Gateway Drug Series: Part 3 Tobacco X-Files

Most drug addicts and alcoholics begin with cigarettes. It's the biggest killer - by far - of all drugs. Nearly half a million Americans die each year of tobacco-related illnesses. Nobody starts smoking with the idea that they will become lifetime users who are predestined to have significant, perhaps terminal, health problems. Nobody thinks that far ahead when they're in their teens. That's the problem. This program cleverly combines teen interviews with a series of staged gross-outs including an interview with a woman who has terminal cancer and has a whole in her throat through which she receives treatments. Uses that tried but true educational video technique: scare the hell out of them. An unrelenting series of grotesque images that makes painfully clear the very uncool impact of long term smoking.