It's a given that smoking isn't healthy behavior. It's also a given that the United States isn't exactly known for healthy behavior.
If someone chooses to continue smoking, or simply not to try to quit, I'm not going to argue with them. I won't stand in the way of anyone - who is of age - exercising his/her constitutional rights. That said, I do applaud any smoker who makes the effort to quit. But I do not believe that anyone has the right to make the tobacco industry seem like the big evil of this nation.
Almost everything you come in contact with, even if it's on the web or the television screen, is part of Corporate America. Money, marketing, and politics rule the roost. And the war against the tobacco industry is no different.
I personally believe that those who support the idea of banning smoking should turn their righteous war to something else. Namely, alcohol. If there is a “big evil” in our country that is legal and regulated, it is not tobacco products - it is alcohol.
Do I believe that alcohol should be banned, then? Honestly, as a recovering alcoholic, I have mixed feelings on that score. I believe we would live in a safer, saner world without alcohol, yet I would never stand in the way of anyone exercising their constitutional rights to use certain products - as long as they're of age, and they use it responsibly.
Money plays the biggest role. If advertisers had the kind of contracts with the tobacco industry that they do with alcohol companies, it would be an entirely different story.
In many places presently, including certain sporting events, smoking is banned. Yet they continue to sell alcohol. In the last few years, I've been to a couple of Rock concerts, and the limit in my area for alcohol consumption at these shows is two drinks. But no one listens to that, and that rule isn't enforced - at least it wasn't when I was there; I saw several people dog drunk. You can't smoke a cigarette in the building, but you can drink.
Fights break out at these events, and alcohol is usually involved. It is true that someone can start a fight for no other reason than being drunk. I've never heard of anyone fighting, and getting hurt, because of smoking.
A large number of drunk-driving incidents, sometimes resulting in at least one death, happens when the drivers are heading back from a Rock show. Fifteen years in the rock-and-roll business taught me that. Does anyone die on the way home because someone was smoking?
What sort of message are we giving the younger generation? I know younger people (legal adults) whose parents don't mind if they drink, but their parents would freak out if they smoked. I'm not saying that we should choose the lesser of two evils; I'm just saying that the whole mess seems backward.
No one can really know where the line between tobacco and alcohol is unless they personally experience both. I am a tobacco consumer, and I've made efforts to quit and have managed to cut down on it. Unhealthy, yes, but it's nowhere near the danger level of alcohol. No one but an addict can understand. And from my experience, as well as from observing those around me, one drink only leads to the next drink.
Alcohol, in excess, lowers the immune system, thus opening the door for cancer and other illnesses. It turns you into someone you're not - in my case, someone I never wanted to be at all. It deepens depression. It slows your reflexes, which is why driving after drinking can be so dangerous. I don't drive myself, but I've ridden with many a drink-imbued driver, and it's a wonder we never crashed.
Alcohol in moderation is one thing; you just have to be careful, for one drink can too easily become one too many. Smoking, even in excess, doesn't change who you are; it doesn't warp your mind or tear your family apart. And alcohol affects the memory: I know someone who sold her car a few years back, and she doesn't remember a thing about it. She's been drinking for years.
I've lost two friends with whom I had a bond and both of whom I would call my comrades. Both died because of alcohol. One had quit years earlier, but the damage was already done. His liver became so infected that he couldn't process his food. The other, my former band mate, died from alcohol poisoning. For a recovering alcoholic who has lived in the rock-and-roll world for most of his life, it hits home. Both of my friends were lifelong tobacco consumers, too. But it was alcohol that killed them.
It seems politically incorrect nowadays to go against the ban on smoking. But I'm an artist: politically correct or incorrect are wasted concepts to me. For it seems that the truth rarely coincides with what is politically correct.
Where does that leave us, then? I don't know. But it seems a sad state of our society that smoking is the Big Evil when alcohol, “crazy water,” as my Native American ancestors called it, is socially acceptable.
My mom once told a friend that I had started using tobacco. (I was drinking, too, which she did not know.) Her friend said that if that was all I ever did, she shouldn't worry. Her son drank, and was into trouble all the time. When I think back to my mom telling me about that conversation with her friend, I wish I had taken it to heart.
