At
the hostel, I met a British man named Sam who was rolling a cigarette. His job at a rental car service was
stressful, and the stress visibly infiltrated the rest of his life. He appeared very bitter and resentful toward
Americans who generally don’t read the insurance claim forms and are surprised
when they must fork over cash after totaling a car that doesn’t belong to
them. I decided not to pursue this topic
and instead focused on the work of his fingers. I asked him why smoking
cigarettes seemed to be the national sport in England.
“Before
2006, you could smoke everywhere:
restaurants, clubs, even airplanes,” Sam said. “It’s very popular here and always has
been. I think a few years ago, like,
seventy percent of people who could smoke smoked.”
Sam
exaggerated a little, but a lot of people used to smoke in England. In 1974, 51% of men and 41% of women smoked
cigarettes, almost half of the population.
Nowadays, roughly one-sixth of the English suck on cancer-sticks. The average English smoker goes through 750
cigarettes per year, compared to an American smoker puffing on just over a
thousand.
In
2012 census, the national smoking rate in the United States dropped significantly
since 1965, when 42% of adults smoked compared to today’s number of 21%. Poorer areas like rural Kentucky and West
Virginia show a smaller decline. I might smoke, too, if I lived in Kentucky and had limited cultural resources. There are places in America where walking around Wal-Mart is considered fun because there is nothing else to do for the unimaginative mind.
In more
populated, urban areas such as New York City, D.C., Miami, and southern California,
smoking rates are depleting much faster, probably because they have more
options for entertainment and stimulation.
Residents in popular locations may also be more health conscious due to the
sex appeal associated with areas such as Miami Beach or Los Angeles.
My
theory is that working-class people smoke not only to escape the stress of the
job, but to keep themselves busy.
Smoking is a distraction from undesirable tasks and an oral
fixation. A disciplined mind will use
free time to improve health and status through self-education or exercise. A determined person with long-time goals should
realize that smoking hinders one’s health and finances, and ultimately is a
horrible idea if you want to make progress.
But failures, dissatisfaction, or lack of opportunity could motivate a person
to pick up the self-destructive habit.
This is evident in the extremely high rates of smoking in countries like
Greece, whose economy crumbled after the worldwide recession in 2008.
Several
actors in the Golden Age of Hollywood were constantly followed by gray
plumes. The Don Drapers of the fifties
added even more allure. But the habit is
no longer associated with beauty, sophistication, or success. Smoking is linked with poverty, depression,
and lack of cultural enlightenment.
As
I watched Sam sprinkle tobacco onto white paper and roll that into a tube, I wondered
if those stupid and nagging car-renters poked too many holes in his happiness,
and now he has to fill in those gaping wounds with cigarettes. He said he preferred the taste of pure
tobacco, and he didn’t have to smoke too many to achieve the desired
effect. On his pack of tobacco, there is
a giant label that says SMOKING KILLS, and I contemplated what effect he was
trying to find.
Sam
justified his habit by claiming that smoking didn’t kill as many people as
alcohol did. In my mind, the numbers
didn’t matter; death was a likely possibility.
Hippos in the wild kill more people each year than alligators do, but
that doesn’t motivate me to jump into a swamp full of gators.
I
thought he needed to find another hobby.
Maybe if he could revel in the satisfaction of a hard day’s work, he
wouldn’t need to smoke. If literature
satiated his curiosity, he could replace cigarettes with books. If he could truly love a woman rather than
look upon her with a possessive gaze, he would have no emptiness that needed to
be filled.
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