For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 24, 2021

Underage or of age, you’re not.

First, you hold everything in so you DON’T vomit while people are watching…

I heard Theodore Roosevelt had asthma as a child and one of his doctors recommended cigars

Easy – you don’t.

Signed, A Retired Cardiac RN

You know, one of the “nicknames” that cigarettes had back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they started to mass produce them, was Coffin Nails. Even back then, they knew that cigarettes were bad for you.

The jokes on Liz. Dawn actually does look cool doing it by not inhaling. She’s a natural.

Today they’ve colorized this from the original black and white version. My question is shouldn’t the tip of the cigarette when Liz is inhaling be a reddish orange color instead of gray? My personal knowledge as a former smoker.

It’s not possible to smoke a cig and “look cool” anymore. Those ignorant days have passed. Now it just looks sad.

I’m waiting for the green to set in……..

Idiots.

YOU DON’T

Maybe you shouldn’t do it then.

There’s nothing cool about smoking…

I gave it up over 30 year’s ago why I wanted to know what life would be like without a cigarette and the freedom

I wonder how people were ever tricked into thinking that smoking was cool

You don’t – at any age!

Lynn’s Comments:

I got into some trouble, of course, for showing the kids smoking. Because a situation like this is not resolved until the next day, readers were left with a disturbing image that bothered them for 24 hours. I would often get an angry letter soon followed by an apology from folks who saw that the situation was just a set-up to be appropriately dealt with later, or so I hoped.

Everything about tobacco is terrible, from the way the crop depletes the soil, to making scumbag corporate executives rich, to killing people. Oh, and cigs smell bad.

and yet, in 2021, people smoke, I just do not understand.

You don’t look cool, you look stupid

See. All that dizziness, nausea and foul taste in your mouth is why you eat less and lose weight. Is it worth it?

Sheesh…not to mention a single pack costs something like $14.00 where I live…talk about burning your money

Such pretty girls, but not today! The posing is still spot on. I’m still smelling it!

You don’t look cool doing that.

You don’t look cool smoking, but you sure as hell STINK. Your clothing, your hair, your body, your bed just stinks. Which I never noticed until after I quit

This strip is doing a good job at showing hazards to health, examples being:

Candace, Dawn & Elizabeth = Risk of lung cancer

Elly = High blood pressure (nonstop screaming at her kids)

Michael = In danger of heart attack (from eating fast food and sugar)

Lawrence = AIDS

Only people in the movies look cool smoking

Look cool while smoking? Not possible!

Aren’t we interesting? We try things that are absolutely nauseating at first, which should clue us in as being bad for us, but force ourselves to get accustomed to them, like smoking and drinking. Animal instincts protect them (except for dogs who will eat anything); humans have free will to do anything in the name of cool. Tongue-in-cheek gross generalization maybe, but really, why do we think, “maybe if I try that awfulness again I will like it?” Probably because we were forced by parents to eat kale with the same logic.

When W.C> Fields was doing the 1930’s radio show with Edgar Bergen&Charlie McCarthy,it sponsored by Lucky Strike Cigarettes.

Fields started making jokes about an imaginary son of his named “Chester”.

It took the network geniuses a few month to figure out that “Chester Fields” was the name of acompeting cigarette,

Life is full of ironies… I started smoking cigarettes around 12 years old and didn’t quit until I was 40 and was a pack-and-a-half-per-day smoker ( over 37 years ago! ). My brother, who was 4 years younger, never smoked yet he died of pulmonary complications common to many heavy smokers when he was just shy of his 65th birthday.

What is everyone’s hangup about Dawn and Elizabeth hurting themselves. Guess everyone forgot they live in Canada, a.k.a. House of Handouts. They have free healthcare!

Did Mike go through a smoking phase?

Girls your too young to smoke. I’m an adult and I do not smoke.

If your a smoker and cannot afford things yo want, quit smoking. That will you $200 or more a month for what you want. Is there not something you would rather have then a smoking habit.

Only because fool rhymes with cool, can you even come close.

And THAT’S why ya don’t smoke!XD

Light ‘em up and please don’t stop,Cause if you do,My tobacco stocks will drop…

They never let Liz suck her thumb either. Remember how THAT turned out for her? if Daddy freaked out them, what will he do when THIS turn of sucking events gets out of the bag?

You don’t.

i smoked because i enjoyed it; i quit twice. this second time has been for 13 yrs and i have no desire to go back to it.

They would look a lot cooler with a baby soother in their mouths.

My work happens to be right next door to my church’s building (built in the 1830s), and a former coworker showed me a picture of himself smoking, wearing a cowboy hat, black-and-white, moody. …With the church in the background. sigh

Vaping starts making sense.