The debate on Smoking

I am old enough to remember when smoking was very commonplace and accepted everywhere. When I was young at least half the men I knew smoked. Fifty years ago not only were restaurants and bars enveloped in a blue haze of smoke but homes as well. After dinner at my parents house, my father and my brothers and I would all light up a cigarette after a meal and my poor mother would wave her hand in protest but would never say anything. Smoking in those days was acceptable.

What is really amazing is that the health risks of smoking was not recognized then. Advertisements would show doctors discussing the healthy aspects of smoking. I remember in particular an ad for Camel showing a doctor describing how Camel cigarettes were good for the T-zone. An outline of a T was placed over a smokers throat. Looking back it seems unbelievable that people would believe such ridiculous ads.

Several of my father's friends who died prematurely probably was due to their smoking. The case against smoking in those days was that it was a dirty habit and ladies who smoked had a certain air of mystery about them. My grandfather used to sit all day in his Morris chair in the dining room and blow smoke rings from his pipe. Whenever I went to visit my grandparents there would be a haze of smoke hovering near the ceiling when you walked into the house.

One of the most smoke-filled places I can remember was in the men's restroom at the old MDR gymnasium during half-time when all of the smokers would convene in the restroom to have a smoke and talk about the game. It would almost gag a person.

I started smoking when I was 18 after finishing my athletic career at MDR. I don't know why I started but I think it was because I thought it was cool to smoke and I would be more attractive to women in a dangerous sort of way. Sort of like Humphrey Bogart or George Raft in the gangster movies of the 30's. I was a compulsive chain smoker puffing down 2 to 3 packs a day alternating between unfiltered Camels and Kools.

When the Surgeon General came out with the report in 1964 linking smoking with cancer and heart disease I began to question the wisdom of my smoking. However, I believe the biggest reason I quit smoking is because I resented the control if had over me. I was hooked on a habit that I could not control and it angered me that I could not resist the urge to smoke a cigarette.

I strongly urge young people to not start smoking. It may appear to be cool at this stage of your life to be a smoker and it may be an expression of rebellion. However, the odds are that if will eventually ruin your health and why take a chance? Smoking is like putting 5 bullets in the gun and playing Russian Roulette. Young people have to overcome their sense of immortality and realize that the decisions they make can have life threatening consequences. Those who started smoking over 40 years ago deserve some sympathy since the health risks of smoking were not yet known. However, anyone who started smoking since the health risks have become known are downright foolish.

In spite of the health risks there are still many people who smoke. It feel that smoking regulations should be determined by the owners of a business establishment just as a homeowner has the right to tell a person whether they can smoke in their house. Government is already too intrusive in our lives and we need to draw the line somewhere. No smoking sections seem to be a reasonable solution for business establishments. Those who object to that solution need not enter the establishment and can take their business elsewhere. Business owners will figure out pretty quickly on their own whether or not to allow smoking in their establishment.

The government itself is pretty hypocritical on the whole smoking issue. On the one hand they are passing laws outlawing smoking in certain areas and placing high taxes on the sale of tobacco products. On the other hand they still give subsidies to tobacco growers. What is really ironic is that the use of tobacco helps the government financially because of the amount of tax reaped from the sale of tobacco. And in a more morbid form of revenue the use of tobacco causes people to die sooner and, therefore, lessens the amount of social security benefits paid out to the early departed. So smoking is definitely a money maker for the government. It seems like the government's policy is to tax tobacco as high as possible without causing people to quit smoking. If the tax becomes too high people will stop smoking and there goes the government's revenue.

Until the government makes smoking illegal it seems that we need to stop treating smokers like criminals. We should discourage the young from taking up smoking and refrain from unduly restricting the freedom of those who still smoke by giving them their own place to puff away in a non smoking section. I know how hard it was to quit smoking and I am sure there are a lot of people out there who want to quit but just can't do it. Rather than using negative measures against smokers, we should encourage them to try to quit rather than making it even more miserable for them by ostricizing them from public establishments.