This year will be better than the last.
I used to wake up every morning last year at about 8 a.m. Two scoops of coffee grinds cascade into a filter as cold water fills up the chamber. I flick the switch, turn on my laptop and surf the news sites for the juicy tidbits that materialized overnight.
Class for me began at 9:05, so I had plenty of time to pound down a bowl of oatmeal, drink two cups of Maxwell House French Roast and smoke two Camel Filters.
My girlfriend at the time didn't mind my smoking habit. Then again, she wasn't in Blacksburg.
This year, I plan on starting my day off the same way, save the smoke.
My girlfriend convinced me to try to quit smoking this year, citing that she was concerned for my health. Realizing that I could afford to bottleneck my smoking, I found myself spreading a pack of cigarettes out over the course of a week, then two, then eventually one pack a month.
Now, you'll rarely catch me smoking.
It's not so much that I am worried about that post-cigarette hint of tobacco that lingers on my jacket or the seemingly cartoonish disapproval for smoking I receive from my coughing, hacking and gagging peers whose lungs are so overwhelmed by my oppressive storm of second-hand smoke.
It's that it has gotten too expensive.
I'm just no longer comfortable with spending five bucks for a pack of cigarettes that will cause a fight with my girlfriend, lead me to coughing up debris and my roommates to drown out that wonderful scent of stepping outside for a smoke with a half-bottle of Febreze.
Living in a society that holds a prejudice for smokers is quite taxing these days. We have heard the comedy bit from Denis Leary complaining about how smokers are allocated a portion of a restaurant but recently have even lost, or the bit from Dave Chappelle about looking forward to having to smoke on the moon.
With New York City's trendy bans of vices like smoking in buildings (and trans-saturated fat), the complaints of the air-hoggers have become the majority voice in the court of public opinion.
Hell, even at work the smokers are discriminated against. Non-smokers felt smokers received better treatment with permission to take short cigarette breaks. The complaints led my boss to permit "fresh air breaks," where the non-smokers could sit outside for four minutes whenever they felt like it.
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Very well said! I think too often in today's society people opt to choose for us instead of letting us choose ourselves what course our lives should take. I highly recommend Peter McWilliam's book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" to anyone who thinks they have a right or say-so in anyone else's personal choices (google the title & you can read it for free on the author's website, but it's well worth the $10 from Amazon).
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Right on, Mudo, make personal choices for yourself. However, don't forget that your right to choose ends where imminent risk to another person begins. You smoking in a restaurant next to me and my wife and child is over that line. But beyond that, I'm a libertarian and wholeheartedly support freedom of choice.
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Can he same be said for other drug addictions? "Do not let someone heckle you into something to which you do not subscribe" which could be the same as don't let someone else get in the way of your love of blow. Cigarettes kill people and offer no benefits to society, why are they still legal?
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Mudo: I agree, it seems too often people can't be trusted to make the 'right' decision, so the Government has to make it for them. I'll have to look for that book. Jeff: I'd say you're to blame if you take your wife and kid to a restaurant with smokers sitting next to you. I suggest taking your wife and child and money to another restaurant. If smoking bothered enough people to make them go elsewhere, restaurants would be forced to adapt. Clearly that hasn't been the case and Big Brother was forced to act to help the masses who refused to help themselves. Anonymous: Cigarettes are legal because the government makes too much money off taxes to do without. Nevermind a spike in unemployment as everyone from farmers to retailers to corporate drones tries to find a new job.
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Mark, agreed. Jeff, not to mention, the inconvenient truth about second-hand smoke seems to be that it is not deadly. There's a fairly comprehensive British analysis of tons of second-hand smoke data (its sources and neutrality seem very credible to me) that concludes that no added risk can be causally connected to second-hand smoke inhalation.
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say bye bye to smoking once the g-men start paying for your health care bills. is there any analysis out there comparing the tax income from smokes vs the cost of treating all the smoke related illnesses? of course its tough to pin down which illnesses were caused by smoking but i dont think that would stop anyone from doing a report on it
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Smoking is actually healthy for you and kids should be handed out free packs in kindergarten. Of course, the government has been covering up the truth...
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You know what? This is exactly why I'm glad people start educating themselves about electronic cigarettes! www.eSmokeIt.com talks about it - no tar, no ashes, four-thousand less commercials. I've been off real cigs for over ten years - people need to educate themselves!
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