Ah, Ms. Lozano, I'll bet your mother is proud...
A New Camel Brand Is Dressed to the Nines
THE next time R. J. Reynolds Tobacco asks smokers to walk a mile for a Camel, watch how many of them are in high heels.
Reynolds, eager to increase the sales of its fast-growing Camel brand among women, is introducing a variety aimed at female smokers.
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After being diagnosed with COPD, many people talk about feeling ashamed, blaming themselves for smoking and for the disease. Often families follow suit, perhaps from a need to blame someone rather than facing their own feelings about their loved one's illness. Society certainly blames the victim, calling COPD a "self-inflicted" disease or a disease "of lifestyle".
Cigarette smoking is indisputably a causative factor in developing COPD. There are almost certainly other factors - most smokers do not develop COPD and even fewer develop emphysema - but I haven't met anyone that was a smoker and developed COPD who doesn't credit smoking for contributing to his or her disease.
We smoked, we read the warning labels on the pack, we heard what the surgeon general had to say.
We smoked.
End of story.
But it's the beginning of the story that also needs to be told.
Most of us started smoking a highly addictive product when we were in high school (or younger). This is not an age group known for its far sightedness or mature decision making skills.
We were tricked.
Conned, manipulated, marketed, targeted - call it what you will - we were lured into an addiction that we would not be likely to break.
We paid the price, we're still paying the price.
What is very, very sad - and shameful - here is a place to lay blame - is that young people are still being stalked by Big Tobacco.
I don't believe a woman of thirty is going to look at this lovely pink package of death and decide that now would be a good time to start smoking.
It will be a high school (or younger) girl wanting to be cool, or sexy, or hot or whatever the package successfully represents to her.
She will be the one in the pretty pink snare. 
