Ever contemplated suicide? No, I don't mean if you've ever considered it for yourself...just thought about it in the sense of other people doing it. Without going into all of them, there's lots of ways to commit suicide, and if you think about it, they all have one thing in common. Well, two things, if you consider that they all involve death. The main thing they all have in common is you're not allowed to do it. I'm not sure about the legal ramifications, as in whether it's actually illegal or not in most places, but the authorities will definitely do anything within their power to get you to stop trying whatever it is you're doing to off yourself, and do their best to keep you alive.
Now...there's another kind of suicide that most people probably don't consider associating with one's self-destruction, at least not in the way I'm about to lay out.
Smoking.
That's right, smoking. I know your first reaction might be "Oh jeez, here we go again with another preachy lecture" or "I already knew that people who smoke are killing themselves", but think about it harder. They're killing themselves, this we know, but who's doing anything about it in an authoritative position? Who, at any level of power...law-making, law-enforcing or otherwise...is dealing with this the way it should be dealt with, rather than with the limp-wristed efforts that have been shown for years now? Ok, I don't want to jump too far ahead with my ideas for a solution to this worldwide problem. Let's dig a little further into smokers, the "habit" of smoking, and the whole "us versus them" aspect of it.
First of all, I think we should look at the "habit" itself. It starts off by one of two things: peer pressure or imitation. Our friends or someone we knew and possibly looked up to got us into it, or we may have just started because our parents did it, and we got so used to having the smoke in the air that it was just natural to do it ourselves eventually. It's called a "habit", but studies show that most of the habit of smoking is purely mental, and whatever dependency the body has can be eliminated within a scant few days of stopping. It's like nasal spray. Sure, our noses are going to plug up like crazy after we stop taking it, but when it gets used to the idea that it's not going to get anymore, it falls in line. So after we tell our bodies we're not smoking anymore, it's just a matter of not allowing our minds to give in to the temptation provided by our fellow smokers and/or the bombardment of advertising that shows us how cool we can be if we buy certain brands.
Face the real facts...smoking is the poster child of both addiction and pollution. It represents the worst a person can be by trapping us into financially supporting a habit that is slowly shortening our lives, not to mention the lives of those around us. We try to justify it by saying it's our right. Remember what I mentioned earlier? What right do we have to kill ourselves and others? Without getting into a-whole-nother diatribe about the right to die, there are laws out there, and they're being enforced. Go up to a cop on the street and try to put a gun to your head, or cut your wrists, or even throw a rope around a tree and hang yourself. You won't get far. He will stop you. Now go up to that same cop and light one up. He's not going to do crap. What's the difference? Just because one form of suicide is quicker, why should the slower one be any less wrong to do? If you shoot yourself, you're most likely just going to hurt you. Same with cutting yourself or hanging or drowning. But look at what smoking does. Not only are you killing you, but you're exhaling that chemical-laden smoke into the air, and you're killing everyone else! You're polluting the damn air that we have to breathe to survive!!! Throw a candy wrapper on the ground, and you'll get a ticket for littering. Expel tobacco smoke into the air, and the cop is probably just going to ask to bum one off you. The candy wrapper can be picked up and placed where it should go, but the smoke is in the air permanently, yet you get into more trouble for littering. Is it coming through yet as to how messed up this is? Let's apply the pollution aspect I just mentioned to some examples, in a sort-of metaphorical fashion:
Take a glass of nice, clean water. We all need water to survive. Take a drink. No, wait. Before you drink, put some ashes from your ash tray into the water and stir it up real good. Now take a drink. What's wrong? It's just water. So it's a little dark. It won't kill you...yet.
Have a young child? A baby, maybe? Take your child's crib and put it next to the exhaust pipe of your car, turn the car on and close the garage door. What? That'll kill him/her? You're right. What was I thinking? Better to expose your offspring to an entire lifetime of your habit and take a chance on giving them a smoking-related disease they'll endure for the rest of their shortened life, possibly speeding up the process if they pick up on your example and start smoking themselves. Good plan.
The last thing I want to point out about smoking is the thing that really shows how little smokers care about the environment. I can sort of understand the expelling of the smoke into the air, in the sense of where the hell else are you going to put it. But smokers have a choice as to where they put their cigarette butts when they're done with them. And guess where they choose to put them...everywhere! Smokers don't care where they throw their butts, as long as they're far away from them. They know deep down how filthy their habit is, so instead of placing the butts in their ashtrays and disposing of them properly later, they get flicked right out the window. They lie in droves on the sides of our roads and highways, in our parking lots, in the grass of our parks...basically anywhere the smokers are, they'll get rid of the butts right there. It's almost like they can't wait to get rid of them. Check the car of nearly any smoker. Nice, fresh, clean ashtrays. Not even a single speck of ash to be found. Right out the window with it all. Heaven forbid their precious cars resemble the appearance of their lungs, or the stagnancy of their breath. "Fuck the earth, I gotta keep my ride tidy!" Spend one day and really pay attention to how many cigarette butts are lying all over the ground. It's absolutely disgusting.
So, a final message to smokers: If you want a little respect for your "right" to pollute your own bodies (and everyone's air), quit bitching about having to smoke in designated areas, and dispose of your waste properly, instead of just throwing it wherever you feel. Recognize my right to not have to breathe in your stink, and to not have to deal with looking at your butts all over the ground.
And a final message to lawmakers: It's time to get rid of this ugliness. There's no need for it. It serves no purpose, save your own greed. You want to provide a service to your constituents? Save them from themselves! Make smoking illegal. Make making cigarettes illegal. Put someone in charge who's going to tell the tobacco industries and the people who work for them, "Tough shit."
We have a right to smoke. Tough shit. It's killing you and everyone else.
We have a right to make cigarettes and sell them. Tough shit. Same reason as above.
Working in the tobacco factory is what I do for a living to feed my family. Tough shit. Get a real job and get a good night's sleep knowing you're not helping pollute your planet and it's people.
There's lots of things in the world causing harm to the planet and its people. Why not pick on those things? Tough shit, and stop trying to distract from the matter at hand, which is that tobacco and the act of smoking have NO REDEEMING QUALITIES WHATSOEVER!
I realize hardly anybody is going to read this, and one man's feelings aren't going to make one bit of difference one way or the other toward the end I'd like to see here. I'm not completely naive, and I realize trying to get our government to see past its own greed is like trying to take a zebra carcass away from a pack of starving hyenas; it just ain't gonna happen. But, they're my feelings, and I wanted to express them. Don't like it?
Tough shit.
;-)
