WE Blog

I read that study, and later in life still only 1% difference between who grew up and smoked and not.

This also has no points on the towns which 1. Are more likely to enforce teen smoking laws stringently.. Such as ticketing the teens that are caught…and 2. Access to buying cigarettes for teens. Wouldn’t you agree that the towns who are willing to enact the smoking bans are also more likely to take other preventative measures?

The cost overall has also become prohibitive.

Society has this fixation with “Sinners” and trying to help them by flagellating them to death. No different here.

Ok, up front I quit smoking cigarettes in 1979 (I started smoking in 1971, when I was 16). I quit because my dad, who was a 2 pack a day guy, quit. And he quit because his doctor told him that he was likely to die of lung cancer, based on the results of his physical exam…and the fact that my grandfather (yeah, my dad’s dad) died of lung cancer.

To this day my mother talks, in what can only be described as hushed and reverential tones, of how gruesome my granddad’s death was, how he died in agony (in 1962, when I was 7). I guess it was very, very bad.

But. I do love me the flavor that can only be found in Cuban cigars. American cigars just don’t do it, imho. Even as I write this I am sitting here puffing on a Partagas Cuban (you can buy them easily on the internets), one of maybe 25 cigars I smoke each year. See, the thing is that cigars are composed of tobacco that’s been allowed to spoil or ferment, then wrapped in a fresh tobacco leaf of (usually) a different variety. Like good cheese or wine or beer or dry-aged beef, the flavor is to die for (again, my opinion…and my dollars). It’s learned..yada yada…but again, the flavor is frickin just the top of the world. Has nothing to do with conspicuous consumption or anything like that (again, I smoke most of them in the privacy of my home), it’s just that I absolutely love the flavor. What can I say, we humans are suckers for sensation — we’re built that way.

On occasion, if I reckon consuming one won’t be perceived as ostentatious or obnoxious, I like to sit outside at a restaurant table and smoke one there. It’s a very nice way to lounge, imo.

Ok, so this is something I’d keep at home IF it meant that one more teenager wouldn’t smoke cigarettes. Teenagers are special creatures, not formed yet and so, so, SO impressionable. Tobacco, however, isn’t. It’s just really addictive, especially when consumed in cigarette form.

I would support this law, if it lead to a decrease in teenage tobacco consumption. Wholeheartedly. I would also support wholeheartedly all the restaurants around me that I perceive give me value for my dollar.

Not a problem.