{"id":805,"date":"2007-06-22T09:10:20","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T14:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/805"},"modified":"2007-06-22T09:16:40","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T14:16:40","slug":"tobacco-outlaws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/805","title":{"rendered":"Tobacco Outlaws"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a British guy, but someone finally steps forward as a proud, and very annoyed tobacco user<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\n

A lot of people who, like me, have hitherto been keen smokers have suddenly started telling me that they are glad the government is stepping in to discipline them. These are people who were until recently aware enough of their own pleasure centres to know that the act of smoking can be, and often is, so much more than feeding a greedy addiction. It does relieve stress; it does deepen the pleasure of a sociable evening, as it relieves the alienation of a lonely one; it does help you think.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s actually the first time I’ve ever seen anyone acknowledge that smoking can alleviate the sting of loneliness for a while.  Yeah.  It does that.\n<\/p>\n

And yes, unlike other intoxicants, tobacco does does help you think.  It can also give you cancer and heart disease.  But we make these trade-offs all the time in life.  You can get heart disease from the regular consumption of certain kinds of food.  You can get killer VD from having sex.  You can be crippled or killed in an automobile accident.  Same thing with any of a dozen or more active sports.  There’s this puritan strain here in America, and I guess in places overseas too, that regards any kind of drug use, and nicotine is certainly a drug, as wicked and which admits no limits on its right to stop other people from doing it.  Whether what someone is doing is putting other people at risk isn’t the point, although it’s often the rhetoric.  The point is that they like doing it purely for the pleasure of doing it and they have to be corrected.  It’s not drugs that are evil, it’s pleasure.\n<\/p>\n

Anyone who ever had to deal with an alcoholic or a drug addict knows there are times when you need to step in and put a stop to it.  But people who can handle their sinful pleasures responsibly ought to be left alone, simply on the principle that our lives belong, ultimately, to us and not a bunch of finger wagging pinched face nags.  That goes for sex, it goes for drag racing, it goes for tobacco, it goes for anything someone might do, purely for the pleasure of doing it.  I work twelve hour days sometimes, and weekends through.  I’ve postponed vacations when work related matters needed my attention.  Sometimes, life just gets like that.  I pay my bills, I pay my taxes, I always try to get the best deal for goods and services, but I won’t try to cheat anyone.  George Washington could not tell a lie…I just won’t.  I respect the rule of law, and I keep an eye on my neighborhood, and I look out for my neighbors.  If I want to fucking enjoy a good cigar from time to time I damn well ought to be able to, as long as my smoke isn’t bothering anyone else.  I’m fine with the concept of smoke free zones.  Not so much with outright bans.  Maybe it’ll kill me someday.  On the other hand, maybe a mugger or a gay basher will get me first.  Life is too risky a business not to have some fun with it while you can, even if it kills you.\n<\/p>\n

If I could live to be a thousand, and smoking was likely to cut nine hundred and forty years off that, then I probably wouldn’t do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a British guy, but someone finally steps forward as a proud, and very annoyed tobacco user… A lot of people who, like me, have hitherto been keen smokers have suddenly started telling me that they are glad the government is stepping in to discipline them. These are people who were until recently aware enough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}