Smoking is addictive, and I would like to see some real help and support for people who want to quit. We give support to every other vice and don’t demonize the people along the way. People use alcohol as an excuse for everything these days—think of all the celebrities who screw up, enter rehab, emerge clean, and America cheers. Why not have that support for smokers who want to quit? If we can send people to the moon and map the humane genome, surely we can find a way to help people quit smoking.
In the meantime, all the judgmental non-smokers need to remember something—some people don’t want to quit. I don’t. I very much enjoy my cigarette at the end of the day. I have quit when I wanted to, and I have started again when I wanted to. I like to smoke, and I have every right to smoke and to not be treated like I am the devil for doing so.
You need to remember something else too—you don’t know what people do when they are not around you. It’s possible that the guy you met at the bar last night smokes, and it’s possible that you have coworkers that smoke. It’s possible you like a movie written by a smoker and it’s possible that your kid might smoke. With everything else, people pause before they speak, for fear of offending someone, but people really let loose about their anti-smoking beliefs, and I am here to say that it’s not OK to behave that way.
Smokers are not evil, and even if you hate the sin, you should never hate the sinner. Next time, think before you speak—smokers have every right to make their own choices, just like you do. There are millions of kind, talented, giving, and productive citizens who smoke—what makes you think you are in a position to judge anyone else?
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