Screamin' Mimi !

I just don't get it: When you see people smoking, does it make you want to SCREAM "How stupid ARE you?!?!" My mother died young ... alcoholism and cigarettes did her in at the age of 38, ending up with emphysema, bronchitis, cirrhosis of the liver and worse... I was fortunate enough to get a wonderful stepmother but then she too died before her time as a lifelong smoker who ended up with COPD, emphysema, etc. She spent the last two years of her life basically slowly suffocating to death while awake as her ability to breathe lessened and lessened. Hundreds of panic attacks and trips to the emergency room, more and more frequently until she too was gone... Along came the next stepmother, and happily, turned out to be a healthnik who not only keeps herself in good condition but rides herd on my father to keep him on his game, thereby adding no doubt another decade or two to his life.

The point of this tirade is to ask anyone reading this, to help me understand HOW reasonably intelligent people can still pick up a cigarette and inhale that poison into their lungs, seeing the havoc it wreaks on people all around them... people tugging along their "portable" oxygen tanks with tubes in their noses, people sitting on buses or in public places with disgusting wet and plegmy gacking coughs, people with stained fingers and yellow teeth, bad breath, and homes/cars that smell so bad you wonder how they can stand it? Then there are our coworkers: with their hair and clothes reeking of the stink of smoking getting into the elevator on the job after having their "fix" on their break...

On the other hand, we have the most intrusive government in history, forcing us to do myriad things 'for our own good' from wearing seat belts, recycling, contributing to social security and countless other government mandated behaviors required by law, and YET they allow cigarettes to be packaged and sold (and taxed of course) knowing definitively that these products sicken and kill. Is this some sort of devious "culling of the herd" ?

Studies abound about how smokers have higher absenteeism and lower productivity in the workplace, how their exponentially multiplying illnesses as they age tax the health care system and consequently DRIVE UP THE COST of health insurance for the rest of the population. And still, these insidious ciggies are up there on the shelf to be bought in every imaginable location from convenience stores to the grocery stores, and parents are passing along their ADDICTION to their children and family members through second-hand smoke.

I just don't get it... Do you?