Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Cigarettes

Fortunately, I've never had any interest in smoking cigarettes.  Even when I was younger and my friends smoked, I was never tempted to imitate them.  Why would I want to get lung cancer?

Over the years, I have probably not objected to anything more than cigarette smoking, nor been ignored more.  Smokers need to smoke, the objections of others notwithstanding.

I've watched as friends and family have died prematurely.  I always wonder at smokers who don't try to discourage their adolescent children from smoking.  Don't they care about them?  My assumption is that they consider smoking together another form of family bonding.

Years ago, the smoke cloud would form in my workplace in the late afternoon.  The smoke burned your eyes.  My tough luck, I assumed.  After all, the smokers had their rights, and you could only be so miserable about it.

Later, smoking in the workplace was restricted to a designated office area, and finally banned indoors altogether.  Occasionally, an argument would break out as to the boundaries of the workplace.  If you smoked on the balcony, the smoke could still blow back in to the office.  If you smoked next to the outside air intake, the smoke could make its way back into the office.  Still, the improvement was substantial.

But the determined smoker won't give it up just to please others.  I guess you could say the same thing about the determined drinker or any other drug addicted personality.  They smoke no matter what the consequences.

You can watch the daily count of soldiers who die in Iraq or Afghanistan; their names and faces flashed for a moment on the TV screen or shown on the internet.  Victims of human folly.  Yet the deaths in those wars are insignificant next to the deaths from cigarette smoking.  As many people die in the U. S. every two days from smoking-related diseases as died in the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11.  You wonder who the greater terrorists are, Al Qaeda or the cigarette manufacturers?  It's all in your perception. 

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