Tobacco: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) 

Philip Morris lost its suit against Uruguay and was ordered to pay $7 million and other court costs.

The day we passed the Plain-Packaging laws in Australia I was so proud. It was a big middle finger to the tobacco companies.

I'm a heavy smoker, I doubt I will ever be able to drop the habbit, and I'm in favor of any law that prevents people from becoming smokers.

I live in Australia, and I'm telling you, the packaging on the cigarette boxes are absolutely terrifying. The worst bit is that some people who don't throw them away properly. You'll be walking home from school and you'll see that eyeball. Just think about that

The Google image thing actually worked...

"some people would prefer having smaller babies" reminds me of "global warming is good because warm weather is nice"

I quit smoking 9 years ago. I smoked a pack a day. It can be done. It once was a serious important "need" for me and I no longer care at all and don't miss it a bit. Please know that you can be free of this addiction!

It’s always good when a joke actually improves with age, especially a joke about Ye

Tobbaco companies literally kill their best customers

Australia just won its international lawsuit : )

I quit smoking 10 years ago. Best choice I ever made.

In India we have absolutely horrific images on cigarette packs. Whenever a character in a movie is smoking or drinking, there is a little warning message. Not just that, they also roll a video message from a man who died from lung cancer due to tobacco.

John deserves a Nobel Prize

Quit smoking on July 16, 1993 after 29 years of addiction to nicotine. This will be my happy, healthy 25th anniversary of smoke free existence.

I think we need a Part 2. So much has changed since, but the industry has only grown.

I've recently been diagnosed with asthma and the doctor told me "it doesn't matter if people smoke outside or not, if they're not changing their clothes, showering and brushing their teeth and using mouthwash after every cigarette, you're at risk of secondhand smoke." A third of the students in my sixth form would go outside the gate and smoke at break time and then would go to class. In my history class, 70% of the students smoked. There should be laws here in the UK stating that schools should not only be no smoking zones, but laws that state students should not be allowed to smoke during the school day because it can cause serious harm to an individual with breathing problems. An asthma attack (which can be triggered by cigarette smoke) can, and does, kill. 3 people in the UK die from asthma attacks every day. Plus, 16 and 17yr olds aren't even legally allowed to buy cigarettes. There should be better young person protection laws in schools and colleges.

Update: the smoking baby ended up quitting cigarettes at the age of 5!

Hearing people talking about quitting or being motivated to quit from this video is heart-warming.

Storytime: my mom told me a story of when she was younger (this is in Egypt in the 70s/80s) there were cigarette ads on TV that were literally just an image of a pack of cigs for a few seconds and it's gone. THAT'S IT. and then one day my grandma (mom's mom) sent the maid out with some money to get something from the corner store and she came back with cigarettes. No one in the house smoked, they'd never requested them from her before. So they asked her why she got them, and she couldn't give an answer. She legit just said she has no idea why she bought them, and they ended up throwing the cigs in the garbage. Since then, those ads have been banned but smoking rates are still really really bad in Egypt unfortunately. :/

Holy shit the “that’s not Uruguay” bit made me remember where it was 6 years later.

I never thought I'd hear the line " just across this bridge, lies the home of the small fishing village that has the smoking baby"

As figured out here in the comments: -Australia won its International Lawsuit -Uruguay won its case -The Smoking Baby quit smoking at the age of 5 All if right with the world! Take that Big Tobacco!

Marlboro: Don’t be a maybe Me: Ok I’ll definitely get lung cancer from your murder sticks

2021 and Jeff is still the first thing you see when you look up Marlboros mascot.

The best journalist in America is from England.

I quit smoking on February 9th, 2019 because I felt embarrassed by how unwillingly I was playing into everything cigarette companies are doing. I was smoking despite knowing the risks and Jeff was the punch in the lungs I needed to finally stop. Here's day 25! Thanks John Oliver and Last Week Tonight staff.

I am a pack and a half a day smoker who's tried to quit a million times. I wish "plain packaging" was a thing with cigarettes here in the US

I felt slightly satisfied with myself when I saw that they had Uruguay as Paraguay before he pointed it out.

I quit smoking after being on the drug for 28 years. I had tried to quit many times, and had watched my mother die from tobacco related cancer. I can remember the feelings of failure each time I gave up and lit that first one. The patch is what did it for me. That way quitting nicotine was easy. In May it will be 25 years smoke free!

Congress should pass a bill requiring Jeff to be on all Marlboro packaging.

You know, half of my grandparents died of lung cancer, and both of my parents used to smoke. Smoking has done so much harm to my family that I have promised never to touch a cigarette in my life. However, I realize now that that decision means nothing, as what these tobacco companies have done gave me cancer.

I noticed that wasn't Uruguay, mostly because I'm from Paraguay XD

Don't "maybe" die of cancer, Ensure it.

I remember when I was a child and I first learned how bad and addicting smoking really was and what it can do it your body, either at school or on a commercial. I started crying for a time and even went up to my mother, who was a smoker at the time, and begged her to quit. For a while I even had this desire to get rid of any packs in the house that I might've acted on occasionally, though I'm sure I was caught trying, more times than not. I don't know how often she'd smoke but when she did, I do recall her bedroom being a bit smokey, though honestly that was probably just from her not opening her window than smoking too much. Thankfully, not only has my mother been smoke-free for maybe 5 or 6 years (according to her, anyway, though personally I think it's been much longer, I'm 21 at the time of this comment and I recall hearing the news - with confirmation - when I was a lot younger), but so far nothing smoking-related has happened to her body. However, one cigarette alone can cause plenty of damage, there's no such thing as 'too many cigarettes' or whatever. If you smoke more than others, it only does more damage than it normally would, plain and simple. I was born in 2000 and for my entire life I've felt the desire to *not* smoke or drink instead of the desire *to* do either of those. Unfortunately, there are still smokers in my family, some who smoke enough to smell of the stuff, including one woman who looks at least 20 years older than she actually is from chain smoking that has even caused cancer to manifest in her which was treated in the past, and she's in her early 70s today. I hope people continue to see the dangers of smoking, smokers or otherwise, and the smokers are able to quit, no matter how long they've smoked and regardless of age. Something may have happened to their body from smoking, but I believe quitting will give you more time than continuing to smoke under the belief that you 'might as well', if you get what I mean. Hopefully, one day, smoking cigarettes, at least, will be banned altogether. At least marijuana doesn't have stuff used for rocket fuel in it, like, why the hell would you stuff these things with such garbage? Is plain tobacco even safe without all the extra crap or is it bad, too? Cause, there are some plants out there that can do some… unique shit, to say the least, to Humans.

My grandmother said she started smoking when she was young because she worked in a bar and all the smoke bothered her, and someone told her that if she started smoking it wouldn't bother her anymore. We did lose her to lung cancer a few years ago.

I love how john oliver just pisses of douchey companies.

This is my first day trying to quit smoking. watching this video was more motivating than I expected

I started at 14 & was a pack a day till 36. My Dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness & begged me to let him pay for whatever treatment it took to quit so he could die without fear that I was right behind him. After several previous fails, his request enabled me to finally quit cold turkey. I didn't even crave or get moody. It was the "miracle" I needed, though I can't exactly recommend it to others. It was also the best gift he could have ever given me. Miss you, Dad.

I came across this episode right after reading an article on the conversation about the judgments : -Australia won it's international suit, paving the way for any country to implement these plain packaging laws -So did Uruguay.

love this guy and fyi, Uruguay won the international trial against malboro

The biggest issue I see here is that corporations have too many rights, too much money, and too much power.

I'm from Uruguay! That joke was great because I always have to tell people "it's just a small country in South America" LOL

Not much worse than watching older family members struggle with breathing problems for years before they finally are killed by these evil products. Sadly, I've seen it at least 5 times in just my immediate family.

See, that's pure genius right there; for not only does Oliver provide quality entreatment, but he's also, dare I say it, doing his part to change the world! The new Jon Stewart!

Man, I gotta admire just how far John takes things on every single episode here.

My father died of emphysema at 74 , after smoking since he was 9 years old. I was the first child ever born in my family with asthma. I was diagnosed with COPD at the age of 29…and I am on oxygen at 58…I never smoked, but being exposed to second hand smoke since being in the womb has passed asthma down to my only daughter and my only grandson. I hate Big Tobacco with the fire of a thousand suns that bellow cigarette smoke.

What's great about Australia's plain packaging laws is that there is now nothing glamorous about smoking. It is seen as the disgusting, boganish habit that it is.

See libertarians, this is why government is necessary. Without governments corporations run amok.

Update: We have just adopted plain packaging in Canada, exactly like Australia

I love that at the end of the "Don't be a Maybe" clip the warning lable on the cigarettes translates into "Smoking MAYBE deadly"

The thing I couldn't stop thinking about once it got to all the lawsuits is why there isn't some kind of international legal agreement that health comes before marketing I mean. . . surely we can agree on that?? Obviously the tobacco companies wouldn't lol but we could stop them from ever getting the chance to argue their 'delusive, fatal' cases if there was some kind of international law, something protecting public health measures from being threatened by corporations on the basis of damage to their brand. It just makes no sense that something like this doesn't exist??

I quit 10 months ago feels good to not be a slave to something

|I quit after 57 years smoking between 20 and 40 per day - February 18, 2019 was my last cigarette - so, i hope this an incentive for anybody else out there! BTW I'm 70.

The thing I regret the must about the 30 years I smoked is my disregard for other people. Because it smells terrible, and is terrible to breathe for non-smokers. See, I wasn't thinking about other people- because I had a need. Therefore I was more important than them. I cannot speak to other people, but i had convinced myself that I had a right to this. Callous indifference to other people was implicit in my cigarette habit. Having stopped smoking, I certainly wish I had never started.

This is just amazing. I wish more media had the guts to actually intervene not just report on horrible stuff.

Curious George is always getting into such crazy shenanigans! Like transforming the Man in the Yellow Hat into a gigantic, diseased lung

Let’s be real the cigarette ads are exactly like beer ads today

Australia has got the right idea on this. Make the stuff expensive, unappealing and visually uninteresting. Great work!

I was holidaying in Indonesia a few years ago. I was on a small island in the south for a week doing some scuba diving and I was talking to a local nurse who lived there. She told me that that day she had to break the news to a 17 year old that he had terminal lung cancer. I asked her if he smoked, she said yes. Then I said something like 'Yeah, well y'know, I guess that's what happens' and she said 'No, cigarettes aren't that bad if you don't have too many'. I was stunned. Also, one time during the trip we were travelling down a highway and I saw a huge billboard with a smoking ad on it which just had a picture of a guy in a leather jacket smoking with the text underneath just saying "NEVER QUIT". Dead serious. Loved the country btw, had a great time, but boy oh boy do they have a tobacco problem over there.

Love this guy... hilarious bit on a serious issue :1

I absolutely love the ending. Simply gorgeous.

All the great stories of people having the will power to quit smoking is so inspiring that it makes me want to quit even though I haven’t smoked ever in my life

My mom and dad always got smoking ads, specifically marlboro ads, in the mail. They'd also go racing with Marlboro all the time. My dad's fingers are now a pretty solid yellow color. Neither of my parents can breath very well, and neither can I because of the secondhand smoke I inhaled. I went to the doctor and he asked me how long I've been smoking. I said never and he said I had the lungs of a 2 year smoker.

Companies should be below countries, the fact that they can sue a government is ridiculous.

If “master of your own destiny” means choosing when to die, then Marlboro will help you with it!

1:29 I love he just casually brushes aside that question

John Oliver is like a troll that's on our side lol

That Mike Bloomberg joke aged well.

I guess John Oliver's job must be hard. In five years his hair turns grey completely. He's been doing one heck of a job, like the previous president of the US.

This might be the single best Last Week Tonight with John Oliver video on YT. Awesome!

John Oliver putting that HBO dragon money to good use.

I'm a smoker and this video is probably convinced me to quit smoking more than anything else.

Does anyone else remember watching a Wizard of Oz anti-smoking video in school? It had the stupidest theme song. “Smoke is no joke. Smoking is a very bad habit. Smoking is bad for a woman or man or a kid or a chipmunk or a rabbit.”

One of the most successful episodes of this show in my opinion. Really showed the world the power of J.Oliver's show.

This program is so valuable. NO ONE Else is educating and entertaining on this level. Thank you John Oliver and your team. Brilliant. and Needed.

I smoked for 20 years before finally quitting on March 10th, 2017. It was the most liberating feeling to finally break free of the monotonous routine of smoking. I suddenly felt like I had more time in the day, more time to relax, or more time to get things done. Work was more enjoyable when I wasn't watching the clock, desperate to get outside and light up. I feel like I won my own personal battle with the tobacco companies, and I refuse to give them one more cent of my hard-earned money.

You are a National Treasure, John Oliver! Keep doing what you do!

I absolutely loved Joe Camel as a kid, in the 80s - and I'm not even American(grew up in the UK, and Canada). They knew exactly what they were doing.

Uruguay, A county you think about so little, That you didn't even notice that wasn't Uruguay. Priceless (:

From Indonesia... I quit smoking today, thank you for the explanation and encouragement. I hope many Indonesians can massively boycott the product that is killing us... Cigarette Companies are playing the people here in Indonesia, and the government took part on the epidemic spread with no strict regulation ever made, nor implemented. Ironically, the people do know how it can harm them but still prefer to consume cigarette as if folloeing the smoking brandings as a lifestyle made by the capitalist.

4:30 You're wrong there, John. The lighter is tied to prevent lighter-theft. Might sound unbelievable but that's what the string's for.

I started smoking when I was 18, and quit when my first son was born. It was difficult, but not impossible. It's a disgusting habit from a disgusting industry.

I noticed that it wasn't Uruguay

In Sweden it's illegal to market tobacco products in any way.

Bless you and your whole crew, and especially bless you all and the people of Paraguay and Togo for the Jeff the Diseased Lung bit with the ¡Jeff! billboard and the beautiful people of Togo decked out in Jeff-ware. I was having a panic attack - this got me enough pleasurable endorphins to snap out of it. Thank you.

This video was so interesting. Really shows you how money and international companies can be more powerful than countries, something that shouldn't be possible, and can prevent countries from protecting their population's health.

Jeff is among the top in google searches after I searched Marlboro.

That Marlboro ad was almost cartoonishley evil.

I have a cigarette allergy that almost killed me as a baby because my mom smoked while pregnant. And then refused to quit when i was born. The doctors said if i lived I'd likely be brain dead.

In Australia 2022 it's $45 for a packet of 25's .... I quit smoking 🚬 🚭

I'm glad I was born after the tobacco ads were on tv so I don't have to deal with this

I remember overhearing conversations at the counter when the graphic images on smokes packages came out. People would be like "I want the one which says smoking harms unborn children. You don't have that one? No definitely not the one with the eye!!! I guess the foot with gangrene isn't too bad. I'll have that one then."

It would be great to see mascots like Jeff on t-shirts that we can buy with all of the proceeds going to charities and organizations who combat the misinformation and educate people affected by companies like these

Good content. Thank you for your researches and hard work.

Bruh I searched "Marlboro mascot" and the first thing that popped out is a Wikipedia reference for the lung cowboy mascot lmaao

April 7th, 2016 and Jeff is still one of the first few images on Marlboro's image search

I honestly thought that Last Week Tonight was going to help Lome (government of Togo) fight back against Phillip Morris in court. Which would've been the most incredible thing they've ever done

You earned my respect once again, Mr. Oliver! 😊🙏🙏

That might be the single greatest piece of television I have ever seen

Jeff does appear in the top search results for google search on Marlboro.