I don’t know about your state, or country, but here in New York there has been a pretty massive anti-smoking campaign in effect for a while. Not only have public smoking laws been passed in conjunction with the ever increasing “sin taxes,” but there has been an extensive media campaign, comprised of both print and television ads, which effectively blankets the 5 boroughs. These ads are not only run continuously but are quite graphic, focussing on the damage smoking does. There is a man with throat cancer, a woman with multiple amputations, images of bleeding brains and tar-soaked lungs being squeezed like sponges, etc.

Here’s a tiny glimpse.





Now let me be clear. If these ads, in conjunction with the legislation and raised prices, are having the desired effect of reducing cigarette smoking among New Yorkers, I’m glad. If the general cultural outlook on smoking is changing to one of disgust and derision, making it ever less comfortable or socially acceptable for smokers to light up I’m glad about that too. You know why? Because I hate smoking. I hate that I do it and I hate that I can’t seem to stop. Not a day passes that I don’t think about cancer, nor does a day pass that I don’t feel like a pathetic weakling loser for continuing to spite it all.

Which brings me to my quibble.

There is something cruelly passive-agressive about New York’s campaign against smoking. While I am prey to nasty looks and comments on the street and brow beaten unendingly with advertisements designed to frighten me and shame me and fill me with a paralyzing anxiety, I can, none the less, stroll into my corner deli and choose from a staggering array of tobacco products to kill myself with. Sure the city will charge me the arm and leg not yet amputated, but I can buy cigarettes, and quite conveniently too, as there is a tobacco shop in every neighborhood, a deli every half-a-block, and street kiosks everywhere in between. Christ. I have a deli in the lobby of my office building, I don’t even have to cross the street to commit suicide!

So do you see why this troubles me?

While on the one hand New York does a myriad of things to make me feel crappy about myself and fill my days with a constant undercurrent of dread, it stops short of doing the one thing that might actually make someone like me, who is pathetically hooked, bow to the cultural pressure… criminalizing them.

I can tell you right now that heavy smokers, to a person, want to quit. No matter how deep down that desire is, no matter how dampened by chemical need, no matter how much we deny it. We are well aware of the health risks and effects. We are perfectly, 100% cognizant, of the fact that we will, in all likelihood, die a horrible death. No amount of advertising is going to tell us anything we don’t already know. No cost can not be rationalized somehow. We are simply helpless, spineless, wretches who can’t stop ourselves.

So… If smoking is this terrible blight upon humanity (which it undoubtedly is), if the act kills more people than all the illicit substances sold on street corners and in middle-school bathrooms, if the healthcare system is unduly burdened by all us numbskulls poisoning ourselves to death, and if elected officials are so keen to protect the health of their citizens then why are these god-damned things so easy to get?! Seriously. Can’t someone just pull the trigger already and make them illegal?

I don’t know… it just seems kind of cruel to endlessly poke and prod us stupid people. We’re already going to die horribly, smelly and broke, because of our poor choices. Isn’t that enough?

Choose a fucking side already.