I was just finishing up my 28th beer and 29th line of coke when the prostitute I was having unprotected anal sex with yanked the cigarette out of my mouth and placed it on the table next to the needle we were sharing, the joint we were smoking, and the high-fat, high-cholesterol snack foods we were munching on and said through her yellow, unbrushed teeth, "Don't you know that cigarette smoking is bad for you?"
Yes indeed, it's true. The warning labels they put on cigarettes are not just there to teach junior high schoolers how to read. The Liggett Group Inc., manufacturer of tobacco and dispenser of death, recently admitted that cigarettes are deadly. Those of us who can tell our butts from the ones in ashtrays already knew that, but never mind! We have a scapegoat who needs to be scapegoated. Expect the court system to become clogged like a smoker's arteries as lawsuit after lawsuit is filed against the evil tobacco companies.
Five hundred thousand people a year die from tobacco-related illnesses. None of them were responsible - it's not their fault they smoked themselves to death. They are all victims of big business, pawns who had absolutely no power to stop themselves from smoking. Tobacco executives went into victims' homes and businesses 20, sometimes 30 times a day for decades, put guns to their heads, cigarettes in their mouths and nicotine in their systems until the poor, innocent smokers finally keeled over dead.
For all the hullabaloo about the toll tobacco takes, no one stops to think that, gee, maybe half a million premature deaths a year ain't such a bad thing. People living longer means people sucking more out of an already near-bankrupt Social Security, and 500,000 people a year can do a lot of sucking, not to mention the extra taxes they pay every time they buy a pack of cigarettes. In short, smokers do more for our economy that nonsmokers ever have; what's more, they do it willingly. And they suffer needless harassment at the hands of nonsmokers.
Smoking is now forbidden in all government buildings and most private ones. Indeed, about the only place you can find cigarette smoke anymore is outside. This is the way it should be, as cigarette smoke pollutes the air and irritates the hell out of me (the best thing about being an ex-smoker, aside from better stamina, more pocket change, less coughing, better sense of taste and smell, fingers that don't smell like cigarettes, hair that doesn't smell like cigarettes, clothes that don't smell like cigarettes, a house that doesn't smell like cigarettes, a car that doesn't smell like cigarettes, no nicotine cravings, no heart flutters from too much nicotine and no more passing out after walking up half a flight of stairs, is telling smokers how irritating their habit is and how much better they'll feel if they quit).
But there are some nonsmokers who cannot bear to see a smoker light one up, even if he's outside. "You filthy smokers pollute the air with your awful habit and you litter the ground with your filthy cigarette butts and I'm probably going to get lung cancer just from breathing in your secondhand smoke!" (I keep waiting for them to add, "And my vagina hurts toooo!!!" but they never do.)
What nonsmokers need to do is shut the hell up and let social Darwinism run its course. What smokers need to do is smoke more and die sooner. What the government needs to do is stop paying for medical care for smokers when they get sick. And what I need to do is go outside and have me a cigarette.
Pennell is a junior English major.