Huffy Puffers

The Kansas City, Missouri, voter-approved smoke-free law for restaurants, taverns and tobacco shops took affect at midnight last Friday and its made some nicotine fiends un-happy big-time. Before I go any further, I must disclose that I am a former smoker of more than 30 years. I’ve been nicotine free since 1987.

Let’s compare the advantages of smoking with the disadvantages. First, let’s list the advantages. Smoking has a mildly pleasurable narcotic effect. Smoking is an appetite depressant and helps avoid weight gain. Smoking creates desirable lifestyle routines or little habits like pausing over a steaming cup of coffee or having a beer with friends who are also smokers. As far as I can tell, that’s about it for the pluses. If you know of others, please comment. Now, let’s consider the bad side of the habit. Smoking is expensive- robbing you of hard earned money that could be put to more productive and satisfying uses, not just because of the cost of a pack of cigarettes, but for the higher life insurance premiums and health care costs as well. Smoking creates health problems – causing illnesses such as cancer, heart attacks, bone density loss, and a host of respiratory problems, ultimately reducing the smoker’s life span. Smoking is dirty - staining teeth and fingers, fouling breath odors, and coating glass like the inside of your car windshield. Smoking is dangerous – burning clothes, furniture, and even whole mattresses, houses and the people in them. Smoking is a time-waster – emptying ashtrays, lighting up, extinguishing the weed, and robbing loved ones of precious time in your relationship.

It does not take much more than common sense to see that the disadvantages of smoking outweigh the advantages. It’s too bad these disgruntled smokers don’t see this non-smoking ordinance as a boon to their existence. My wake-up call, the event that prompted me to quit smoking, was the unfortunate, untimely and greatly lamented death of a friend who died of lung cancer, most likely caused by his pack-a-day habit. The no-smoking ordinance should provide many smokers a similar wake-up call without them suffering the grief I felt, which would be a blessing for their spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and anyone else the smokers have affected by spewing second-hand smoke and odors. There is a small minority of smokers whose addiction is so strong, they probably can’t quit despite how hard they think it is to successfully kick the habit. I’m not going to worry about them. I would rather think of all the lives improved and lengthened, rather than dwell on the few who insist that their right to self-destruction is a higher imperative than a better life-style for everyone else.