Gather the children, boys and girls, moms and dads – the whole family – for a wonderful and inspiring I Hate Monday story.
nce upon a time there was a very successful product. The product was so popular and profitable that many competing companies sold it. Farmers could grow it. It was a popular cash crop. People used it every day – many times a day, in fact. The product was called cyanide. The cyanide companies all marketed it as a refreshing, healthful product. They used clever marketing strategies. Some used celebrities and even doctors to endorse their brand. Some added flavorings, so Country Spice and Lemon Fresh cyanide came on the market and were very successful. People soon discovered that they liked cyanide so much, it almost seemed addictive. People loved to inhale cyanide fumes! It was the cool thing to do. Everyone did it.
Over time researchers – some of them working for the cyanide industry – discovered that cyanide actually was addictive. What wonderful news for the cyanide industry! They secretly did more research on how to make cyanide even more addictive. It only made good sense from a business standpoint.
till more research gradually established that inhaling cyanide fumes could be fatal. Cyanide was proven to be a lethal poison, but the cyanide industry used a delivery system that prevented their millions of happily addicted customers from getting a lethal dose. More research conclusively proved that cyanide fumes were harmful to the lungs and heart. Inhaling cyanide fumes caused customers to be at much higher risk of developing cancers all over the body, not just the lungs. Hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in the United States alone were blamed on cyanide fumes.
ut cyanide was very profitable. The cyanide companies had stockholders and investors to worry about and executives and employees to pay. So the cyanide companies decided to simply deny that cyanide fumes were dangerous. They presented their own falsified research to counter the negative publicity. The independent research against cyanide was overwhelming, but that didn’t affect many cyanide customers. They were addicted. They had to have cyanide whether it was deadly or not. They would rationalize. “I’m going to die from something eventually,” they would say. “It might as well be from something I enjoy.” Others would say, “Cyanide might be a deadly poison, but what if I quit? I might be run over by a truck tomorrow.” Still others: “I’ve been inhaling cyanide fumes for fifty years and look at me. I’m as strong as an ox.”
he cyanide industry became very wealthy, and used its profits to create a powerful lobby in Washington to protect its interests. Although it did an admirable job of protecting the cyanide industry, more and more government regulations and restrictions developed over the years. Punitive taxes. Warning labels on cyanide packages. Bans on many forms of cyanide advertising. Increasingly restrictive laws about where people could inhale cyanide fumes. More and more companies refused to hire cyanide inhalers, even if they inhaled in private, in their own home.
Cyanide addicts became upset by the growing restrictions against their habit, but the truth was that the medical and scientific evidence against cyanide use was overwhelming. Even though cyanide company executives continued to deny the dangers publicly, they knew their product was killing hundreds of thousands of their customers every year. So they decided to close their business and gradually stop making cyanide and all that money and instead, to protect the lives of their customers.
ust kdding! Ha ha! We made a big funny! No, what they really did was study history. They found out that other companies in the past had faced restrictions when their products were proven to be deadly or environmentally destructive. Products like DDT and PCBs. All they had to do was target poor Third World countries who didn’t have laws against their deadly products. So that’s what they did. And they still had all their addicted customers back home, too. While in Europe and the United States, only 15 to 20 percent of people use cyanide, in some parts of India, Latin America, and the Philippines, over 70 percent of people inhale cyanide fumes.
nd so they all lived happily ever after, except for the one billion people the World Health Organization predicts will die from cyanide-related illnesses and cancer during this century. But that’s okay! The cyanide companies will make lots of money from those billion customers before they die. And so will doctors, hospitals and funeral directors. Hooray!!! Yipee!!! THE END