Cigarette Smokers: Endangered Species?

by Christopher Reardon
(excerpted and revised from the original, published in the Daily Collegian on 2/15/2006)

Surgeon’s (Not-So) General Warning: Quitting smoking, while beneficial to your physical health, may cause extreme irritability, sleeplessness, and the ability to smell things that you would have preferred not to.

Smoke up while you can people, because the “golden days” of Big Tobacco are gone, and before you know it lighting up on your cigarette break will be as taboo as mentioning Abu Ghraib in the Oval Office. Where once Americans considered themselves lucky to win a carton of smokes on “I’ve Got a Secret,” now we consider ourselves lucky to avoid a “Truth” ad during Adult Swim. Whether they’re aware of it or not, the human species is steadily phasing smokers out of the equation.

Let’s look at evolution. Until we experience another massive global environmental change (an ice age, for instance), it can be assumed that, for now, human physical evolution is at its peak. Mental evolution, though, doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. As a result, technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and humans are learning things about the universe and about their own bodies that scientists 100 years ago would have scoffed at. At the same time, the earth’s population is steadily increasing, with villages and towns increasingly making way for cities and megalopolises (the entire northern half of the east coast, for instance).

Fields are being paved for streets and buildings are becoming taller and closer together. That alone spells doom for the lowly cigarette smoker. I’m sure you’ve noticed the imposing signs that read “No Smoking Within 20 Feet of the Building.” It started slowly, but before you knew it half the buildings in Boston maintained this policy, and soon you can be sure that every building in the state will follow suit. Add that to the fact that thirty states (including Massachusetts) have enacted legislation restricting smoking in public buildings, and it can only be a matter of time before the Patriot Act renewal includes a “no smoking inside ANY building, period” rider.

So we can’t smoke indoors, and we can’t smoke within twenty feet of any building; what happens when you walk twenty feet away from your office and bump into a Macdonald’s, three Starbuck’s, and a Wal-Mart? Where do you go to smoke then? Are humans doomed to taking a lovely Sunday drive to the country just so they can puff a Marb Red?

Well, without sugar coating it, yes they are; and eventually even that solution will be implausible. The fact that I can remember ashtrays being offered in fast-food restaurants is a testament to the speed with which smoking is being eradicated in the state. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a handful of lifetimes smoking was unilaterally banned throughout the planet. Humans in the twenty-third century will learn about the curious tradition of inhaling tar and nicotine into our lungs and risking fifty different kinds of cancer with every drag, thinking to themselves how stupid and self-destructive people in our time were. Well I, for one, laugh at the (alleged) ignorance of my great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren, for they will never know the sweet, calming truth: through numbed tongues, hacking coughs, and smelly fingers, every single puff I’ve ever taken in my life was absolutely worth it.

I’m a rare breed; a true casual smoker. I tried that whole addiction nonsense, but it was too expensive and once in a great while I like to be able to smell my food before I eat it. Now I try to reserve smoking for times when a) I really want a cigarette, or b) I really need a cigarette. Therefore, each and every cigarette I smoke is a little slice of Heaven, and the idea of that being taken away from me concerns me more than some Irag War ever could (just kidding!).

Of course, as I said my theory that smoking will one day be completely abolished from society will take a few lifetimes to come to pass. And, although this change in human behavior may affect my children’s children…well, I’ll be dead by then so I won’t give two craps. But let us, in the meantime, reflect on all the experiences that past smokers took for granted, but are no longer available to present-day smokers.

It’s a little sad, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you love to sit in your favorite bar, with your favorite drink, and your favorite brand of cigarette hanging sexily from your lips? How many of wish we could have had such a bonding experience with our fathers as sitting on the dock by a lake at the age of fourteen, fishing rod in hand, smoking a cigarette?

Well, maybe I’m the only one. But it’s okay, because I’m a smoker, and proud of it.