On smoking

I lived with smoking for a very long time. It was pretty normal for people in American during the fifties and sixties to smoke, and many of my family members did. As a child I inhaled a lot of second-hand smoke. Personally, I have never smoked, really don’t care for the habit, try and avoid those who do, and discourage everyone from smoking if I can. Of course, many people in Spain smoke, and though the government discourages smoking, tens of thousands of poor souls lose their fight to smoking related illnesses every year. What brings all of this to mind today was the odd “smoking box” that I encountered at the local department store, El Corte Inglés, at lunch: in order to follow government regulations concerning smoking, the cafeteria/restaurant has been equipped with a four side enclosure for the smokers. I walked through it on my way to the bathroom and got “smoked.” These poor people not only smoke their own cigarette, they smoke everyone else’s smoke as well. The place smelled of stale smoke and tobacco, and I really don’t know how these people could even smell their food because the stench was so overpowering. Yet, this obsession with tobacco on the smoker’s part is so strong that they are willing to give up smelling good for their habit. In fact, their ability to smell anything is so impaired by smoking that I am sure they have little or no idea how offensive they really smell. The great tragedy, of course, of the “smoking box” is that their were children in there being “smoked” right along with their parents. Second-hand smoke is highly toxic to everyone, and cancer from second-hand smoke is very real. I’ve heard the smokers defend themselves, crying about their right to smoke, and saying stuff like, “Well, I’ve got to die from something.” My rejoinder to that is, “Have you actually seen a person die from lung cancer?” “Uncle Charlie lived to be 96 and he smoked his whole life and nothing ever happened to him.” “Good for him because he beat the odds, which means yours are less.” I guess if you smoke, I’m not going to get on your case unless I care about you, but if I do care, watch out because I’ll fight tooth and nail for your life. Since I originally wrote this post about two years ago, a good friend in Spain died of a stroke in the middle of his first cigarette after his afternoon nap. Dead, gone.