Beating a Smoking Dead Horse?

Everything in my psyche (which as everyone knows is: That which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason and of course: The immaterial part of a person; the actuating cause of an individual life) tells me to write about what is really on my mind at the time I type this present column. Smoking in restaurants is not what is on my mind.

But…this Saturday’s special vote on the smoking issue is an item which will directly affect the future of Baytown and I feel it is in the best interest of everyone in this blue-collar town, to consider all options before we cast our vote in the local election.

To recap my last article, I voted FOR Proposition One (concerning Smoking in public places) even though I detest cigarette smoke and avoid it when possible. I acknowledge that smoke of any kind is a potential health risk. I recognize smoking in this country kills a lot of people each year, something like four hundred thousand. I realize well-intentioned people with letters behind their names also throw around “facts” like they were indeed facts and use position to force people to vote away inherent American rights.

I also realize the constant bombardment against smokers through litigation and rapidly changing civic restrictions is going to boomerang and cause smoking to revive amongst those who wish to rebel against parents and civic responsibility. Then there is the black market and organized crime which will feed the smokers vice through illegally manufactured cigarettes.

The eagerness of well-intentioned anti-smoking zealots to stop smokers from polluting our atmospheric space is commendable from a health aspect, but not when it concerns reducing our rights as citizens to operate a legal place of business. Smoking is not illegal.

“Smoking IS allowed in this business – Enter at your own risk”.

Now there’s a sign we should adopt instead of forcing all businesses to exclude smoking. In the meantime, educate the masses (especially the age-old activist handle - THE CHILDREN!). God save the children! God save the earth! God save the environment!

I love children (well, I am a cranky old dude and tolerate well-behaved children only). I do believe children should be protected and that is where the signs come in. Parents will tell their children why they don’t eat at this establishment, over another because they allow smoking…or vice versa.

Let’s look at my personal history on smoking the long leaf.

I grew up in mostly a one car family with two smoking parents. We five kids complained constantly when our parents smoked in the car and we always had cigarette smoke wafting around us like fairy dust on a…Hobbit. Most likely because my parents smoked, I grew up a smoker also, starting my tobacco-inhaling career at the ripe age of seven and as I’ve stated many times, by the time I was eleven, I always had a pack of cigarettes on my person.

By the time I was seventeen; I was a one-pack a day serious tobacco herfer and when the smoke finally cleared around the age of twenty, because I quit cold turkey as it was no longer fun, amongst other things. I replaced smoking with another healthier addiction – karate and jogging!

Over the many years since 1972, I jogged hundreds, if not thousands of miles and done about a bazillion sidekicks and secret martial arts mystery stuff in this town. Rolling along the smogged/benzene-laden streets of Baytown, I’ve pedaled my bicycle untold miles, all the while gulping the pollution filled atmosphere with total abandon. Until the last few years, I’ve spent thousands of hours in smoke-filled control rooms inside the chemical plant, where I am employed.

Here are my questions and I throw them out for those that deem Baytown’s environment so hostile to the general public: Why do my pulmonary tests, which I’m required to take each year reveal I have above the national average healthy lung results? If first and second hand smoke and the god-awful filthy pollution-laden Baytown air are silently killing me, why don’t I see it in the tests I have? Here is my answer: It’s because I’ve taken steps to keep my lungs clear through cardiovascular exercise. I’ve educated myself on the adverse effects of pollution and smoke and because of this, I have clear lungs.

Americans do not need more laws to prevent them from doing harm to them; they need education and possibly a strong dose of get off the couch and exercise. Then there are those who just want to smoke and I say, let them smoke. It is America after all.