Smoking Is Bad For You, and Other Revelations

Growing up, I always loathed the smell of cigarette smoke. I watched my grandmother smoke pack after pack, and found myself escaping to the far reaches of her house just to escape the smell of Pal Malls in the morning. I told her about every anti-smoking, stop-smoking product or message that crossed my path. Cigarrest! Nicorette! One of those ashtrays that suck the smoke away--anything that would make her reject this repugnant lifestyle.

I would nag her about this habit when I was younger, because the anti-tobacco campaigns worked for me then. I was on the Students Taking A Right Stand (STARS) [against drugs, alcohol and tobacco] planning committee in high school, my friends and I would make fun of the smokers at concerts we went to, and I even didn't associate myself with people that smoked in the parking lot after school.

Then, college happened. I began to associate myself with people I admired who, in some cases, happened to be smokers. I started studying art, and those late nights in the studio really begged for something to distract me, something to get me outside. I felt a little sorry for the girls I saw smoking outside on the dorm steps when it was 20 degrees and sleet was falling, but I also started to feel a little intrigued with the idea of escape: a kind of forced thought-break, a time to gather yourself and reflect on life. At least this is how smoking looked to me from afar.

I made the mistake of listening to a friend of mine tell me I have an "addictive personality" when we were discussing tobacco once, which granted me a kind of permission to make the decision to smoke. I was telling him about a trip to Europe I took after I graduated High School in '97, and how I remember having the time of my life on that trip where I just-so-happened to have smoked my first cigarette. In a little piazza in Italy, while all my traveling companions were getting drunk on sangria, the only way I could participate in the vice somewhat was to smoke. As a Baha'i, drinking was out of the question--there was no way you could hold me down and pour sangria down my throat--but you might be able to convince me to hold a cigarette. After all, in Paris, all the fashionistas were doing it. In Spain, all the beautiful dark-haired women were smoking. In Italy, to be seen without a cigarette or a drink in hand just looks strange. I loved the romanticized memory and bought into it, thus starting a struggle I would continue with for years.

There have been some valiant and worthy efforts by the world to save people like me who are tempted by tobacco, like the Truth campaign. Truth is composed of talented, passionate young people willing to stick their necks out (risking incarceration, gaining a reputation for tasteless advertising, and in general, creating bad karma during the Super Bowl) and take a risk to get people to see what a deadly poison tobacco can be. By piling thousands of weighed body bags outside of a leading tobacco company, flying banners behind planes shouting the ingredients of a cigarette (like carbon monoxide), or by prank calling Phillip Morris on the radio, letting them know about your collection of dog pee they can use in their cigarettes if they want it--they have managed to make an impressive statement of the seriousness of smoking and its health implications. They have a visually impressive, educational website, great print ads, celebrity endorsements (like Moby), creative commercials--and to a young mind, this speaks volumes. It's not the public service announcement of your childhood: these are youth trying to save youth. They are doing it through the media, the very tool that is used to crowbar our morals and values away: this is strategy to our generation.

It is just this that brings me back to cigarettes. Every time I convince myself that smoking is the vilest thing ever, I open a Bazaar magazine and see Kate Moss, the supermodel, looking glamorous with a cigarette in her hand. I love old movies, and vintage films are famous for the glamour--and they are riddled with famous names holding stout unfiltered Lucky Strikes, spouting classy lines which would become famous milestones in the industry. The idea of a smoky jazz club on a Saturday night, the pleasure that comes from smoking in an outdoor cafe on a summer evening, the first cigarette in the morning, the cigarette after a big meal: these situations and opportunities escalate and multiply like rabbits.

Because I wanted to live that ideal lifestyle, smoking turned out to be something that I wanted all the time. I chain-smoked one after the other with my friends in the outdoor cafes, I took 3am smoke breaks from the computer lab at school, I watched Technicolor films and then would pretend I was as glamorous as Lauren Bacall by going out on the back porch for a Parliament after watching "How to Marry a Millionaire." It was becoming too familiar. And more importantly, I was ignoring the fact that cigarettes are killers, and I was killing myself because I wanted something I could only hope to attain: the ideal lifestyle, immortal beauty, happiness, and infallibility.

What I was never cognizant of was that most of those movie stars died of something other than old age, modern fashionistas are hospitalized for eating disorders and substance abuse all the time, and glamour is relative: a movie star that looked great at 20 might not look so great at 50, and a singer that smokes is not going to sound the same in 30 years.

I would justify it by telling myself I am young, I'll quit soon and still be healthy enough to get over it without any permanent health risks. My grandmother smoked for 60 years (she finally did quit) and she's still okay, right? She only makes that loud wheezing noise when she's awake. Her brother died of lung cancer and one of her sisters died recently wielding an oxygen tank, but that's only because they smoked forever, right? Emphysema only grips the older generation, I still have time.

The Baha'i Writings even say, "…smoking tobacco, which is dirty, smelly, offensive - an evil habit, and one the harmfulness of which gradually becometh apparent to all. Every qualified physician hath ruled - and this hath also been proven by tests - that one of the components of tobacco is a deadly poison, and that the smoker is vulnerable to many and various diseases. This is why smoking hath been plainly set forth as repugnant from the standpoint of hygiene" (Selections From the Writings of `Abdu'l-Baha, pps 147-148). While not forbidden to Bahá'ís, smoking is obviously not favored as a clean habit-and cleanliness is definitely a favorable trait.

Further, `Abdu'l-Baha goes on to say, "My meaning is that in the sight of God, smoking tobacco is deprecated, abhorrent, filthy in the extreme; and, albeit by degrees, highly injurious to health. It is also a waste of money and time, and maketh the user a prey to a noxious addiction. To those who stand firm in the Covenant, this habit is therefore censured both by reason and experience, and renouncing it will bring relief and peace of mind to all men. Furthermore, this will make it possible to have a fresh mouth and unstained fingers, and hair that is free of a foul and repellent smell. On receipt of this missive, the friends will surely, by whatever means and even over a period of time, forsake this pernicious habit. Such is my hope" (p 148).

The other night I was thinking about these things and debating starting or stopping, good or bad, and I wondered what is it exactly that makes me want to put this "deadly poison" in my body over and over? I wake up in the morning with my lungs feeling heavy with fluid like I am getting a cold, but it isn't that; it's the concert I went to the other night and all the smoke there, and the fact that I myself smoked a couple. Why do I do these things in my solidarity, with no one to admire how cool I am while I'm doing it? Why also, do I feel guilty when smoking on my way to work in the morning with local school kids passing by me, looking up at me, walking past me in packs? Why do I hate the taste, hate the health implications, hate the smell in my apartment or on my breath? Why do I hate remembering the cigarette smell in my grandmother's living room? Why do I justify this habit in light of the negative implications in the Baha'i Writings? Why, after all of these negative things, do I continue to support this addictive, disgusting, expensive product?

That night as I lit up, I thought about the dozens of times I stood in that exact place on my porch doing the exact same thing. I asked myself, am I really enjoying this? It took me a long minute to come up with an honest answer, and it was no. I kept thinking over and over about the Truth ads and the words `Abdu'l-Baha spoke against tobacco. The minuses outweigh the plusses infinitesimally, and even more than all of these things, I felt depressed when I would finish a cigarette. Ultimately, I wasn't achieving that ideal status, the one promised to me by the cigarette ads and Technicolor movies and Kate Moss.

So before I could debate it after another drag and another, I put out that cigarette in the fresh snow on my porch. I put it out, and with satisfaction I proceeded to write in the light layer of snow, "SMOKING IS BAD FOR YOU," with the stub itself. Giddily, I grabbed my camera, adjusted the flash, and took a photo to document the experience. Laughing in celebration of my victory, I learned a valuable lesson about myself, and now I have the photo to document the proof. Here's to the future challenges.

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