About ten years ago, when my city was debating mandating that all businesses be free of cigarette smoke, I wrote the following essay. Since then the city, and the State of California as a whole, has outlawed the use of the evil weed in all public places including offices, bars and open air stadiums.
In the intervening years, a pack of butts in this state has gone from about a dollar to five bucks or more and yet I still see people at the smoke shops lining up; the draw of the cancer stick is so great. It is a jones that is next to impossible to kick for so many that it is easier to just keep smoking and take the chance on the roulette wheel of health.
Thanks to typical government thinking, we spend tens of millions of dollars in tobacco taxes to fund anti-smoking PR campaigns, while bemoaning the skyrocketing health care costs of those who can't kick the habit.
Since this week our good friend need2no and her husband are stepping off the big leap and quitting smoking I thought I'd dredge the memory banks for a golden oldie.
And need2no.... you go girl!!!! 
Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette
I smoked a long time, and I quit. Not everyone seems to be able to quit, even though they should. And the walls are closing rapidly on those who still do smoke.
Here in my home town, the City Council is a busy bunch. They have many important things on the docket when they meet every other week. There is the never ending saga of flood control in our river town. Rising costs and shrinking budgets. Forced reduction of services and the attendant constituent complaints. Also ever present is encroaching development, seemingly radiating from City Hall itself and sprawling ever outward.
Our elected council is faced with hard issues and harder decisions all the time. But for the past several weeks the council has been spending its time worrying about smoke; cigarette smoke to be precise.
It seems that the council wants to be not only health conscious, but politcally correct as well. They banned smoking in all city owned facilities some time ago. But now they are following the lead of other towns that have banned smoking in restaurants and private business offices. Some cities have gone so far as to curtail consumption of the evil weed from any and all indoor places open to the public. Such a law here would include both open to the public businesses and private office spaces. So far, our council is only proposing the ban be extended to restaurants.
As mentioned earlier, I quit. A couple of years ago, work was really tough. I had a heavy case load and a chief of police who was on my back constantly about it. To keep him at bay I was working a ton of hours; running on coffee, not much sleep and a lot of cigarettes. Eventually it all caught up with me, I got sick and was off work for three and a half weeks and it really scared me. Both of my parents smoked for years, and it wound up killing my mother even though she quit completely a decade before the onset of emphysema. On top of that, my wife had bugged me for a long time to stop. She is asthmatic with horrendous allergies and can't stand to be anywhere near smoke, hence she could not stand anywhere near me.
I had quit so many times, and had always started up again. Earlier that same year, my partner at the time and I had both quit for a New Year's resolution. Leslie and I were both cheating by about the fifth day, cadging a smoke here or there from a co-worker, but I think we made it almost two weeks without buying any of our own. One morning after briefing, I noticed Leslie putting a pack of Marlboros into her mail box, she said she gotten the last of a pack from her boyfriend. Later that day, as we finished up some silly call or another, I asked Leslie for a smoke. She had run out, and said she was about to ask me for one. The jig was up and we both knew it, so we both drove lights and sirens to the nearest 7-11 and loaded up; she with Marlboros and me with Camels. Ten minutes later we were having a smoke parked behind a shopping center, because it was against regs to smoke in uniform in public view, when we looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, "what the hell are we doing?"
So on the last day of 1991, when I was still off work and recovering from my job induced illness, it dawned on me that it was time. I don't recall actually reaching the conclusion, but I just decided that I was ready to come in from the backyard and enjoy my life and health. About two hours before the new year dawned, I smoked the last butt in the pack I had. I decided that I would just not buy any more and that would be it. I didn't savor those last few puffs, as one might expect. I simply smoked that filtered Camel as I had hundreds of thousands before it. After I stubbed it out, I felt as if the monkey was really off my back. I went to bed a short time later, slept soundly and awoke more thoroughly refreshed than I had in weeks.
I haven't had a cigarette since. I had no fits, no withdrawl that I was aware of. Within a few weeks I had no urge to smoke at all. I am still not really sure why.
Recently, I figured out that I smoked between ten and fifteen thousand cigarettes a year, every year, for nearly twenty years. Now, after just over one year of not smoking I feel better in both body and mind. I have more money to spend, and my wife likes to snuggle again. All the things that all the prudish ex-smokers told me would happen did in fact come to pass. All except one.
I have not become a prudish ex-smoker. Naturally, I would encourage anyone to not smoke, in fact to never start. But if you are like I used to be, you just aren't ready to do it. You haven't found the right reason yet. It could be that you never will.
But I join with all of you smokers in finding as reprehensible the repeated attempts by our elected officials to enjoin personal behavior. Regulation on city owned property is one thing, but infringement on the rights of a private property owner in how he or she conducts their business is another. It is my belief that such regulation is better left to the individual. I am personally familiar with businesses that are voluntarily smoke free, and I applaud that. But is a restaurant chooses to cater to a smoking clientele, it should be able to.
Put simply, some people choose to smoke, regardless of the personal health risk involved. Similarly, some people choose to drink alcohol and some choose to skydive. All of these activities affect, potentially, more than just the immediate self. But the right of choice is the bottom line. It just makes me mad when government, regardless of the level, gets involved with individual choice issues.
If you do smoke, you should quit. If someone as compulsive as me can do it, anyone can. But neither I, nor anyone else, can make you do it. It is your choice.
In the final analysis, I would be really happy if all you smokers out there did stop. That way, should I ever get lucky and get published, you'll all still be out there to buy my book.
