Mindless Reaction

I am a cigar smoker.

Have been for about half of my life at this point, but only been really serious about for the last... oh... twelve or thirteen years.

Recently, though, cigars have been lumped together with cigarettes. Why? Is it because they are comparable? No. It's because the fact that they're NOT comparable is just too hard to think about!

Comparing a person who smokes a cigar a day or so because he or she enjoys it to someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day is a little like comparing someone who has a glass of fine wine or so per day with the wino getting blotto on Night Train outside of your apartment building. I realize that i'm generalizing here, but most cigar smokers (and, i would venture, NO smokers of fine cigars) are addicts, just as most cigarette smokers are. I say that i'm generalizing, because i do know some addicted cigar smokers, just as a i knew a few (very precious few) cigarette smokers who can smoke say... two or three cigarettes a day and be done with it, just because they enjoy it.

And while we're on the subject, i bet that some of those anti-smoking nuts who lump cigars with cigarettes drink occasionally sometimes themselves. As a matter of fact, i've had conversations with some of them. I've got to warn you... if you're one of these people, avert your eyes! I've lost more than one friend by blinding them with the light of truth! Here goes...

It is difficult to get accurate statistics on deaths from either alcohol or tobacco. Why? Because of all of the other factors that may play in these deaths. For instance, in the eighties, when smoking was on a sharp decline, lung diseases in the United States almost TRIPLED. At this point, we have about ten times the amount of childhood asthma than we did ten years ago, and a hundred or more times that number since the seventies when everyone smoked everywhere all the time. You know how many of these are attributable to cigars? Zero. As a matter of fact, look at famous cigar smokers who have lived into their eighties, nineties or even a hundred plus. George Burns. Milton Berle. Sid Caesar, who'll be ninety next year. Burns, who died in 1996 at the age of 100 was performing right up to the end. Caesar still pops up on TV from time to time.

My father, a life-long cigarette smoker, died last year at the age of 72, after having spent the last several years of his life house-bound.

See the difference? Compare that to famous cigarette smokers, who all died young of lung disease. Rod Serling (50), Bogart (57), Edward R. Murrow (57). Yul Brenner actually made it to 65.

You know how many of these deaths are factually attributable to second hand smoke? NONE.

Now look at alcohol. The CDC estimates 25000 deaths per year from alcohol... but that's just alcohol users. How many non-drinkers are killed every year by crazy drunks? In fights, auto accidents and just random acts of alcohol-induced stupidity. And that doesn't take into account the number of people seriously injured or crippled by drunk drivers every year.

If you REALLY want to ban a serious health hazard to people who DON'T use the product, you should work on banning alcohol.

I lived in Seattle the year that they passed the idiotic law banning smoking in ALL buildings, including bars. Including CIGAR bars of all the stupidity. The government actually stood still for this. Aren't we sick of the nanny state taking away our freedoms? Oh, and a note to my republican brothers and sisters... when we talk about "small government", we're not talking about government staying out of corporations' affairs, we're talking about keeping them out of OUR affairs. There are even places where you can't smoke in your apartment. Places where you can't smoke in your own CAR, for dog's sake.

Look, i HATE cigarettes, okay? For nicotine addicts, they are the equivalent of needles for heroin addicts. But smoking is LEGAL. If you want to regulate it, do it in a sane way, not in a mindless, knee-jerk way. Ban it in McDonald's and Chuck E. Cheese, which are mostly for kids. In a place like the Pike Pub in Seattle, which has a HERMETICALLY-SEALED cigar room, keep it legal.

By the way... do you know what illegal drug has never, as far as anyone can prove, killed anyone? Anywhere? Ever? Pot. I don't smoke pot, but legalize it for heaven's sake.

Peace.

Randal