We Were Marlboro Men Once

Dallas writer Zac Crain's new piece about his struggle to quit smoking is a great piece of writing, but what makes it especially interesting is his recounting of the history of smoking culture in Dallas. I imagine what he found about Dallas is true of other places too. Julie and I have very few friends who smoke. When I was growing up, most of my parents' friends smoked (my folks still do; Marlboro Reds; lots of 'em). It was always smoky in our house. It was smoky in most everybody's house. I remember the last car trip I took with my family. I was 15, and we drove all the way to northern Illinois to visit family friends. My parents rolled their windows down an itty-bitty bit when they'd light up (wouldn't want to let the cool air from the a/c out), and handed my sister and me surgical masks. Non-smokers were thought of as eccentric as best (about like vegetarians today), and obnoxious busybodies at worst, no matter how mildly they complained about smoke.

Well, that's how I remember it, anyway. So while there's a small libertarian part of me that hates smoking bans, mostly I don't care. I really don't. I prefer the cultural shift against smoking that we're now living through. I grew up with the opposite thing. This is incomparably better, at least for non-smokers. But you know, a friend who quit smoking once told me that he had no idea how bad it was for non-smokers until he'd been off the smokes for a while. From that I learned that smokers probably genuinely don't realize how nasty it makes the air smell, and how difficult secondhand smoke makes breathing for non-smokers. When I was a kid, my mom and dad had been smoking so heavily for so long that they probably thought my complaining about it (I had serious bronchial problems as a child) was just whining about no big deal.

Anyway, Crain's piece is really good. Excerpt:

You probably don’t need me to tell you this, since I am neither a doctor nor a scientist nor, as far as you know, your father. But I will anyway. If you don’t want to die of lung cancer or heart disease or emphysema or some other malady that kills you slowly but oh so surely—and I suspect that describes the vast majority of you—don’t start smoking. Cigarettes are bad. Beyond blackening your lungs, they also yellow your fingers, stain your teeth brown, and, over time, turn your skin an unsightly shade of gray. They make your clothes smell awful. They absolutely ruin your breath. They take valuable time out of your day and, as I mentioned before, years off your life. There is almost nothing at all to recommend them.

Except for one thing: smoking is awesome.

Cigarettes are bad for you. But the actual physical act of smoking? It’s the best. Seriously. Don’t let anyone tell you different.