tion to nicotine. I’ve heard this addiction described by someone
who would know as more powerful and harder to break than the
physical dependency on heroin—powerful enough to keep people
smoking even after they’ve developed emphysema or lost a lung
to cancer.
Now science has established the causal link between smok-
ing and these killer diseases to the satisfaction of most everyone
except tobacco company executives. Twenty-five years ago the
surgeon general slapped a warning on every pack of cigarettes.
Society has sent a mixed message. Ads for cigarettes originally
touted the product as a health aid; athletes lent credence to this
claim with their endorsements. As information from the medical
community began to refute these notions, the appeal shifted to
the cigarette as refreshment (“Take a puff. It’s springtime”), social
prop, status symbol, and image enhancer. (Marlboro didn’t sell as
a “woman’s” cigarette with a red filter. As soon as they shed the
red filter and started putting cowboys into the ads, sales took off.)
Back in the dark ages, smoking in public was for men—or
fallen women—only. Then women gained “equality.” (“You’ve
come a long way, baby.”) When the medical evidence against “sec-
ondhand,” or “passive” smoke began to become pervasive and per-
suasive, many municipalities banned smoking in restaurants and
public offices, and legal efforts to prevent sales of cigarettes to
children intensified.
But already the pendulum is swinging back and the backlash
for “smokers’ rights” is being felt.
What have you decided about smoking? If you’re a smoker or
a recent ex-smoker, how many times a day do you have to decide?
Have you decided that you don’t really have a choice at all?
It’s not as simple as just “doing what comes naturally.” We ini-
tially repel the smoke but become hooked on it later.
It’s not easy to know what’s “approved” or “appropriate.”
“Society” says, among other things, that smoking is cool and that
it will kill you.
W H O S E D R U M D O Y O U M A R C H T O?