A Moment of Vexation

Smokers. It is always the smokers who are my problem children. It is just so funny (okay, I am trying to drain my sarcasm); they suffer so. Tonight as I post this, I have two thoughts about smokers and cigarettes,as I work to get it all out of my system.

First - its not your granddaddy's cigarette anymore. That's right, for all of you out there who say, "Well, my granddaddy lived to the ripe old age of 99 and he smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes everyday and he never got no cancer," have I got new for you. One - just think how much longer he might have lived if he never smoked. Actually, I am sort of kidding on that part...BUT...that leads me to two. Your granddaddy probably smoked a much different substance than today's monsters. No, I do not mean he smoked anything other than good ol' tobbaccee (and if he did, I don't want to know). But chances are for a long while, granddaddy may have rolled his own cigarettes, and if you live anywhere near tobacco county he probably knew exactly where the plant came from. Look at everything that is in a cigarette (need I run through the list? Let me know and I will)...most of it has little to do with tobacco. It is all the other nasties that make them so repulsive to our health, I suspect.

The other thing about cigarettes is that I think we have so much more to learn about the mixture of nicotine and the other substances and how this react mixture reacts in the human body. With the hatefullness and vileness that I hear from smokers, they seem so much more defensive of the idea that they are addicted than do the crack addicts I have worked with. So, I am truly thinking there is more to the substances in the cigetters than we already know. Of course there is sugar and that has its own problems...but I think it could be worse than what we think we know.

And I am sorry for the surmon, but the vileness (for that is what it was and has earned the redundancy) of that which I hear from smokers can be truly awful. And today was one of those days.