Hand Me Down Smoke

First, it was first hand smoke.

I was in elementary school in the late 1960s when I was first forced to look at pictures of the diseased lungs of a dead smoker, removed from the chest cavity of a cadaver, choked with cancer. We also saw pictures of an addicted smoker sucking on his cigarette through a tube inserted into his tracheotomy. We saw lips swollen with mouth cancers and lip cancers, ugly gluttonous growths fed by the smokers' insatiable appetites for poison. We viewed pictures of people who had parts of their jaws removed in order to free their bodies of aggressive tumors associated with smoking--destined to live out the rest of their lives in deformity.

A cigarette, I quickly determined, looked a lot cooler when being lightly tugged on by a pretty, 20-year-old girl than it did when hanging from the mouth of an old crone wheezing away at the edge of a hospital bed. I knew, even then, that Mary Tyler Moore would age one day.

It was way back then, in 1969, that I decided for myself that not only would I never smoke cigarettes, but also that anyone else that decided to smoke tobacco was pretty much an idiot. If I had had my way I would have outlawed smoking on the spot. Someone had to save the idiots!

Of course, in my later years my philosophy toward others changed. I have became more aware of the concept of grace, have made a few serious errors in judgment myself, and have decided that being in charge of everyone else would be sort of cool for me, but it would be decidedly less cool if someone else had that same power over my life.

Others have not aged so wisely as I have, though perhaps they have done so more humbly.

The next battleground was second hand smoke. The battle still rages in some areas but it is a foregone conclusion that big brother will win this war as well. Many states already outlaw smoking in most public areas and many other states are even outlawing the practice in bars, restaurants and, yep, smoke shops. Michigan will soon succumb.

What will the next battlefield be for busybody dogooders as they attempt to prevent all of humanity from becoming exposed to the smoldering butt? I'm talking new horizons here, pushing the envelope...

Moonbattery points us toward the inevitable...third hand smoke.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who heads the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the phrase third-hand smoke is a brand-new term that has implications for behavior.

“The central message here is that simply closing the kitchen door to take a smoke is not protecting the kids from the effects of that smoke,” he said. “There are carcinogens in this third-hand smoke, and they are a cancer risk for anybody of any age who comes into contact with them.”

I am not suggesting that the government or other advocates are attempting to nose in on parents or businesses to eliminate third hand smoke. Such legislation or suggestion might be out there somewhere, but I'm not aware of it.

However, would it be a great stretch to make all hotel rooms non-smoking so as to protect the maid from rubbing her hand on a smoke filmed table? From that easy step, how much more difficult would it be for some benevolent legislator somewhere to determine that no smoking should take place in a home where children live? When a home is sold, will it become necessary for complete sanitation of the vacated home so as to keep the buyer from sniffing some ash?

Even if that arena has not yet opened up, it will open at some time in the future.

I really dislike smoking. I try my best to avoid going to smoking restaurants, always stay in non-smoking rooms, and do not allow smoking in my home or my car. And, I suppose too, it is valuable to know that the stinky guy buying bread in front of me is teeming with baddies. Who doesn't need to get creeped out by those thoughts on a regular basis? (On second thought, if he smells that bad, I sort of hope it is tobacco I'm smelling.)

Seriously though, it bothers me when I see parents smoking around their children. It bothers me when I see children hauled into a smoky restaurant for lunch. Heck, it bothers me when some bozo with a lit cigar stands behind me at the craps table and starts yelling his fool head off for a FIVE! But, as adults, and as parents, we have to be allowed the freedom to do as we see fit with what God has blessed us with. Shame on the government and other busybodies for trying to assume the role of parent for all of us. But shame too on parents and other adults so willing to abdicate their own responsibilities to some faceless, intruding entity.

A government big enough to make a rule for and about everything, and big enough to try and enforce every rule it has ever made, is one that cannot coexist with a free people.

It would be better for all of us if that bozo just up and quit smoking on his own. Oh, and stopped screaming in my ear.