2003 Soap Box Archives

Smoking 04/21/03

By now the most addicted cigarette smoker knows that they are harmful
to your health and a habit that is extremely hard to quit.

I know what I’m talking about because I had a four to five pack a day
habit which I quit cold turkey in 1967.

The answer to quitting smoking is not something that can be legislated
and you can sue the tobacco companies from now till doom’s day and it’s
not going to make one person quit.

The only thing that has done is allow some very greedy lawyers to
collect obscene fees and given some politicians more money to waste.

The only legal action which would hinder smoking would be to shut the
tobacco companies down completely and the government is not going to do
that. They collect way too much tax money from the sale of cigarettes.

First of all, if somebody chooses to smoke it’s their business and
their funeral. We don’t have laws which forbid doing things just
because they are dangerous.

The main thing that bothers me about the smoking scene is the amount of
young people I see lighting up. I don’t think they realize what they
are getting themselves into.

Is it peer pressure or the notion that smoking is chic or do they think
it’s cool to see some movie star put a match to tobacco and use the
cigarette as a prop making it look like the most sophisticated thing in
the world?

With me it was a combination of peer pressure and just thinking it was
the coolest thing in the world to pull out a pack of cigarettes in
front of a bunch of kids and light one up. I thought it made me look
grown up and worldly.

Looking back it was difficult to become addicted to tobacco as hard as
I tried. Lots of kids would smoke the occasional cigarette but didn’t
inhale. But you really admired the big kids who could take a long puff
and pull the smoke down into their lungs and blow it back out.

Oh how I wanted to learn how to inhale and the big kids were only too
willing to teach me. You would take just the tiniest puff and suck it
down into your lungs. You would cough and sputter the first few times
but before long you were able to take that tiny puff in and out of your
lungs without the coughing.

Then it was a little bigger puff and yet a bigger puff until the first
you knew you could inhale a whole mouthful of smoke and blow it out
without a problem.

Then the next thing you knew you were sneaking cigarettes out of
daddy’s pack not for fun but because you felt a real need for the
nicotine. Then you were hooked.

Looking back I remember my quest to smoke as a traumatic experience,
but I fought the good fight and learned a bad habit.

As I said that habit developed into a four to five pack a day
addiction. To the point that if I’d get up at night I was apt to light
a cigarette before I went back to bed.

I started smoking before all the information about how harmful it is
was discovered. But even then in the back of my mind I knew that
something capable of giving you a hacking cough and intensifying the
effects of the common cold couldn’t be good for you.

I can hardly stand the smell of cigarette smoke now and I believe there
are additives in them that weren’t there when I smoked.

It’s never too late to quit. My mother smoked for fifty years and gave
it up. Some of the most addicted people I know have stopped.

I would encourage you to speak to your kids about smoking.
If you could persuade them not to smoke you’d be doing them a favor
which would pay dividends in the years to come.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels