Smokers

To the Editor,

Soon I will be reuniting with a European friend of mine I have not seen for five years. In a recent conversation he said to me, "I still smoke, but I am getting better, I promise." Because I am an athlete people often assume that I am a "militant non-smoker" My friend here made me think perhaps he feels a tinge of guilt over his addiction. After reading the article in the February 20th edition of The Clock defending smokers, I decided that I'm glad my friend feels self-conscious for smoking in my presence. He is an intelligent person and should feel stupid with each drag he takes. Don't give me the credit of labeling me as militant. I am simply annoyed and disappointed.I realize that the authors' goal was perhaps satirical and tongue-in-cheek. But mainly I only got a sense of ridicule and ingenuousness.It saddens me to hear someone say that"...some of the best conversations in a young smoker's life can occur while in a tightly wound 'smoking circle.'" No I don't feel bad for smokers suffering the cold for a 'butt', and I assure you that as a smoker exhales their "...puffs on their way to class," while walking directly before me, it is not a "mocking cough" I release, but sincere reaction to a force that, quite frankly, may be shortening my lifespan.Smoking is not taboo. To smoke in the face of all the evidence of its' detriment to the human body is similar to practicing unprotected sex. It's stupid and naive. Confining student smokers to their dorm rooms is a solution that is as tenacious as the author of the article. The stench will linger on for next inhabitant, smoker or not. And like many establishments dorms often have a system of reconditioned air, the smoke has to go somewhere and in the case of a dormitory it could very well end up dissipating into the room of an unsuspecting non-smoker.The WHO (world health organization) has been supporting exhaustive studies on the worldwide and individual implications of tobacco use. Cancer is certainly a Minotaur in the arena of complications caused by smoking, but it is not the only beast. According to the WHO, 75% of tobacco users worldwide live in developing countries. Clearly people living in places where the days' simplest and quietest moments are a struggle for survival are unaware of the health risks of smoking. As Carl Sagan notes in his book "The Demon-Haunted World", an alarming number of Americans today are unaware that human beings and dinosaurs did not cohabitate. From here it doesn't seem a huge leap to assume that many smokers in rural and urban America are unaware of its' cancer causing effects. Considering how vaguely defined the term literacy is, does everyone really know who the surgeon general is or care what he/she says?1994 data suggests that smoking is responsible for a loss of some US$ 200 Billion each year. This figure comes from studies that conclude that smokers are less productive workers than non-smokers because of increased illness across their lifetime. Smoking often disables and kills people in their prime. Perhaps our rise to substance abuse as a species is purely inevitable and evolutionary. There is evidence of tobacco use in the America's as far back as 6,000 BC. As the current era approached people used tobacco in moderation for smoking as well as to perform enemas. The key thing to notice when assessing current trends in smoking is that until the last few hundred years tobacco products were used in moderation. You will not find many chain smokers in the native mythology. As tobacco made it's way to the European nations around the start of the 16th century it was used mainly for medicinal purposes until the tobacco pipe made its' debut in England in the 1580's. Perhaps if we stuck to more primitive methods of tobacco use we would not be dropping off like carcinogenic flies.

A.M. Winters