You know what I like? I like it when something appears on the news or in the papers saying that yet another area of society will be declared smoke free. The best part of it is the great moral outrage provoked in the smokers I know. They get themselves all worked up, and I'm sure some of the emphatic oratories about smokers rights that they embark on would be quite stirring if they didn't lose their breath, dissolve in hacking coughs and turn purple halfway through these inspirational monologues.

They seem to think that it is an infringement on their rights and freedoms to not be allowed to light up in certain areas, and to have the tax on cigarettes raised higher and higher every year. You wouldn't believe the amount of wheezing, gasping rants I had to listen to around the time they were proposing banning smoking in all outdoor locations.

This is seen as a violation of their rights for one simple reason - What smokers do to their own bodies is their own business. It's their choice and shouldn't be infringed upon by others.

I agree with this completely, except for the one minor flaw in the logic - It doesn't apply to them.

I believe that whatever you choose to do to your own body is your business, no-one else’s. The one small problem with this as it relates to you vile addicts is - You're not only doing it to your body.

I mean, sure, you're getting the worst of it, but every time you exhale, I have to breathe that poisonous shite.

Now, you could argue that the dangers of second hand smoke have been exaggerated, and maybe you'd be right. But even if second hand smoke doesn't cause cancer (which it does) then at the very least, it smells really bad and makes it difficult to breathe.

I'm not against smoking for what it does to the smoker. If they want to die wretched, cancerous deaths, that's their party - I hope they have fun. I'm against it for a much more noble reason - What it does to me.

Sure, when you have that smog in your lungs, everything smells like it, but I'm used to what passes for oxygen. After some gatherings at my flat, I can't hang out in the living room for half of the next day, because breathing the stale rancid "air" in there simply isn't an option...

And yet, smokers seem completely oblivious of this. I still remember a conversation between two of my flatmates a while back - one a chain smoker, the other a serious asthmatic.

"Have you checked the mail recently?" "Nope. Expecting something?" "Yeah, a big package. It's pretty important - Steroids to help with my asthma, because I really haven't been able to breathe for a month or two." "Oh yeah?" (long, thoughtful pause) "But all of the smoking around here doesn't affect that, does it?"

They actually seem to believe that no one else if affected by their habit.

We are. We need to breathe, and you're not helping.

Recently, an acquaintance of the above mentioned carcinogen factory was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I actually had to leave the flat, because I couldn't bear to listen to his shell-shocked disbelief that it could happen to a person who only smoked a pack a day. He spent an hour wondering aloud what could have caused the lung cancer - asserting that yes, she had chain-smoked for decades, but of course there was no way there could be a connection.

You think I'm making this up, don't you?

In terms of the argument "It's my body, so it's my choice" that's why I think you should be allowed to choose whether or not you want to take heroin or ecstasy or any number of hallucinogenics. Because you inject them or swallow them, and you don't get any of them in my lungs. I occasionally have trouble breathing in my own flat. However, when any given number of flatmates are bollocksed on a bit of the old classes A through C, they do very little but stay up all night. And so long as they remember to adhere to the "No talking to Jack unless there's some sort of fire" rule, I don't care how much sleep they lose.

It's simple - When you smoke, you are putting poison into your system. Yay you. However, enough of it escapes to affect me, and you have no right to do that.

And just while I have your attention - I've been reading in the papers on and off for a while now about tobacco companies having to pay out millions to people who, shock horror, got cancer from cigarettes.

That's what cigarettes do to you, jackass - they give you cancer. It even says that on the packets - Warning, smoking causes cancer.

As little as I like it, smoking is legal, which means if you chose to do it, you can. You do so, though, in full knowledge of the dangers involved. When you buy a packet of cigarettes, it says on the label that they are harmful, and it is a fact taken for granted by even the smallest of children. If you smoke, you will get cancer. It's your fault, and you knew the consequences at the outset.

It's no ones fault but your own. Peer pressure and media saturation be damned, no one forced you to start smoking at gunpoint. It is your fault that you have cancer, so shut the fuck up, stop blaming everyone else, and just die in the horror that you brought upon yourself.

Apathy Jack

19/5/02