A Smoker's Manifesto

I'm a smoker. I smoked cigarettes from the time I was 17 until I was 23, when I switched to a pipe. I'll be 56 this year, and I'm still smoking my pipe. And I intend to go on smoking my pipe till I die, probably from a "smoking-related" illness.

Whatever I die from will be labeled smoking-related, since I'm a smoker, unless I die in a traffic accident or some other violent occurrence. And it doesn't bother me a bit. I read the news reports about the evils of smoking. I know the statistics about tobacco-related health problems, and, frankly, I don't care.

You know what? You non-smokers are going to die, too. And you're going to die of heart disease or cancer or organ failure or pneumonia or dementia. You're going to die just like me of the same things I'm likely to die of. And maybe viewed statistically you will live longer than I will, but in the end death comes for us all. And in my experience, not smoking is no guarantor of long life, even if the statistics say otherwise.

About a dozen years ago, one of my wife's best friends, a woman who lived a consciously healthy lifestyle, died of cancer. It was such an aggressive cancer that she died within six months of being diagnosed, and they never were able to isolate where it started.

In December or 2003, one of my sisters died from breast cancer. She was 46, with a husband and two daughters (12 and 10) who adored her as she adored them. My sister was the prettiest, and the healthiest, of my eight siblings. She was a professional dancer with a lithe body that, until ravaged by cancer, was always in perfect health (except perhaps for the injuries attendant on any dancer's body). Like the friend I mentioned earlier, she did not smoke and lived a healthy lifestyle.

Those are just two anecdotal cases, I know. The studies on the evils of smoking are much more rigorous and have much more daunting statistics to support their conclusions. Smoking is bad for you and me.

And, we're both going to die anyway. Okay, you think you'll life longer, or you have a better chance to live longer. Fine. What will you do with those extra days? Will you have the retirement funds to enjoy them? Most people won't. Most people have to take some other employment after retirement to make ends meet. So much for enjoying your golden years.

You will live longer, you say. Will it be longer, or will it just seem that way as you sit in your retirement home playing bingo and falling asleep in your pudding? Living longer means more of a chance to die in a senile state, the victim of Alzheimer's or some other mind-robbing disease or condition. You may live longer than me, but will you know it? And if you know it, will you like it, or will you long for death in those rare lucid moments you might have?

I don't know the answers to those questions. They're your answers. I have my answers. I will live to the best of my ability as long as I can, and when my time comes I will accept my death with all the dignity I can muster. I will not accept or tolerate heroic measures to keep me alive. I'll move into hospice care as soon as it's obvious that I'm on the short-term path to the end, and I will go. And it doesn't matter if that happens in a year or in 30 years.

None of us knows how we will go or when. All we know is that we'll die. This nonsense about this or that being the cause of death or the shortening of life is, in my judgment, nonsense.

So, you ask, what brought all this on? Well, the city I live in has passed an anti-smoking ordinance that means no one can smoke inside a public building. That includes a bar or restaurant or office. It includes even those places that have set aside special rooms for smokers, rooms that have their own ventilation. So we are forced to huddle outside in winter winds that create unsafe and unhealthy conditions. And all of this is so our non-smoking friends can enjoy a smoke-free environment.

We, of course, are told that we have the choice to come in out of the cold. All we have to do is give up our addition. And most of us would love to give up that addiction. But addiction is a powerful thing to break. For some it is obviously easier than for others. And for some of us, it is either nearly impossible or not worth the discomfort we cause ourselves and others.

I don't think you non-smokers appreciate how addictive nicotine is. And I know of no approach to addiction that is 100% effective. Not everybody can "kick the habit," whatever the habit is: drugs, alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine.

You're all just fooling yourselves if you think it is better to live to be ninety in a wheelchair than it is to die in your sixties on both feet. And I think you're fooling yourselves if you think you'll somehow have a better death or an easier death than I will.

And in the end it won't matter how we get there; we'll both be dead. Think about it.