Less fear, more smoke

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat Brad Wallace

However, I'm turned away from the collapse of society and freedom to more important issues, like smoking. Mine is a lurid tale, of a 19-year-old Mormon turning into a walking advertisement for atheism and Camels.

However, I'm far from unique, as one may only need to look around the UA campus to see smokers coughing on our thick nicotinic saliva, our hands trembling as we light another cigarette. There are thousands of us now, and just about half of us will live to 60.

It's a habit that is simply absurd to justify, even to myself. Just considering safety and health issues, smoking rates just above drinking Red Dye Number 2 and just below getting several dozen X-rays a day. Despite recent gains in social acceptability, smoking certainly isn't considered "highly appealing" by members of the opposite sex. Hell, it's even expensive, draining money that I would otherwise spend on enriching and beneficial habits, like drinking and clubbing.

I have another reason to feel hypocritical about my flourishing addiction to death: During the summers, I've worked at camps for children with cancer. There's nothing like spending a day surrounded by the horror of children dying without cause, itching for 10 p.m. when I could sneak into the forest and light a few smokes.

Believe you me, there's nothing like the crushing guilt and remorse of playing Frisbee with chemotherapy patients with shaking, nicotine-stained fingers.

Do cigarettes contain some hideous additive that drains the human capacity to understand statistics? Am I just a monster, addicted beyond reason to a dangerous chemical? Did that cute Joe Camel cartoon subvert all of my desire to see grandchildren? Maybe.

The truth of the issue is that smoking is both an easy way to belong to a tortured minority and a very stupid sort of rebellion. In those wheezing clusters outside of buildings across campus, the topic of conversation is usually either, "I'm quitting really soon," or, "I wish those damned non-smokers would let us smoke in class." It's a blast to feel part of a misunderstood sub-population. I was going to go with either Judaism or smoking, but ultimately, smoking was just more convenient.

Our society is absolutely dedicated, dare I say driven, to squeeze every last day of possible life expectancy from the human body. Whether it's antibiotics or aromatherapy, we are a people driven to live as long as possible, above all else. Those people who push their bodies to exhaustion and eat the caloric minimum to stay breathing are admired as examples of "healthy living." It is a slap to our collective ideal to light a cigarette, to admit that immediate pleasure can outweigh an optimized life span.

French essayist Michael Montaigne said, "Philosophy is learning to die." Our culture utterly rejects this sort of acceptance of death and demands that every citizen makes their best effort to see 80. Failure to comply results in increased insurance premiums, loss of privileges (tried smoking in California lately?) and being forced to sit through Arizona's "Tobacco: A Tooth-Staining Ignore Arizona's Dismal Education Statistics Worry About Teen Smoking Instead Cancer Causing Habit."

Smoking kills 470,000 Americans every year, which although horrible, amounts to a small fraction of a single percent of our population. Smoking is an unhealthy public nuisance to be sure, but how does it compare to the endemic racism of our nation or our lagging public education programs? Perhaps we should stop grilling Joe Camel in the courts and start thinking about more sweeping issues that are more deserving of public outcry from smokers and non-smokers alike.

Brad Wallace is a molecular and cellular biology and creative writing senior. His column, Handful of Dust, appears every Tuesday.