Opinion

Extinguish your deadly habit today

By Richard Lutz

If you read my columns, you may have noticed a common theme (besides squirrels): I don't like it when innocent people are killed. The issue does not solely revolve around wars in distant countries or gun control in the United States. It is also very close to home, and I have a message for about a quarter of you: Smoke is murder. Please stop.

We all know the facts about tar, how smoking causes a dozen varieties of cancer and damages your immune system. How a countless amount of people continue smoking despite the known dangers is a glorious example of doublethink and denial. Imagine you step on a rusty nail and then get bitten by a rabid badger, yet refuse to get tetanus or rabies shots because the needle is going to hurt. Continuing to smoke simply because you don't want the withdrawal that comes with quitting makes about as much sense.

Now, the reaction: What business is it of mine that someone chooses to smoke? If they want to die, that's their business. They know the risks, so who am I to tell them what to do? Well, I'm a victim of their murderous habit. "Sidestream smoke," the stuff that comes straight from the tip of the cigarette, doesn't pass through the filter, so second-hand smoke is actually more poisonous than first-hand. Smokers continue to congregate around building entrances, despite the fact that it is illegal. The poor things don't want to catch a chill or get rained on, so they force me to walk through a cloud of cancer every time I want to enter or leave my residence hall, a class building, the University Center or almost any other place on campus. Smokers sit next to me in class and I, mild asthmatic that I am, have trouble breathing. I can feel it killing me, but if I ask smokers to move away, somehow I'm the rude one.

Another pro-smoking argument: How much damage can one cigarette do? Well, one little tick can give you Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. One mosquito bite can spread West Nile Virus, encephalitis or malaria. One cigarette is all it takes to start a cancerous growth. And even if that weren't the case, cigarettes still kill 440,000 Americans each year. That's more Americans killed per year by cigarettes than in the entire history of time by terrorism.

Whiny old me isn't the only one suffering, either. The smokers themselves are the most at risk, of course. Other victims include the nation's babies. An increase of the smoking rate in women since the 1960s has been correlated with a rise in Attention Deficit Disorder. In other words, if mommy inhales cigarette smoke then baby gets brain damage. All of our pocketbooks suffer -- it's estimated that between $100 billion and $150 billion each year is spent on cigarettes. That's combining health care and lost productivity. What it boils down to is that if the nation stopped smoking today, we could make up the cost of the Iraq war before readers graduate.

If $100 billion of the budget deficit doesn't bother you, then consider Mother Nature. Each cigarette only weighs about a gram, and maybe only half of that is smoked. But when millions of cigarettes are smoked each year, that's a lot of pollution. Also, the butt ends up on the ground more often than not. Smokers are supremely lazy when it comes to looking for an ashtray.

There is a wealth of resources to help you stop smoking. So please -- stop killing yourself, stop killing me, stop causing fetal brain damage and for decency's sake, don't leave your butt lying around.

Lutz, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at drahcir_j@hotmail.com.