Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Quit Smoking, Win a Car!
Is it just me or is the Canadian Cancer Society's "Driven to Quit" contest one of the most retarded ideas ever? In case you're not familiar, the Driven to Quit contest awards prizes to people who quit smoking, the biggest being a hybrid car. Am I missing something here or have we gotten really fucking dumb?
In the most recent contest, entrants quit smoking on March 1, remain smoke-free until March 31 at which time there is a winners' draw. In April all the smoke-free verification is done by urine test and the winners are announced less than a month later on April 27. Got that? So all you have to do is quit for less than two months (since relapses after the draw disqualify you) and there you be.
How hard can it possibly be to quit smoking for 2 months, scoop up a car, and then start puffing away again? Again, either I'm missing something or this is a very poorly planned contest.
But that's not my main gripe with this. My question is, why are we rewarding people who chose to pick up an unhealthy and quite possibly deadly habit in the first place. You don't reward someone who gives up doing something they should have the common sense not to do altogether. You don't see prisons releasing guys and saying "Congratulations, Thumper, you haven't stabbed anyone in 7 years. Have a Toyota!"
This a completely ridiculous idea and needs to be rethought. Something along the lines of "Fuck the contest, nobody gets anything." You can't reward the smokers because they're smoking and that goes against the whole Canadian Cancer Society thing to begin with. You can't reward the non-smokers because they didn't even do anything and you don't reward common sense. And you can't reward the quitters because, well, you've just read why up to this point.
Plus they'd probably just get all gay about quitting and brag to everyone and piss a lot of people off.
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yes You only have to be smoke free for two months but after that long your addiction is probably mostly over.
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