Cigarettes

They are about 4 inches long, about 5/16 inch in diameter, they are often all white, but with a line or so close to one end. Sometimes they have a tan coloured end. That would be on the 'filter-tip' end. Most everyone smokes filter-tips, a few smoke 'tailor-made' unfiltered and I only know one guy that rolls his own cigs. No, he likely never rolled his own wacky tabacy, that's not where he learned to roll his own cigs.

This week is National Non-Smoking Week. It's been observed on the third week of January for more than thirty years. I'm thinking they picked late January to reinforce and grab again the people that had a New Year's resolution to quit. The non-smoking lobby know how to manipulate the public. 'Course, so do tobacco manufacturers. They are very good. I don't doubt that their profits have been good for years, in spite of the efforts of many to get people to quit smoking.

What's that line about smoking ? - Something like "It's the only legal product that when used, as per manufacturer's instructions, will kill 60 % of it's customers"

The non-smoking lobby wants to make smoking appear non-normal. That's why they want a ban on advertising ( showing smoking in normal circumstances ), to eliminate depicting smoking in movies and to have it banned from workplaces, public places, cars that are carrying kids and anywhere else they can think of.

Yul Brynner, a long-time smoker, died of lung cancer in 1985. I remember a anti-smoking ad that he did when he knew that cigarettes were going to kill him. He said ( I'm paraphrasing ) " No matter what, whatever it takes, however you do it ... just quit."

There has been a story out recently, citing a study, that says third hand smoke is dangerous to children. Third hand smoke is the chemicals that cling to upholstery and carpets of areas that have been smoked in and even to the clothes of people that smoke. cathiefromcanada did a piece about it ( you'll have to scroll down - linking directly to the specific post didn't work ). She didn't think much of the study and figured it was just another way to demonize smokers. I tend to agree with her.

The movie " The Insider " has recently been on my cable channels. It " tells the true story of a 60 Minutes television series exposé of the tobacco industry, as seen through the eyes of a real tobacco executive, Jeffrey Wigand. " (wiki). I haven't watched it but it looks like it might be good

I know a fella that has smoked since he was about 18 ( 37 years ago ). It started slow, the addiction part, that is. He had his first cigarette at age 11, likely. His dad smoked, rolled his own. For a while his dad used a rolling machine, coolest thing. Not one of these packing machines that make filter-tips using tubes with the filters already on them. This machine used a special long paper, five times as long as a regular paper, so the cigarette that came out of the machine was about 20 inches long. It was then cut into five regular cigs. My friend was visiting his aunt and uncle once and his older cousin volunteered to roll up a number of cigs for my friend's dad, 'cause he had such a cool rolling machine. So the cousin pilfered a few cigs and shared them around out behind the barn. As expected my friend said it tasted terrible.

No, the real addiction problem started at 18, when my friend came into the presence of the devil's tobacco. That's right, marijuana. He smoked that, off and on, half assed seriously for six or seven years. But he had the first cigarette he liked twenty minutes after he had smoked a joint. A person he was with said he should have a cig because it would give him the same sensation as the grass, sorta. And sadly, tragically that person was right. Ya see, cigarettes create their own kind of buzz. It's immediate and addictive. It's highly addictive. Lots of smokers never do quit - they just die.

My friend has quit many times over the years, the longest for about four months. He thinks he will have to be off, completely off the evil weed for two years before he can fairly say he has quit smoking. He has been told, and has found, that the first three days are the worst and the third day is the worst of the three. He has found over his many attempts that he gets owlly - he can be a right royal, short-tempered, snappy, pain-in-the-ass son of a bitch. I felt sorry for his wife. He has also found that he cannot have just one cig, ya know - for old times sake - one can't hurt - it's just one - you are not really starting again. He has had no luck with tapering off. He has to quit and be done with it. He has never tried Weedless Wednesday. He understands the concept - make a commitment to quit for one day. That's all. One day isn't that hard and you know you can quit for one day. After that day you can go back but you have proved you can do without the weed and live. Therefore you can do it for good, sometime. It has always seemed like intellectual trickery. Everyone knows what is supposed to happen. But hey, if it works, it's all good.

If my friend quits he hope he doesn't become an anti-smoking zealot. He has seen some of those folks and if that's what they have to do to keep themselves on the wagon, so be it. It isn't a lot of fun for anyone when a discussion happens with a zealot. He's not going to tell people to quit smoking, never has. He know he has had plenty of good reasons to quit and just never got around to it, so he figures other people might be in the same boat.

He bought some Nicotine gum recently and hasn't had a cig for about 57 hours, since almost 1 PM on Friday. He would be some ticked if he knew I was talking about him. When a person quits and tells people he is quitting everyone is always supportive. That's nice and everything but it doesn't really help. It actually puts some pressure on a person. Stop smoking programs always say that a smoker should make the attempt public. It draws support and makes success visible. It also makes failure visible. My friend would feel bad if he backslide and didn't make the quitting permanent. My friend also knows that lot of people have quit, and it's that person's own personal struggle and they got through it and it isn't that big a deal.

I'm just rambling because it's non-smoking week and I'm just sitting here with nothing to do with my hands.

Peace out.