Tag: Cigarettes

In about 11 months, I celebrate my 20th anniversary of being tobacco free. In the first 5 years of that, it was a fight to stay off the nicotine, and the body and mind played tricks to try and get me puffing again. Stress, the after dinner reach for a pack, drive time, all of those things I thought of as pleasurable for so long, reached up from the depths often, in order to regain its hold over me.  Its hold from a time when I was its slave, and it was my benevolent master.

As long as I fed it, the habit made me relax for a time, and I was allowed to live in my skin.

Some folks have compared tobacco addiction to that of heroin, or other narcotics.  Others, to its oft used partner, alcohol.  Though I have never experienced the withdrawal effects of those, I believe I understand them as a result of having had been a smoker for well over a decade.  The 'habit' was more than that.  It was an unchangeable lifestyle; a daily thing that demanded my attention, or the consequences would be hellish.

There is a drug that is worse however.

And it won't be your body or mind reminding you how bad its going to be without it.  It will be active little monsters who also get a high from it, and want you hooked for as long as it takes for THEM to live THEIR lives.

While our state became the 30 plusish state to jump on a FSC (Fire safe cigarette) bandwagon, I wonder if our leadership would care to ponder the wisdom of such a move?  Perhaps those who blindly follow the lead of other not-so-informed legislatures in their zeal to enforce new fire codes (essentially what this is)have been sniffing a little too much glue?

Carpet glue actually..  And not just sniffing it..  Burning it, THEN sniffing it.

Michigan has come to a fork in the road, and instead of left or right, it has driven itself into the ditch. It should be noted that in the case of the new ban on smoking, it does come at a financial cost.

The cost to nonsmokers to impose their will on smokers, say, in a restaurant, bar or airplane, is zero, or close to it. They just have to get the legislature to do their bidding. When the cost of something is zero, there's a tendency for people to take too much of it. You say, "Williams, in my book, there can never be too much smoke-free air!" Here's a little test. Say your car's out of gas and stuck in a blizzard. You wave me down for assistance. I say, "I'll be glad to give you a lift to safety, but I'm smoking in my car." How likely is it that you'll turn down my assistance in an effort to avoid tobacco smoke? You might be tempted to argue, "That's different." It's not different at all. The cost of a smoke-free environment is not what you're willing to pay.