My relationship with cigarettes

I've hate cigarettes.

In high school the "cool" kids walked up "the hill" to smoke on the designated pad while I hung out with my lame friends inside wondering what was so cool about freezing my fingertips to puff on a paper stick filled with tobacco.

The best stories were told on the hill while the cool kids huddled around each other to protect themselves from the windchill.

The best fights occurred on the hill while the innocent nerds waited patiently to hear about the latest battle.

I never smoked. My grandma smoked. So did my mom and dad.
That's a bit of a lie. There were a few nights in 1995 where some friends and I lit up in a bar thinking it was time for us to join the cool kid ranks. Into the mirror I saw a horrendous cancer stick in my mouth. I looked ridiculous. So my engagement with coolness ended that night.

My grandma died two years earlier from lung cancer. I saw the horrendous effects menthols could produce. Yet the desire to be cool on that smoke filled night was greater than the desire to not die like her.

Second hand smoke has been part of my life since childhood. My family were smokers on the most part. Smoke was in the car, the living room, the kitchen. As I got older, it was in the bars, the restaurants and designated areas of the office.

Within ten years, cigarettes were banned in bars and restaurants. Then they were kicked out of all public buildings. Then they were ostracized from the doorways of buildings. Now their vape cousins are treated with the same hatred as the cantankerous cancer sticks.

In 100 years, the cigarette has gone from being a symbol of sex, coolness to absolute detest and disgust. The banning of cigarettes in public is coming. Despite tax profits, and free economy, there is an anti cigarette lobby that is trying to obliterate the industry.

And I couldn't care less. Except for one thing.

Free choice.

When do government rules eliminate the ability for its citizens to decide what they want to put into their bodies?

Today it is cigarettes. Tomorrow it will be sugar. Coca Cola is banned in some schools following the same path as its unhealthy tobacco cousin.

The cigarette is a symbol of the industrial revolution. It was popularized as western nations became more industrialized. Pollution, lack of consideration for others and blatant disregard for our health is foundational to what happened with the industrialization of our civilization. Cigarettes are another example of what we created in that time.

As we move into the information age, factories are being shut down, production work is being transferred to less civilized nations and governments are imposing greater laws on the population.

Imposing further bans on cigarette consumption does not stop smoking. It just sweeps the problem under the rug a little further. People who want to smoke, will continue to smoke. People who want to freeze their nuts off while inhaling on a tumour stick will continue to freeze their nuts off.

Smoking will never go away. It doesn't matter how many government laws exist. The only way it will ever go away is because people don't want it anymore. After 80 years of the imposition of the marijuana ban, we have statistical information that shows that the legality of a product does not thwart its consumption.

Let's be honest, governments love smokers. Elected officials are not long term thinkers. They don't worry about future healthcare costs of smokers. They are short term thinkers. Elected officials only care about one thing: how to stay in power. They stay in power by getting votes. They get votes by passing popular laws, no matter how ineffective and ludicrous they really are.  Let's face it, cigarettes is big tax revenue for government. They are not going away, just like the stupid laws that pretend to limit consumption.

10 cases of cigarettes bought in another province is not treated with the same legality as 10 cases of chocolate bars for a reason - taxation.

I hate smoking.
I hate stupid laws that try to control us even more.

The biggest farce of this new law is that the government has asked the public to "rat" out any offenders. Cool kids don't rat out their friends, even if they do wreak of smoke and burnt tobacco.

It's time for government to leave the smokers alone. If they really want to stop promoting smoking, they'll make it illegal to buy.  That'll never happen...