Monday, December 16, 2013

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em


Vindication!

I am a smoker. Nasty habit, to be sure, but certainly no worse than drinking booze or eating high fatty foods (both of which are also things that I enjoy from time to time). Everything in moderation... except when doing things to excess.

I have always prided myself on being a considerate smoker. I don’t smoke around kids. I don’t smoke around non-smokers, people with allergies, and people who are annoyed by the smell. I don’t even smoke in my own home. You can never get that smell out of the curtains.

Smoking is not good for you. Cigars, cigarettes, pipe tobacco, marijuana, banana peels - smoking anything is carcinogenic. Huffing a campfire can never be considered a particularly good thing. But, since I do smoke, I smoke well. My brand is Camel straights (non-filters to all you laymen). Cigarette filters are made from synthetic fibers, which are likely to cause more damage than the tobacco itself. You’ve seen the ads: "Have you or someone you know been exposed to asbestos or other fire retardant chemicals?" Mesothelioma is a killer, don't you know...

So, I figure, if I’m going to put my health at risk by smoking (which surely protects others, because without my morning smoke, I would surely kill somebody), I will do it by only smoking the best. Finely cut and rolled Turkish tobacco, and the best pot that money can buy. Just like any good bad habit, why go half way?

I try to be considerate because the smell can be overpowering, and as a person with a sensitive olfactory system myself, I feel that shared spaces should be shared free of stink. Hear that ladies? A little dab will do you; you don’t need to bathe in Au de Terlet! And to all the metro-sexual guys out there (you know who you are), take your body spray and shove it up your Axe!

As a smoker, I have felt the exclusionary practices of discrimination up close and personal. Smokers are the new gays, who are the new Mexicans, who are the new blacks, who are the new Indians (the Sitting Bull type, not the Gandhi type).

For decades, smokers have been penalized for our foul habit, paying higher insurance rates and such. We have been excluded from employment, from housing, from public spaces such as theaters, restaurants, and get this - bars and nightclubs. Yeah, I’m work hard at developing psoriasis of the liver, my drunk driving proficiency, and the occasional bout of domestic violence, but don’t ruin my life by making me smell your cigarettes!

Now honestly, the smoking bans in bars was probably the best thing to happen to the singles scene since the Pill. Let’s face it, being forced outside to suck a butt gives you an instant conversation starter - bitching about being forced outside - while women who drink and smoke are more likely to take you home that night to, well… suck their butts.

That said, smokers have been a societal pariah for decades, largely due to specious and fallacious studies that linked secondhand smoke to cancers and other respiratory ailments. Asthma is certainly no picnic, and assuredly lung cancer is far worse. So please, especially you kiddies, don’t smoke. And to those of you that do, at least try to quit. I can tell you that the nicotine patches work every time. At least they did the five times I used them to quit.

The linkage of secondhand smoke to cancer however, has always been a bullshit story, and finally there is scientific evidence to back that up.

An article published this month in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) found that there is no link to cancer from secondhand smoke. The study, taken over the course of more than ten years and included more than 76,000 women found that indeed, smoking increases the likelihood of cancer for smokers, and even former smokers, but none for people exposed to secondhand smoke.

This has been my argument for years against the militant anti-smoking nazis.

See, a basic understanding of the scientific method would indicate that in order to determine whether or not secondhand smoke caused cancer, one would have to study a control group. To my knowledge, no scientific study has ever locked non-smoking people up for years, forcing them to breathe secondhand smoke exclusively, and studying there susceptibility to smoking related illnesses.

As there has never been a study of that sort - a control group exposed to secondhand smoke - there is no legitimate scientific data to support a claim that secondhand smoke has any deleterious effects, thereby rendering any such conclusion as faulty and completely corrupt junk science. Kinda like the idea of climate change hoaxes, “intelligent design” creationism, and pretty much anything that Alex Jones has ever muttered. Utter bullshit. Science is pretty specific in its methodology and peer review, and not made up entirely to push an agenda.

Your SUV and energy consumption has more to do with your increased risk of developing lung cancer that my cigarettes do. Have you looked outside lately?

I remember as a kid, clear skies and crisp, clean air. You have to travel an awfully far distance away from civilization to find that anymore. I remember that you would come over the hills toward San Francisco to see stunningly blue skies in the East Bay and a large grey fog bank to the west. Today, that same view is blurred and obstructed by a film of brown that hovers over everything, and blends seamlessly into the fog that still lingers off of the coast. The smell of roasting coffee from the Hills Brothers plant has been replaced by the smell of filth - sewage, crops burning, plastics, and exhaust fumes as far as the nose can clog.

I could chain-smoke an whole pack of cigarettes and put out less than half the carbon monoxide that you do starting your car in the morning in your driveway. And the time you spend idling in traffic on your way to work, or school, or the market, throws more shit into the atmosphere than my smoking will over the course of an entire year.

Now, this study gives vindication to all of us smokers who have been relegated to second class status within our own respective peer groups. We no longer have to feel guilty about killing you; just about killing ourselves. That is, if you are the sort that may have a guilty conscience.

So stand your ground smokers! Don’t give in to the hate filled pricks that want to judge you for taking what little enjoyment you can from your time on earth. When that self-righteous non-smoker, or even worse the self-superior former smoker gets up in your face to ridicule you for your addiction, take a long drag, do a quick French inhale, and blow smoke rings in their smug little face.

2 comments:

  1. Not going to write a whole comment since the blog will screw it up again.

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  2. OK - that worked. Absolutely with you on the smoking Nazis.

    Also your brand. I was a Camel smoker. Nothing else had the taste except Gallois, and they were expensive.

    When you reach my age, mortality is a real thing. Friends keep dying. Last year was Lee Colderen - smoking. Year before Gerry Gregg - smoking. Also Bud Liebes... not smoking. Might have been second-hand lead - a lot of it flew by him when he was a tail gunner flying out of Italy, over Yugoslavia. But, shit, you gotta cut veterans some slack. Especially those of the only moral war within our memory.

    I quit smoking on my 21st birthday. Fifty years ago last month. In the Monkey Inn on Telegraph Ave in Oakland, where I was a steady patron, but became legal that evening. Hardest thing I have ever done. I was in a daze for two solid weeks. My lungs didn't know what to do with so much oxygen. For decades I'd dream that somebody offered me a weed, and I'd take it, and like it.... and I'd wake up shrieking. No! NO!!!

    Anyhow, good article.



    Keep it up!

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