"It's Toasted"

Talk about the “swindler of sin”, “dancing with the devil”, and other nicknames to describe someone who is good at their job of talking and convincing people they are wrong. In this situation, the actor is trying to prove that there are no connections between deadly diseases caused by the usage of cigarettes. Throughout the whole movie, the senator of Vermont and other health organizations were trying to file a health claim against big tobacco and how it can be harmful towards humans. While evidence of this was undeniable, the big tobacco companies always found ways to prove people wrong about their thoughts and research. I am certain that the government of Vermont was either representing as the FDA or working with them because they wanted to change the packaging and labeling of the cigarettes to show consumers how deadly cigarettes can by putting a large image of skull and crossbones. The senator of Vermont found a way to show people how harmful cigarettes are in one picture without words, which became evident when Mr. Herrera testified Infront of all the senators at the end of the movie and didn’t feel discriminated due to no English wording.

As the FDA, lung cancer association and other groups were slowly closing their grip on big tobacco, they came up with the idea to put cigarettes back in movies. This would have been a massive PR/marketing boost for them because people idolize movie stars and their roles. If someone were to see Brad Pitt smoking a cigarette, they would want to smoke that same cigarette because if he can do it, so can viewers. While this motion would have been expensive at first, it could have brought in billions of dollars to the big tobacco industries and soon enough movie theatres across the world would be showing films with cigarettes in them. Unfortunately, Nick Naylor was not careful enough and shared deep secrets about his business proceedings with everyone. One of those things was bribing the original Marlboro man to not bash the big tobacco industry and take the money. The original Marlboro man also said that he never even smoked Marlboro because he smoked Kools. This was another way of the big tobacco industry trying to prove people wrong by keeping the recently diagnosed with lung cancer Marlboro man in hiding.

In a small part of the movie, Nick Naylor was kidnapped by people who had put a lot of nicotine patches all over his body to try and cause one or more of the many side effects caused by nicotine. When he woke up in the hospital, the doctor had said he was surprised he was still alive and was lucky he was a smoker because the amount of nicotine he had taken in could have been fatal. This was one time where they could have said that smoking saved a life. At the end of the movie at the hearing, Nick Naylor did what he does best and redirected the boards questions by saying they should put these harmful labels on planes, trains and even cheese because they kill thousands of people every year. This was a redirected health claim that went towards other corporations other than big tobacco.

One thing that was interesting to me throughout the whole movie was that Nick Naylor never smoked a cigarette on camera at any point. He did look for a cigarette once, but unfortunately had run out. This is ironic for the whole movie considering what type of message it was trying to send to its viewers to thank them for smoking.