Smok'em If You Got'em

It is true I derive a majority of my topics from conversations I see happening over my Facebook. I find it the best way to talk about what people care about. This post will be no different.

Today a family member posted that smoking should be illegal because it annoys here that she can smell it when she goes outside. To this I ave to say, "Get over yourself". Too many things are being deemed illegal because a select few have an issue of some sort with it without REALLY thinking about what impact it may have.

Now keep in mind I am in no way advocating smoking. I am a smoker and have tried to quit many times. I council many people that they should never start in the first place but he fact remains that there are approx. 45 million Americans that smoke (as per CDC). Also statistics (not a fan of statistics but hey have their uses) show a decrease of approx. 65% (CDC) since 1997.

Now that those are out of the way lets get back to the meat and potatoes of this rant. I feel that non-smokers need to shut their yaps about smokers unless they want to foot the bill for a smoking rehab for every single of the 45 million Americans that currently use the single most addictive drug on the planet. There are those ex-smokers (they are the worst) that seem to think that any smoker can just up and quit like (*snaps fingers*) that. What they have forgotten is the hell they went through. I liken it to getting pierced or tattooed. Shortly after you are done we all seem to forget about what we went through and simply love the end result. Then you have the "half assed" smokers that smoke about a pack a week. You are not smokers therefore your success in quitting does not count. I liken it to a person that smoked a little pot in their teens telling a crackhead how easy it is to quit.

All of these people need to simply back the hell off. I am a respectful smoker. I stand down wind of non-smokers if I can. I don't smoke in the homes of non-smokers. Non-smokers come to my home I smoke outside an hour before their visit and through the duration of their stay. I do this in hopes that the non-smokers will give me the same respect by not hounding me constantly about it. But that never seems to be the case. Just like the current smoking laws in WA State.

We smokers have been steadily forced into hiding and taxed more than ANY other Americans. A law was passed that there is no smoking allowed restaurants, bowling alleys, and bars. Now the first 2 I can get behind but the bars has been a huge sticking point to me. Who goes into a bar thinking about their health? We go to bars to drink poison, dance to music that is louder than a jet engine, and try to take a stranger home to have sex with but god forbid we have to breath smoke too. Once that was passed they moved on to say we cant smoke withing 25 ft of a building. Now we have increased the taxes on tobacco by 300% making it the single most taxed product Americans consume.

So I sit here trying to be respectful that there are people that don't smoke while they repeatedly disrespect me.

Lets play with a slippery slope argument for a moment. Lets ban smoking because it is bad for you. Then shouldn't we ban other things because it is bad for you? Here is a proposed list.
Any Fast Food
Bacon
All Hostess and Little Debbie snacks
Sugar
Eggs
Internal combustion engines
Milk
Eggs
Microwave ovens
Cell phones
Cow farts
The Sun
etc...

The list goes on.

So non-smokers I will respectfully ask you to shut the hell up about the fact that I smoke. I do my best to not do it around you and all I ask for in exchange is the understanding that if I could quit I would and would rather not penalized for my addiction tat no one seems to want to help me cure. If you want us all to quit the pony up the dough to get us all patches because would you really want 45 million irrational angry Americans on your hands? That is what Republicans are for.