Th@nk you for smoking

I feel like I should preface this by saying that I don’t smoke. I’ve probably smoked less than a dozen cigarettes in my entire life, and I smoked my first cigar after beating Florida -- and it was one of the worst nights of my life. No one told me you’re not supposed to inhale. I have since smoked three cigars, all for celebratory purposes. I think habitual cigarette smoking is disgusting, and one of the least attractive things a girl can do.

All that said, I find the extremist anti-smoking campaign to be absolutely infuriating. The most recent example of such is a commercial in which a Brillo-headed activist enters a mattress store and asks the clerk if there are any warning labels on mattresses. After the clerk rightly asks what the hell this weirdo is talking about, the weirdo replies “In 1981, a tobacco company executive said that maybe sleep should be banned since the majority of people die in their sleep.”

The commercial ends with the activist sarcastically asking “A tobacco company saying we should ban sleep?”

That doesn’t even make sense! Nowhere in the commercial is smoking even mentioned. Gee, banning sleep, I’m sure whoever said that was totally serious. Not to mention that it was said 25 years ago. So, we’re using a joke from two and a half decades ago to blast tobacco companies? Really? That’s the best we can do? Wow.

I’m also staunchly opposed to smoking bans imposed on private businesses. For what it’s worth, I don’t really buy the argument that it hurts business, because all indications are that it doesn’t. But it’s the principle of the matter. Business owners should be allowed to run their businesses as they see fit. If they want to allow people to smoke, they should have that right. If people don’t want to be exposed to smoke, they aren’t being forced to patron or be employed at said business, anymore than they’re being forced to enter the smoker’s home.

If the government wants to ban smoking in its buildings, that’s the government’s business. But government has no, well, business, telling citizens how to treat their private property.

I’m also sick of lawsuits against tobacco companies for selling a harmful product. It tells you it’ll give you cancer right on the package! It’s been there for 40 years! What more do you people need? If people still want to smoke, by God let them kill themselves. But anyone who started smoking after 1965 has no right to claim that they didn’t know smoking was bad for them, and therefore has no right to punitive damages.

It infuriates me when corporations are held responsible for the bad decisions of individuals. It also infuriates me when 25 year old quotes are taken out of context in an attempt to make an entire industry look evil. I have several friends that smoke, and I think it’s disgusting and stupid and wish they didn’t do it. But hey, this is America and you can be disgusting and stupid if you want to be disgusting and stupid. If, however, you get cancer, emphysema, or any other disease, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Hmm...all this indignation makes me want a cigarette.