Nothing but theTruth.com

Smoking will make you blind.

It will also give you 14 kinds of cancer, make you impotent, kill your babies, fill your arteries with toothpaste, cause global warming and it will definitely, without a doubt, kill you.

Those are just some of the things anti-smoking advertisers have shouted. In the years since landmark anti-tobacco settlements delivered a windfall of money devoted to wiping out cigarette smoke, the only thing smoking hasn't been blamed for is the war in Iraq.

And they're right.

Smoking is bad for you, plain and simple. But so is obtrusive, over-the-top advertising.

The amount of money spent on these anti-smoking campaigns is mind-boggling, but they're so prevalent and ridiculous that there is bound to be backlash, or, as I like to call it, anti-anti-smoking.

A majority of the campaigns are funded by the billions of dollars in tobacco settlements that have gone to state and local governments, but also by the cigarette companies themselves. Any snot-nosed 15-year-old worth his mustard should and probably does question the sincerity behind leading cigarette maker Phillip-Morris' anti-smoking ads.

In my own brief investigations, I watched a rerun of "Pimp My Ride" (the one with the Jacuzzi paddy wagon) and counted how many commercials and what advertisers made them. Three of those were theTruth.com commercials. You know, the not-funny ones with the eight anonymous white guys in the boardroom acting out a supposed real-life board meeting at Marlboro or Camel or something. The only advertiser with more commercials was MTV itself.

Now, I know those particular commercials aren't supposed to be funny, that they represent the absurd ideas companies have had trying to attract more smokers, youthful or not. But really, what boardroom of suits hasn't come up with stupid marketing ideas?

Who came up with New Coke? The Pontiac Aztek? Ashlee Simpson?

That a bunch of businessmen in a boardroom thought packaging cigarettes with bubblegum or baseball cards to attract younger smokers doesn't surprise me. These commercials use the same marketing tactics on impressionable youths that they parody. What they don't realize is that smoking is already pretty uncool among a growing number of kids, and advertising has nothing to do with it.

Smarter kids, caused by the Internet or maybe even school, learn what smoking does to their bodies sooner, and even current fashion trends and celebrities dictate disgust with smoking. If there's one good thing to come from Paris Hilton's popularity, it's that she doesn't smoke-it's just not hot.

Other anti-smoking commercials go beyond the ironic into disgusting.

The worst is the one where a disembodied hand squeezes a vile cheese out of some poor sap's disembodied aorta. A voiceover says something to the effect of "this man smoked, and this is the crap that built up in his arteries because he smoked."

While I don't dispute the fact that smoking can help clog arteries, I'd bet the Big Macs, Snickers and Chunky Soup the guy had force-fed to him in the average NFL broadcast were just as responsible for killing him.

The anti-smoking hysterics are turning into a mockery of themselves. Like a nagging parent, any savvy kid (probably even dumb ones) will tune them out.

What the anti-smoking campaigns need to do is stop blowing millions on advertising-an already overrated medium if you just ask MoveOn.org-and instead focus on helping an overburdened healthcare system or helping the poor who were most likely to be pulled in by the tobacco industry's malicious advertising.

The best anti-smoking ads I've seen are Canadian-buy a pack of Players and the Canadian government gives you a surprise message right on the box: "Cigarettes hurt babies," "Cigarettes cause mouth diseases," or "Cigarettes cause impotence." These messages are accompanied by gross but often hilarious pictures of the blackened teeth or, in a genius bit of association, a limp cigarette. While just as overcooked as American TV commercials, at least you actually have to consider smoking in order to be pelted by anti-smoking dogma.