I spend a great deal of my time watching things go by. I have stood at the street corner at all hours of the day; I have patiently waited my turn at the great turnstiles; I have picked up my wife on cold and rainy nights and in all these different settings: with all these different people there is one constant which remains.
Smokers.
Young, old, fit, obese, pretty, repulsive, rich, poor; every different ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation. Some rigidly polished where the cigarette looks drawn on with its poufy perfection; some so disheveled and rancorous I don’t even know what to say about these folks.
Still with the cigarette on the lungs and mouth of people of all ages and stripes, it really begs the question: Why is cigarette smoking as popular as it is? It costs a lot of money and statistically the people who smoke the most have the least resources to keep up with these costs. It’s horrible for your health; the only true thing the individual has any control over in this life; your spouse can leave you , your job can fire you, your parents can disown you, your mortgage lender can foreclose on you; but you choose what you put in to your body and you are master of your own domain. If you want to have chips and salsa and drink cheap white wine till you’re blue in the face; that’s your prerogative. If you want to get yourself all messed up on ecstasy and hallucinogens, that too is your choice. If you want to eat a well rounded diet of fruits and vegetables; maybe even the kind you grow in your own garden; then that too is your choice. But cigarette smoking just seems to amateurish.
I know I know “it’s an addiction; smokers can’t help themselves.” Well to that I say poppycock. Any person whose wills are so easily taken from them don’t deserve the privilege of choice. I mean if that’s really where we need to take the smoking argument then we can do that. Thinking specifically about a place so tightly packed and populated; smoking in New York City does not seem to make one lick of sense.
We all are breathing the same air and even if you are standing four feet away from me I, the non smoker, am just as likely to breathe the same cancerous air as you the smoker. So to that end what you do with your time, money and health does affect me greatly. Of course my other option is to take my free will and move across the street. But then we get into the swooping path of the smoker across the street. Do we need to have smoking districts and non smoking districts in place?
Of course Mayor Bloomberg instated these ‘smoking laws’ for pedestrian plazas, beaches, and parks, but how often are those enforced? Moreover how can they be? It’s just like jaywalking; too many people breaking the law en masse and it doesn’t make sense to pull one person over for 100 persons who’ve committed the same crime.
We all just need to take in a deep breath and ask ourselves if we don’t have better things to be spending our time, money, and health on.