Light Up

Cigarettes made of gum was a neat little enticement for kids that saw real smokers and wondered what smoking was all about or to imitate smoking.  You would blow on one of the gum cigarettes and a puff of fake smoke would come out and that was it.  The fake smoke was probably a powder of starch, flour or sugar.  Then you would unwrap the paper and put the gum in your mouth and chew gum.  Those boxes of gum cigarettes resembled the the real thing so much.  I bought those once or twice as a kid for like a dollar or two at my local candy store.

Hypocritically, when I see a girl smoking, I can tolerate it, but think it's a disgusting and dirty view on how she approaches her health concerns.  I bought my first pack of Newports in 1998.  Since 1998, I've switched to Marlboro Menthols.  I have always considered myself a light smoker.  It use to be that a pack would last me a few days to a week.  In between that time, I've cut down even more so because of the knowledge that cigarettes affect the health and especially the lungs in bad ways.  I would experience minor periods of coughing.  I noticed as I exercised or even went jogging it had effected my breathing when I use to smoke more frequently.  Since my smoking reduction, my breathing has improved dramatically.  I never even did what others say as two packs a day or even a week.  When I feel the urge, I'll grab a pack and it will last a month or two or I'll try to find a "loosey" when I don't feel like spending the $9.00 and up on a pack.

By 2005, I stopped smoking completely and wouldn't pick up on it until recently.  Back in 2004, when a bunch of friends went for Korean buffet in New Jersey, I was anticipating a new eating experience because I had never been to a Korean buffet before.  The experience was really good.  It was the first time I smelt like meat after leaving a place, disgustingly good.  A friend of mine lit up a cigarette in the restaurant and my reaction was "what is this guy doing?"  It would be that in New York City the smoking ban had been in full effect since 2003.  Restaurants, bars and in any other public indoor establishment, in New York City, no longer allowed smoking.  New Jerseyans did not have that ban yet.  It would seem residents of New Jersey would not have felt that ban until 2006.  Starting May of 2011, smoking will be banned in beaches, parks or other public outdoor areas.  You cannot smoke within 25 feet from any federal building.  You can still smoke on private property be it the owner allows it.  But even that ban has come into question if it can be allowed in private apartment buildings.  If the board votes or owner bans smoking in the lease, a smoker would not be allowed to smoke even in his or her private apartment.  And that is the simple outline without going into detail of which property, which tenants and will it involve lawyers (or how much the fine will be imposed).

I believe smokers have the right to experience the sensation of taking a whiff of death.

I was watching Cigarette Wars on CNBC the other day and the image of cigarette farming zoomed right into my television set.  I always knew that, yes, part of what goes into cigarettes are just leaves of "tobacco" with other fillers.  For the first time, CNBC brought a up close and detailed view on the foundation of the industry, ten months with the farmers came with seeding, harvesting, and curing until it was time to sell.  On Cigarette Wars it said that some of the top Kentucky growers have lost 25% of their harvest.  One reason is that top tobacco companies like Altria (the parent company of Philip Morris - Marlboro), Lorillard (Newport) and R.J. Reynolds (Camel, Kool and Winston) are buying from the farmers less due to slumping sales.  Why are sales slumping for major tobacco sellers?  In addition to all these bans, there are ads from www.thetruth.com showing the negative side of the smoking industry.  Michael Bloomberg who appeared on Cigarette Wars states that his reason for the bans and increase on sales tax: health cost.  In history class I learned that in war an embargo is a good way to defeat the enemy.  Bloomberg's and other cities government war on rising medical cost in part due to smoking is being fought with this embargo.  The anti smoking campaigns are helping also.  You can spread information, but there's nothing better than having power act on it.  A billion dollar industry versus it's health concerns.

I could have put the sequence of topics from the documentary in order as how it was broadcasted but this isn't describing Cigarette Wars, though I'll take a few interesting topics from the show and use it as a source.  The documentary illustrates the tough times of trying to raise and sell the  tobacco crop of the Furnish family.  They grow a type of tobacco called Burley which roughly can sell for approximately .60cents to 1.30dollars a pound.  An acre of land of soy or corn can profit $300 but tobacco four to five times that much.  Though like farming any other product, mother nature comes into play, employment depends on profit margins and of course demand.  One point noticed from the documentary was that on interviewing one of the tobacco farmers was that he was asked how he felt about planting a crop of death?  He answers that he separates that idea from feeding his family.  Bloomberg's response on that, is that they should be farming something else.  Thus part of the documentary showed that the family legacy of eating off the crop of death is that they had to diversify their farm.  The furnish family is not only diversifying but going international because in European countries smoking is not only a way of life but that market is good.  American grown tobacco is safer and better but not as cheap.  The 25% on average left over unsold at about 30 to 40 thousand pounds being auctioned for At .60cents to a dollar a pound won't bring in much profit margin to cover expense and labor.

---By 1970 there was already a ban on advertising cigarettes on television or radio.  Movies and print still gleamed it as an appealing thing to do.

---Smoking cigarettes is a good starting point leading into other things like cigars, chewing snuff, bidis, hookahs and once you tap into a drug like marijuana then what else is there?  Cigarettes do not have to necessarily have to be purchased already in boxes for you.  This girl I knew showed me that bags of tobacco can be bought without additives or flavors (more natural) then go get some cigarette paper and roll your own.

---In psychological perspective, smoking was a recreational or ceremonial activity that lead it to being more of a chewing gum or watching baseball past-time.  Just something to do, like during war or the image of being cool in the 1960s when the cool or bad boy image was in style, along with the sleek hair and flashy cars.  The physiological side is that cigarettes contain much more than just tobacco.  The additives to cigarettes cause other health risks.  Smoking thins your blood vessels (as well as arteries) and damages your lungs.  I've heard of people that smoke to relax and it calms them, why, I don't know because smoking makes your heart work faster and reduces the oxygen in the blood.  But in the long run thinning the tubes that move your blood can cause a heart attack and stroke, not to mention possible risk of inhaling carcinogens that can cause cancer.  Is the risk of leisure and image worth the effects, I think choice to do so is worth the risk.

This photo is the first image on my blog self taken that I did not Google.
It's four packs of unused matches from my collection.