I am a nonsmoker who
has never routinely smoked. I tried it when I was a teen, owing to that cool
kid clique pressure that does exist. It is a pressure that adults soon forget
the real nature of and then dramatize in ways that make adults seem painfully
uncool. It makes you wonder why kids want to mimic them.
Smoking looks cool. Some
people may be reasonably turned off by smokers, averse to the smell of smoke
(which is also left on smokers) or to a person choosing to be unhealthy. If
smoking weren't unhealthy and smoke didn’t smell, smoking would look cool
to almost everyone. Sexy, like sucking on a lollipop. Anti-smoking ads that
aim to discredit the “coolness” of smoking are doomed to failure. There is
no “coolness” to be had in not smoking, only “coolness” to be had in good
health.
Some people, especially
teens, relish the mark of being unhealthy and disapproved of. Most moderate to heavy smokers smoke mainly because
they have grown used to it. Over time they develop a strong psychological
and minor physical addiction, which translates as a pleasure. How they look
and how they are viewed becomes a secondary consideration or none at all.
Some feel trapped, wishing to quit but finding it too difficult. Smoking may
cut down on one’s quality of life but it’s usually not in a way that is blatantly
perceptible (e.g. less stamina). The truly dangerous ill health effects of
smoking build up over years. Smokers function and act normally. People think
in the short and the immediate term so it is difficult to make the mental
connection between daily smoking and the bad that will follow. Almost all
smokers are now well aware of the long-term risks but they assume these risks,
dismiss these risks or rationalize that they won’t be soon or ever be affected.
Nonsmokers, especially
young nonsmokers, are caught up in the inconsistency and inconclusiveness
of having to choose between smoking and not smoking, only as it relates to
physical health. The choice is more complex. It is between feeling cool, deriving
pleasure from a physical and psychological crutch, and weighing these immediate
goods against the negative long-term health consequences. We don’t sound this
out in our heads. We’re not that logical. The process of becoming a smoker
is oddly illogical. Smoking begins as physical discomfort and becomes a physical
pleasure and comfort only if one keeps at it. Usually “coolness” is the primary
incentive, more important, more pleasurable than not coughing. Even a person
who has become sick from smoking but chooses to continue is prioritizing the
pleasure of custom over the pleasure of potentially and likely better health.
Smokers are comfort eaters, the only difference being that delicious food
is not an acquired taste and pleasure.
The societal backlash
against smoking has indeed encouraged many smokers to quit as well as discouraged
many adults from taking up the habit. That teenagers have not been similarly discouraged can’t be entirely
explained away by their naiveté and
There is no law banning
smoking entirely. This is the effect of the current legal backlash, the regressive
taxes and increasing, unbending limitations on where people can smoke. We
scarcely if ever legislate against alcohol abuse. To get drunk, in and of
itself, is legal. We want to protect our right to drink, even to get drunk.
Smoking is immediately irritating and possibly detrimental to nonsmokers.
The effects of alcohol consumption are contingent upon the amount of alcohol
consumed and the agency of the person who consumed it. It is fair to say that
alcohol abuse causes more societal problems in the sum total than smoking,
and it’s probably true even proportionally. The reason we tolerate alcohol
use and abuse as we do has at least as much to do with our own personal want
for alcohol as it does with the contention that alcohol does not have to be
abused. Alcohol prohibition seems an absurd idea because almost all of us
drink and want to drink. We even want the freedom to abuse alcohol and hide
behind the only partly true arguments that you can’t effectively monitor alcohol
use nor does alcohol abuse necessarily lead to other abuses.
Since so many of us do
not want to smoke and find smoking annoying and obviously harmful, we’ve made
little to no allowance for smoker’s rights or the right of people to service
smokers. Have we collectively decided that smoking is an unbearable abuse
to us all? If so, why is it still legal? If you understand the smoking habit
and want to recognize a person’s right to smoke then it’s wrong to support
legislation that is geared towards getting smokers to quit. Instead, we should
be assessing value to smoker’s rights, the rights of the people who service
smokers, nonsmoker’s rights and promoting public health, and aiming to honor
each in sound measure.
If we tolerate smokers
at all, then we need to try to strike a balance in regulation, not to influence
smokers to quit by legislating misery into their habit. The real misery of
the habit is the eventual and serious health deterioration that will likely
affect them. We can try to address this publicly with information campaigns,
quit-smoking kits and support groups. If
we make the smoking habit miserable by taboo, it is not at the expense of
a smoker’s right but by the exercising of our own right to dissent. To say
that you accept a person’s right to smoke as long as it’s always 100 feet
away from you is generally impractical enough that it amounts to not accepting
smokers at all. To not believe in smokers’ rights is a fair position but rarely
one taken.
I probably could not
smoke regularly, even if I wanted to. I’m an allergic person. Even a small
amount of smoke makes my eyes sting and water. My mother smoked while she
was pregnant with me. At the time, she had no knowledge of the risks to the
fetus but I’m not sure she would’ve quit if she had (She told me she definitely would have). It is unforgivable that
the tobacco companies have knowingly misled people about risks. Yet since
we understood that smoking inhalation is unhealthy we can’t behave as if we
never had any idea whatsoever that smoking was even remotely bad. I only have
sympathy for the tobacco companies insofar as the suits have exposed personal
and public lies and deep hypocrisy. If it’s all about health, why doesn’t
the tobacco settlement money go to the American Lung and Heart Associations?
It’s unjust and makes no sense to award huge settlements to a select few or
even to the states, if justice for smokers’ bad health is at issue. If the
tobacco settlements are punitive fines for breaking laws, misrepresenting
cigarette ingredients, why don’t we have tobacco companies list ingredients
in their exact proportions and semi routinely have a government body do a
quality control check? I do NOT excuse the tobacco companies for tampering
with or misrepresenting the ingredients in cigarettes. I do doubt that an
honest ingredient list would’ve given smokers pause to quit or potential smokers
cause not to try cigarettes. Does anyone ever put a pack of cigarettes down
because of the boldfaced warning label? I do not doubt that tobacco companies
want to get people addicted. I also do not doubt that smokers knowingly risk
addiction, and in some cases seek it. I especially do not doubt that tobacco
companies aren’t the only ones happily benefiting from cigarette addiction.
The states benefit financially. Smokers benefit in pleasure, some without
reservation.
My mother smoked during
her pregnancies and twice gave birth prematurely; one of these births was
highly premature. Fortunately both babies grew up very healthy. It’s impossible
to say whether either child was otherwise adversely affected by the smoking,
which likely was partly or wholly the cause of both premature births. My mother
also had a baby that died from SIDS. She has often wondered and still wonders
if her smoking habit contributed. Years after bearing all her children, my
mother became very ill with a walking pneumonia, which was attributed to smoking.
She quit. It wasn’t the first time she had tried. She hasn’t smoked for many
years now and she occasionally reflects on her former habit. She could rightfully
deflect at least some of her anger onto the tobacco companies but she always
directs it at herself.
If we’re going to be angry
at tobacco companies let it be for their breaking laws, for outright deception.
Let it not be for marketing an item that continues to be legal or for profiting
off an unhealthy product. Is this really any different than a burger company
advertising a juicy fat dripping hamburger? Then again, some people are angry
about that too. It’s interesting that the bulk of discontent is directed at
McDonald’s, not the small burger joint down the block or the burger consumer
himself, no matter how many burgers he consumes. The idea of profiting from
providing a pleasurable but unhealthy product is anathema to some. The idea
of withholding every pleasurable but unhealthy product is anathema to all.
Producers and sellers can identify desire, they can play on desire, even distort
desire but they cannot manufacture desire outright. If we want to curtail
unhealthy human desires and their fulfillment, it will not be by trumpeting
the false claim that unhealthy human desires and their fulfillment are each
devoid of any real choice.
All that said, I present
to you the parody “Snuff the One Lung Dragon” (sung to the tune of “Puff the
Magic Dragon”)
SNUFF THE ONE LUNG
DRAGON
Snuff the one lung
dragon
Raised in N-Y-C
He toked and smoked. He coughed and choked. But lived on happily.
The states sued
big tobacco
Big bucks to the man
Not much for ads that cancer’s
bad and wasn’t that the plan?
CHORUS:
Snuff the one lung
dragon
Raised in N-Y-C
He toked and smoked.
He coughed and choked. But lived on happily.
Snuff the one lung
dragon
Raised in N-Y-C
He toked and smoked. He coughed and choked. But lived on happily.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
set the bars much higher
He taxed the packs
and outlawed acts
Of smoking outside
fire
Does someone hold
my car keys if I’ve too many shots?
Suppose that threat
will soon be met once we connect the dots.
Smoking is still
legal if you don’t light up
If you want to drink booze
you’ll have to think ruse and wave a water cup
CHORUS
No smoking in the
casino
I'll need to breathe
easy
Losing family savings,
these are sleazy cravings
But they made me
V.I.P
See my vices will
hurt no one
While your vices do hurt
me
No compromise means
to criminalize
And still no one is vice
free
Aint enough to have smoking
sections
More windows, vents,
and air.
Society is for the
good of me
so that just would
not be fair.
Wretched be the
smokers
Who can’t get on
the wagon
They’ll all burn
in hell with a nicotine smell
Like Snuff the one lung
dragon
CHORUS