"Cigarettes, I won't do cigarettes, nicotine will kill ya"
About this Quote
Coming from Tommy Chong, this is anti-nicotine advice delivered like a punchline that knows it has to fight for airtime. Chong is a pop-culture shorthand for stoner permissiveness; his whole persona is built on making intoxication seem goofy, harmless, even cozy. So when he draws a hard line at cigarettes, the contrast does the work. The intent isn’t just health messaging. It’s image management with a wink: the “professional weed guy” insisting he’s not reckless, just selective.
The phrasing is telling. “I won’t do cigarettes” treats smoking like a gig you can pass on, folding addiction into consumer choice. Then the line snaps into blunt consequence: “nicotine will kill ya.” The casual “ya” keeps it conversational, but the threat lands harder because it’s unadorned. No stats, no lecture, just the kind of street-level certainty that reads as lived experience. It’s the rhetoric of a guy who’s watched friends age badly, who’s old enough to have seen cigarettes go from glamorous to grim.
Context matters, too: Chong comes from an era when tobacco was aggressively normalized and then steadily exiled from public life, while cannabis has moved in the opposite direction. The subtext is a cultural pivot: what once looked edgy (cigarettes) now looks corporate and lethal; what was stigmatized (weed) has become, in some circles, the “safer” vice. Chong leverages his credibility as a rebel to deliver a surprisingly conventional warning, and that tension is exactly why it sticks.
The phrasing is telling. “I won’t do cigarettes” treats smoking like a gig you can pass on, folding addiction into consumer choice. Then the line snaps into blunt consequence: “nicotine will kill ya.” The casual “ya” keeps it conversational, but the threat lands harder because it’s unadorned. No stats, no lecture, just the kind of street-level certainty that reads as lived experience. It’s the rhetoric of a guy who’s watched friends age badly, who’s old enough to have seen cigarettes go from glamorous to grim.
Context matters, too: Chong comes from an era when tobacco was aggressively normalized and then steadily exiled from public life, while cannabis has moved in the opposite direction. The subtext is a cultural pivot: what once looked edgy (cigarettes) now looks corporate and lethal; what was stigmatized (weed) has become, in some circles, the “safer” vice. Chong leverages his credibility as a rebel to deliver a surprisingly conventional warning, and that tension is exactly why it sticks.
Quote Details
| Topic | Health |
|---|
More Quotes by Tommy
Add to List
