Smoking Makes You Rule

As a seasoned smoker of tobacco I have encountered sweeping changes in how and where I indulge my habit. Obviously there was the smoking ban which it turns out was actually quite a good idea. It's a well known fact that only interesting and witty people smoke so all the ban does is separate the conversationally dexterous from the moribund reality show chatting shit heads I wouldn't want to talk to anyway and better still puts a wall between us so I don't have to listen to their inane non-smoking chatter. I'm much happier outside spreading satans foul cloud through my lungs than inside listening to some bastard in a v-neck sweater talk about the cardiovascular advantages of eating nineteen slices of apple garnished in monkey piss whilst simultaneously hanging upside down in a sauna shoving a nutri-grain up your arse or whatever the hell it is that non-smokers talk about. Despite the occasional effects of the elements the smoking ban actually gets my full thumbs up. Thank you healthy people, you did what we were always too unhealthy and inactive to do; separate us into two happy tribes segregated from each other. Happy, amongst our own, having a swell time, exchanging occasional pitying glances through through the pub window. You imagining us inside our smelly charred coffins and us imagining what it must be like to be absolute cunts such as yourselves. Why couldn't we just have stayed there? Was it not enough for you?

Apparently not! It seems that non smokers have decided that not only do we need to be segregated but also that we can't read. We've had written warnings for years but apparently these weren't good enough and thus exactly like a childs dictionary they have placed pictures on packs of cigarettes denoting our grizzly end. Lambert and Butler now stands for lung cancer with a pictures of some grizzled lungs, Sovereign now stands for slow and painful death, with a picture of a corpse unearth a UV light, I assume Marlboro must now stand for 'My god you are killing yourself everyone around you, everyone you have ever loved, your children, your children's children, the children of people you have never even met you viscous murdering raping child molesting, snuff porn directing, crack dealing, racist, shit shoveling, nazi, terrorist.' With a picture of Richard Littlejohn holding a sign saying 'join me.' Actually just that picture alone may make me stop. Still the fact that cigarette packets now see themselves as little cardboard crystal balls envisioning a dark and desperate future for us all frankly fills me with a sense of......dread?......fear?.

....sudden desire to join a gym?......complete and utter inertia? Oh yeah that's right the last one.

This new tactic, patronizing as it may be, might work to some extent. I mean very few people want to see the grizzly effects of long-term smoking and while I'm a smoker there is no way I'm going to enter the smoking debate. I don't enjoy being vilified or patronized for a habit that I know is bad. I also don't enjoy people believing that they have the moral superiority to tell me how to live my life. However if somebody asks me to put out a cigarette when I'm near them then I will. But realistically is a picture of a corpse going to make me stop smoking? No, it really really isn't. It's just going to give me something to scare the bejeebus out of my non smoking friends with.
The next plan is to take cigarettes off display or to hide them in shops. What good is that going to do? Is the idea that we have to play a game of hot and cold with the shopkeeper when we want a pack of fags? 'Oh getting hot, hotter still, nah cold man, hot, hot, hot! There you go that'll be £6' Or are they hoping that them being out of sight will mean people forget what they are? 'Hey remember those things we used to put in our mouths and light and all that cloudy smelly stuff would come out?' 'Yeh' 'What were they called?' I can't see the reasoning here. Bill Hicks once famously said 'you smoke two packs a day? pussy! I go through two lighters a day.' Would Bill have lived his life any other way if he had had a few dark pictures on his pack of cigs? No. In fact I bet he would have found them hilarious.