\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0The pity is that I probably won’t change anyone’s mind. I’d be ecstatic beyond belief were someone to read this and decide, “Hey, I’m going to quit smoking.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0But it’s like the how-many-people does-it-take-to-change-a-light bulb conundrum. How many? Well only one (but the light bulb really has to want to change).
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Let me start from the beginning. In me, Bonnie married a smoker. I started my senior year in high school at a time when the only fear was that nicotine prevented athletes from getting in shape. Like Mark Twain, I was able to say, “Quitting is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0My wife didn’t nag me about quitting; instead, she used positive strokes such as, “You always smell so much better when you’ve been away from cigarettes.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But rather than turn this column into a how-I-did-it set of instructions on quitting, let me merely discuss something I read that made an impression. And let’s be aware that smokers generally don’t like to read anti-smoking material in the same way that I’ll never read any biography of Dubya.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Shortly before I gave up smoking, decades ago, Bonnie handed me an anti-smoking article, written by a staffer of the San Diego Evening Tribune. At the time, the California paper was part of the Copley News organization, the same company that owned the Aurora (Ill.) Beacon-News, a paper for which I served as courthouse reporter. That connection drew my interest.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0But what was amazing was that the San Diego reporter had written his own obituary. He knew he was dying of lung cancer and offered to write his own obit. The agreement was that when that inevitable day arrived, the publishers would make every effort to have it published nationally and posthumously. I think I read it in Reader’s Digest.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I don’t recall the author’s name but I clearly remember the sentence, “Every morning my mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird cage.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0But aside from what it does to the smoker, what about the effect smoke has on others?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Five executives of five mammoth tobacco companies appeared before Congress a few years ago, each one swearing to tell the truth about smoke and its addictive qualities.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Oh no, they insisted, we don’t want kids smoking. Oh no, they insisted, we would never deliberately try to fudge on the amount of nicotine in our products. Oh no, they insisted, those little holes near the filter are intended to ventilate the cigarette and reduce the amount of tar and nicotine. We never dreamed people’s fingers would block the holes and give the smoker a bigger nicotine hit. Oh no, they insisted, we would never deliberately target our advertising at the young.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t write as a scientist on the dangers of smoking. I can only hope that, as a columnist who socked away a pack a day for decades, I can urge whatever it takes to protect innocent people from the dangers of second-hand smoke.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Which reminds me …
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The City Council isn’t finished debating the possible enactment of an ordinance that would make it even tougher for people to light up in public. That ordinance should have been adopted years ago.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0At the Optic, we receive input on both sides of the cancer stick. A letter, which we might have or might not have published, includes a Web site which the writer invites us to look into. I checked it out.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 To its credit, it contains a well-written article by a staffer of a leading publication that comes down hard on people who receive money from organizations such as the American Medical Association and drug manufacturers to discourage smoking.The gist of the article is that drug manufacturers create devices and prescription medications designed to help people kick the smoking habit.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The logic is that drug and tobacco companies compete for the bucks.\u00c2\u00a0The writer questions the objectivity of researchers on the payroll.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0There are a number “links” that take people to pages that purport to “prove” that there’s no evidence second-hand smoke is harmful.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Just like public opinion polls, in which politicians can get their
\n(paid) pollsters to show a big lead for the politician that hired them, the polemics on the smoking issue can be manipulated.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The Web sites include a number of links for various smoking devices and even a section devoted to the wit and wisdom of Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host who gives an almost daily rant against whatever happens to be bugging him at the time.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, when the debate on no-smoking ordinances heats up, we’ll hear people attest that “My mother smoked three packs a day and lived to be 99.” Or, the argument for all occasions, “Why waste your time on smoking? You should expend your energy on important things, like DWI, the war in Iraq, global warming and inflation.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Yes, we can hear them now.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0We can always conjure us a host of societal ills that officials could be devoting their time to, but that’s a diversion. The issue here is smoking.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Everett Koop, a former surgeon general said, “Tobacco products are the only product mass produced and marketed that when used as directed, kills.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0The pity is that I probably won’t change anyone’s mind. I’d be ecstatic beyond belief were someone to read this and decide, “Hey, I’m going to quit smoking.” \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0But it’s like the how-many-people does-it-take-to-change-a-light bulb conundrum. How many? Well only one (but the light bulb really has to want to change). \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}