly represents our tax dollars well spent, and it's nice to know that we can rest easy with the big government watchdog on point covering all the bases for us.\n\nNo way would Uncle Sam let 599 spooky-named chemicals like \"3-phenylpropionaldehyde\" and \"Para-Tolyl 3-Methylbutyrate\" be added to your Newports unless they were sure it was for the greater good of mankind.\n\nThere's lots of things that people are addicted to; gambling, alcohol, caffeine but cigarettes are the only thing where SO many people are addicted to them that they have publicly dedicated areas for you to get your fix while you're traveling. They're not even going to pretend that you can wait until you get home.\n\nI've always found it interesting that you never hear politicians lobbying to make cigarettes illegal. There's all this talk about looking out for our best interests, and moral posturing about protecting folks from the evils of illegal drugs, but nobody ever campaigns against one of the deadliest and least useful habits we humans have. I guess it's one of those things where we've had cigarettes in our culture for so long that we're just resigned to the fact that they're just a part of life. We may pass laws banning them from bars and pool halls (under much protest) but you never hear anyone talk about getting rid of these useless things altogether.\n\nIt would be political suicide. That's pretty fucking weird if you think about it. We freak the fuck out when twenty people get killed by swine flu, but companies are making billions of dollars selling a product that has 400,000 people in the US alone rotting to death slowly from the inside out, each and every year, and it barely ever even gets mentioned.\n\nThat right there is proof positive that most politicians and government officials aren't looking out for your best interests. They're there to look out for the people that financed their campaigns, and cigarette companies are very high on that list. People love to talk \"conspiracy theories\" and how ridiculous they are, but the cold, hard truth is that our entire system of government is run by people who have been paid insane amounts of\n\n money by companies selling shit that kills people.\n\nA real, live wolf in sheep's clothing, far more sinister and unbelievable than Skull and Bones, UFO cover-ups, or the CIA killing Kennedy. It's crazy, it's unbelievable, but yet it's absolutely true. A company selling a product that kills more than 100 times more people each and every year than the amount that died in the tragedies of September 11th, and they help finance our leaders.\n\nDespite being the distributors of one of the most deadly and addictive products known to man, our government has allowed tobacco companies to contribute millions of dollars to \"A Partnership for a Drug Free America\" where they used that money to make commercials against Marijuana, a drug that's never killed a single person ever. It's a mad, mad world people.\u2014Joe Rogan"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-joe-rogan-guest-blog-experience-day-3-junkie-boxes>