Society works a little bit like high school. It supports the popular, pretty people, rewards sameness and conformity above subversiveness and originality, and -- like any proper high school -- it needs someone to pick on.
We like to take some group, some minority from within our own ranks, and lecture them about something, anything we can find, that we disapprove of. In Victorian times, it was moral depravity. In the first half of the 20th century, it was failure to adequately support the cause of one's country or the war effort (and some would argue that it still is). Today, the boogeyman is smoking.
I've stood back and watched smoking evolve from an accepted habit, to a minority habit, to a "dirty habit" and, finally, to a cause against which people will crusade with all the anger and energy of the most staunch anti-abortion activist. I've seen people in the non-smoking sections of restaurants get up, walk OVER to the smoking section and start berating the people who are quietly sitting there and smoking for having the NERVE to dare to smoke anywhere where other human beings have ever existed. And what's worse, these poor, browbeaten smokers usually curl up and mutter their usual mantra of, "Oh, suppose you're right."
I've heard professors claim they would ban all smoking of any kind anywhere, had they the power. I've heard people compare smoking to abortion, hard drugs, rape, assault and murder. It wasn't always this way, was it? Remember back in the early '80S, even, when smoking was still just something people did? Characters in movies didn't have to be rogues or action-adventure hardcases to smoke. Remember that? So what changed? Majority view. It's OK to pick on smokers now. People will get behind you to support you. Your friends will cite studies which show that smoking kills everyone in a 30-mile range of you. And so on.
The way things are going, it won't be long before most major cities pass laws banning all smoking in and around the greater metropolitan area. After that, it's only a matter of time until tobacco becomes illegal. That might sound ridiculous, but remember, we tried something like it once before with Prohibition. Where Prohibition failed -- try outlawing a substance that can be made from anything containing sugar -- I can see a ban on tobacco succeeding. No smokers. Anywhere. Some of you are smiling at the idea.
I know some of you out there in Newspaperland are just as adamant as I've suggested and would like to stamp out smoking forever and always, and the majority of the rest of you are probably willing to go along with it. Therefore, I say to the minority -- the smokers of cigarettes, pipes and cigars -- keep your eyes open. You've been warned.
Write to Jonathan at
tenement_cellar@msn.com
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