Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed for September 20, 2024

Ex smoker here, quit in 2000 after starting at 17…smoking did me no favors…WOW that is 43 years. I am lucky! I was heavily wounded and replaced my uppers 2 days ago

Yes, Opus, all smokers are dinnks.

Jesse Helms, that is a name I have not hard for ages. That dude was indeed a piece of work! Helms opposed the right to have an abortion, civil rights, disability rights, environmentalism, gay rights, affirmative action among other progressive initiatives. Jesse was one of the first Dixiecrats to flip to the repubbas in 1970 or so….. He and his buddy Strom Thurmond were early front runners of the alt-right along with Barry Gold-H2O, even before Teflon Ron……. Strom and Jesse would very likely be all in for MAGA today in 2024!

That means you have to help save him from himself!

This was the battleground site back then with many of the same mentalities of today, who just finished arguing with logic for about 10 years that global warming was not occurring.

The smoking-cancer link deniers have moved on to climate science now. All you need is one person with a degree who is good for a hot take on social media.

The Pro-Smoking Forces really need an aggressive recruitment campaign. They are losing members at an alarming rate…

In the words of the comedic giant, Chandler Bing : The bottom line is smoking is cool, and you know it!

(Sadly, it came to a point where my wallet informed me that rent and fuel were more important than smokes, so I had to give up my filter-tipped little buddies.)

In that case, eat sh&t. 10 billion flies can’t be all wrong

Back in the day a ‘heavy smoker’ was 3 or more packs of 20 cigarettes per day. I had an uncle who smoked 4 packs a day. I had a college professor who was a chain smoker, lighting the next cigarette with the last, alternating between regular and menthol. You could smoke in the classroom then. Today they consider 1 pack a day to be a heavy smoker. In 1970 at the Fort Campbell PX cigarettes were $1.50 a carton, 15¢ a pack. Back home they were about 50¢ a pack. Today cigarettes are around $10 a pack. Imagine my uncle spending $40 a day on cigarettes, That should be enough to make anyone quit.

Smoking is an addiction, and it is hard for people to quit. I am glad that I never started. My sister smoked as a teenager, then stopped for years when she got married and had children. She started again during the divorce and hasn’t stopped. You can’t reason with her. She worked as an x-ray tech and knows all about the health risks. I keep my mouth shut because if her kids and grandchildren aren’t enough motivation then nothing I say will help .

Anti-smoking crusaders have/had the grace to not hide the raw data — one can find the total population; the estimated percentage and number of how many of those smoke; the number of deaths attributed to tobacco usage yearly, and from that do one’s own calculation of how dangerous tobacco is. P.S., I smoked cigars for 40+ years, and quit 13 years ago.

Many many years ago, my best friend told me she was quitting smoking. A few days later I called her and said I was going to stop at a grocery store to get some snacks, and then head to her place to hang out. And I asked was there anything she wanted me to get for her.

And she said, “Yes. Cigarettes.”

Dead silence on my part for several seconds. Then I replied, gently, “You know why I can’t do that.”

And she understood. She was wanting to quit, and now she was asking me to sabotage that. We did stay friends, but I don’t think she quit at that time.

“Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette

Puff puff puff

And if you smoke yourself to death

Tell St Peter at the Golden Gate

That you hate to make him wait

But you just got to have another cigarette"