Butt Out?

I hate smoking. I suppose indirectly this means I hate smokers too yet to say that outright might cause a few problems, as I’ve been friends with this strange, strange breed in the past. I might be in the future. That’s not the point of this piece.

I will not freely admit that this hatred is stemmed from ignorance. I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to roll leaves, or whatever it is, up in paper, set the concoction on fire and die from lung cancer at some later date. That, and it makes you smell. I have no idea if smokers can smell it, but the smell of cold smoke doesn’t leave. If you’ve had a cigarette this morning, I can still smell it when you hug me tonight. You smoke upwind from me, I’ll smell it on myself for the rest of the day. So can my parents. There’s nothing worse than being asked if you’ve smoked just because some idiot’s lit up nearby. I’m lucky. My parents believe me. I like to think it’s because they know I’m smarter than that.

Yes, smarter. I don’t mean to knock the intelligence of smokers…wait. Yes I do. But perhaps ‘lacking in common sense’ might be a better term for it. After all, with all the warnings, television ads and public knowledge about the dangers of cancer-sticks you’d either have to be stupid, or very easily swayed, to even start the horrible habit. We used to have a great ad on TV about it; a doctor was holding on of the arteries of a heart – a smoker’s heart, of course – and he applied pressure. What oozed out, it looked like he was squeezing lumpy, pus-infused toothpaste out of a tube. It looked like shit. Who in their right mind would light up after that?

Apparently quite a lot of idiots. It’s the under eighteens that piss me off the most. I was loitering outside my old workplace a few months ago when one of the kids I’d just hosted a party for – he was twelve years old – wandered over and asked for a cigarette. I wanted to smack him one. I should have. What sort of fucked up society are we building when children that young are smoking, boozing and sexing? Actually, don’t get me started on the latter two. You’ll get another two rants.

Of course, I’m going to exempt some people. Older people who took smoking up before it was known just what it did to you. My grandpa, for example, smoked during WW2 because it was the done thing. Who can blame him? They didn’t know. It came back and killed him later on in life, but that’s not the point. If you’ve been smoking for decades, who am I to tell you to stop. Anyone under thirty though, give me a break.

Then again, if you’re a smoker, you’ve probably done one of three things by now: you’ve either stopped reading a long time ago; angry as all hell at me and going to leave a nasty comment (Go on, do it, I dare you); or you’re sighing, “Another anti-smokers rant, when will they stop?"

Well I’m writing this in response to an article I saw in the travel-paper yesterday, titled ‘Anti-smokers butt out’. You body, your business? I do see your point. However it’s not just your business. I’ll ‘butt out’ when smokers stop smoking upwind of me, choking me with second hand smoke. I’ll ‘butt out’ when they begin putting their burnt-out husks of cancer-sticks in the bin, rather than on the ground. I’ll ‘butt out’ when kids younger that eighteen no-longer light up in grungy doorways.

You body, sure, it’s your business. Your culture is mine, even if it only is second-hand.

AN: The result of having second-hand smoke blown in my face on a day in the city. I am in no way sorry if this pisses you off.