Smoking is the Only Sin

I fucking hate smoking. Disgusting habit: there ought to be a law
against it. All those filthy young creatures, spewing out sickening
fumes on innocent passers-by. They ought to be shot, tied to a giant
packet of Marlboro and publicly executed, their bleeding tar-filled
bodies burnt on the pyre of their addiction. Suing tobacco companies
indeed! Voluntarily hand yourself over to a lethal and addictive drug
and expect your suppliers to take the blame. Receive a reward for
suffocating your blood cells, clogging up your lungs and staining the
walls of a thousand public places? Get a smiling golden handshake for
your devotion to polluting the atmosphere and breathing your cancerous
nicotine death into the faces of countless unwilling participants?
Sick.

My mother used to smoke. Back in the early Seventies. A lifetime
commitment to a slow and painful end. There wasn't a time when she
hadn't been addicted, and as a child I could imagine her six months
old, clutching a pack of Swan Vestas and mimicking her parents as she
tried to light the cancerous substitute for a missing mother's
nipple.

I remember the smoke she breathed across me through every occasion -
the soothing hugs and bitter thrashings, the times she tried to take a
father's role and teach me the facts of life. The stench of tobacco was
always there. It owned my clothes, permeated every living cell. My hair
stank of it, my nostrils were streaked with yellow and my snot was a
nasty pitch black. There isn't a childhood scene I can picture that
isn't framed with the soft white and blue hues of cigarette
smoke.

It's not that I begrudge the sickly their addictions, it's the fumes
that piss me off. Coke fiends, alcoholics, opiate zombies: they're all
more than welcome to indulge. Addiction is every man, woman and child's
God-given right. There's a certain power in being a slave. You give up
all sense of responsibility, and just sit back and enjoy the ride. And
when you live with The Reaper, you don't have to worry about him
crashing your party.

Meanwhile, the rest of us bolt the front door and keep our eyes open.
We're so desperately sure that we're free, but we never know how it
will happen, which step will take us off this mortal coil. The addict
has far better odds, far greater certainty in her mode of departure,
and she can almost count on it not being sudden. A long slow death,
with ample time to tie up life's loose ends.

All this is fine. I can fully understand the need to add structure to
one's life, to have someone or something to lean on when the agonies of
day-to-day existence take a tight hold on one's innards. Be it a
friend, spouse, job, psychiatrist or chemical crutch, most of us need
something to keep us going.

It's just those fucking fumes; the ultimate reflection of Twentieth
Century selfishness, bolstering one's own comfort and confidence at the
expense of others. It's just like the mountains of plastic containers,
the piles of discarded needles, the carbon-fuel smog and the orbiting
junk that circles the earth at a zillion miles a second. It's sheer,
bloodyminded selfishness strewn across our planet and beyond.

And yet it's heroin addicts that suffer the greatest stigma. Shuffling,
wide-eyed skeletons too weak to injure others, too sick to last another
year, they drag their opiate babies through the leafy suburbs of our
lives. We scowl at the lost hypodermics, tut at escalating burglary
rates... but not once do we spare a thought for the cancerous molecules
wafting through the air in every pub and bar, and drifting down our
streets with an eye for a virgin lung.

"Heroin addicts commit crime". Is this news? Is this a surprise? They
steal petty cash, run off with a TV or video like street urchins
nabbing an apple to stave off a gnawing hunger. Are they alone? Do
alcoholics not rob tills, pick pockets or steal their loved ones'
precious belongings? Are we not confronted every day by beggars on the
streets, neither homeless nor truly poor, claiming they need cash for a
bus, or a coffee, or to buy drugs for their ailing dog? When we deposit
our money in banks, are we not paying strangers to invest it wherever
they want, for nobody's gain but their own? When we rent, are we not
paying someone else's mortgage, shovelling our hard-earned money
through some chuckling agent and on to some higher being? Are these
things any more justified?

But beggars, burglars, bankers and smack-heads are only after our
money. The smoker's destroying our health. In any other situation we
would have some power to act, some legal high ground from which to
defend ourselves. The tobacco giants are sued all the time. Doctors,
surgeons and drug companies are crucified simply for getting it wrong.
People are found guilty of negligence for failing to look out for their
workers. And a woman can take her ex-lover to court for keeping his
mouth shut and avoiding protection when he knew he had HIV.

The precedent is clear: placing someone else's health at risk is a
crime, be it in hospital, in the workplace or the bedroom. So, what
about the smoker? His crime is certainly no accident. At the very least
it's negligence, but in my view it's a great deal worse. He's the lover
with HIV, only to us he's no lover. He's an anonymous man who leans
into our lives and thrusts his leprous presence into our innocent
lungs. He's a stranger with a hypodermic filled with carcinogenics,
slipping it into our arm. If it was Ebola he was breathing he'd be
quarantined. He'd be placed under armed guard for fear that he'd spread
his sickness among his fellow man. He might even be shot dead if he
attempted to escape. And, to think, unlike the smoker he wouldn't have
chosen his disease, any more than he'd have chosen to make it
contagious.

Now, if the bastard smoker simply reached out and smashed us round the
face with a bottle, we'd respond with sure and fast violence. If a
burglar breached our walls and strode boldly into our bedroom, waving a
knife and threatening to kill us, we would be swift to retaliate. If a
rapist had our mother by the hair, you wouldn't hesitate. It's your
right to protect yourself and your family.

And so it should be. While class actions claim millions for the martyrs
of cigarette addiction, those of us the martyrs are taking down with
them must establish a legal precedent of our own. So grab the selfish,
cancer-spreading bastards by their tar-stained throats and exact your
revenge. Break them before they break you. It's nothing more, and
nothing less, than self-defence.