Hal - Deliberately Basic

I intend to live forever. So far, so good. ~Steven Wright

If there are any taboos left in the world, smoking must rank near the top of the heap, just below using the N word. Before you faint and fall to the floor at the mere suggestion that you would ever think about smoking a cigarette, at least consider why not.

There is no need to go into the health issues of smoking. If you don’t know that smoking is bad for your health, you have a more serious problem than a cigarette could ever cause. Even before the onslaught of attacks against tobacco companies, children were admonished (read, got their ass whipped) for smoking.As a child, I was warned of the dangers of smoking, especially in school. Smoking will stunt your growth, turn your skin yellow, and make you into a stinking undesirable, antisocial turd. And, it is generally bad for your health.

Nevertheless, in the 50s and 60s most adults and many teens smoked. I started when I was 16. At that time most people didn’t think of it as something that might kill you. Then again, most people didn’t worry about diet, exercise, carcinogens in water and air, seat-belts, growth hormones in livestock, erectile dysfunction, STDs, lead in paint, UV radiation from the sun, asbestos, mercury in fish, electromagnetic radiation, or Atherosclerosis from a Big Mac. Worry causes stress, and stress has been found by experts to be the root cause of all health problems. What conclusion can we draw from this? Medical experts and contradictions abound concerning health issues, and are synonymous in this industry.

Hitler against smoking. Thanks to Prison Planet
Beginning in the early 1930’s, as part of the Nazi agenda for racial purity, Hitler spearheaded a national campaign to ban smoking in all public buildings, and denounced the practice as a betrayal of the fascist drive for bodily purity.”Brother national socialist, do you know that our Führer is against smoking and think that every German is responsible to the whole people for all his deeds and emissions, and does not have the right to damage his body with drugs?” stated one magazine.

What is most important, your rights as a citizen, or government control of what you do? The Nazi regime did not care about the health of German citizens. Taking away personal rights is a way to control people, and that has been the essence of the anti-smoking campaign for the last 40 years.

If you are an ex-smoker, did you enjoy smoking? For a moment, forget about the health issues consistent with smoking, and consider this hypothetical situation. Was smoking a pleasurable thing to do? It was for me. I loved lighting up a pipe, an occasional cigar or a cigarette. It was a great way to relieve stress, or make a stressful situation more bearable.

I have not smoked anything for more than 30 years, and I will never smoke again. But not because of all the bullshit propaganda that has been perpetrated on me by those with ulterior motives. There was a time when I realized that smoking was making me sick, and as a personal choice, I gave up smoking. Never did it enter my mind to quit because someone else, especially the government, told me it was in my best interest to quit.

I once knew a woman (Call her Betty) who worked in the human resource department of a major hospital. The Godfather guy who was chief administrator, decided to enlighten ALL employees on the evils of smoking. He set about instituting a program which required everyone to tour the morgue. The idea was to show human lungs from smokers versus non-smokers. Of course the lungs of smokers were black, while the lungs of non-smokers were pink. Betty was a smoker, and had no desire to view human remains as an object lesson. Nevertheless, she was forced to go, or lose her job. On returning to the office after her tour, she was asked what she thought. She said, “They were all dead, were they not?”

I do not advocate smoking. I have no agenda, no reason to advertise that anyone smoke. In fact, I find that having to breath second hand smoke no longer agrees with me at the physical level. Do I care if someone else, a friend smokes? Not at all. That is his business, not mine. And please, don’t argue that I am helping to shorten his life by not harassing him. I have no right to tell him how to live his life, even if he chooses to dive off a cliff.

I can think of nothing more annoying than a self-righteous ex-smoker.If I could smoke with no ill effects, or health problems, I would would be pulling on a cigarette before finishing this article. I would again experience that pleasure of lighting up with friends, settle back with a good scotch, and relax. Later we might have a T-bone, rippled with enough fat to give it flavor, a potato and salad with lots of creamy fat dressing.

Maybe it’s the rebel in me; telling me I can’t do something has always made me want to do it just to piss off the establishment, murder and felonies excepted in most cases. I was fortunate to have wonderful teachers in school, and above all else I was encouraged to think for myself. Make a choice based on informed and critical thinking. Never allow platitudes, slogans, a mob, or anyone with an agenda influence your thinking. You always have a choice.

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