[Leica] Smoking

[telyt at earthlink.net (Doug Herr)]

Instead of several of us writing about smoking and the tobacco industry, how
about anyone who carese to showing the list how you feel about it?  We have
cameras, ya know...

Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com




on 4/11/04 8:00 PM, Marc James Small at msmall@infionline.net wrote:

> I have been a pipe smoker for 37 years.  I am happy with my vice.  Having
> grown up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the High Days of the steel
> industry, I have absorbed enough soot and smog to kill me already:
> anything I inhale from tobacco fumes has to argue with some REALLY
> cargenogenic stuff to make an impression.
> 
> My family is relatively immune from cancer.  My folks generally die in
> their 80's from terminal nastiness:  my own mother passed five months back
> at age 82, loyal to her box of wine and carton of cigarettes a week up to
> the end  She had a peaceful heart attack and death over a three hour
> time-span.  I can only hope that we all pass on as peacefully as she did.
> (My non-drinking and non-smoking father, by comparison, had a stroke and
> lingered on for 11 months in a comatose state, something his worst enemies
> would probably not have wished on him, though Dad was capable of making
> some REAL enemies.)
> 
> In the end, genetics does more that anything else in determining longevity
> and, even then, lifespan is a crapshoot.  (I am enough of a Christian not
> to fear death but, then, I am enough of a Christian to understand the
> virtues of having that finest advocate of all time on my side in explaining
> my sins in the hereafter!)  Scions of even the longest-lived of families
> can die young for no explicable reason -- my own sister died of cancer at
> age 31 some 29 years back.  Those whose family members die young can live
> long.  Still, genetics seem to count for more than anything else.
> 
> Secondary smoke has been shown to not be a real issue save for extreme
> conditions:  it can be shown, for instance, that twenty working years of
> exposure to a co-worker smoking constantly and sitting within ten feet may
> add to the risk of lung cancer but, other than this, the issue is of no
> merit and the Federal Courts readily disposed of the rather dubious EPA
> study of the early 1990's.
> 
> At its heart, objections to smoking by the majority who are non-smokers are
> simply a matter of style.  Non-smokers do not want to inhale tobacco while
> in public places nor do they wish to do so while in restaurants.  So be it,
> and this is a reasonable request.  But the merchant is torn in two:  the
> majority of those who populate bars are smokers, while the majority of
> diners are not.  In the end, the owners have sought an absolute ban by the
> government so that they are not forced to make decisions which might prove
> unpopular.
> 
> Obviously, accomodations have to be made.  When I am around non-smokers, I
> do not smoke -- in truth, the couple with whom my wife and I are most
> likely to go out with are non-smokers and I accede to the majority rules
> without a problem.  When I have a visitor who is a non-smoker, I work with
> them for mutual comfort.  Common courtesy, we call it in these hustings.
> 
> And do not forget the salutary effect of nicotine:  those of you who are
> former smokers will recall the effect you first felt when you lit up that
> first smoke in the morning.  Inhaling nicotine provides a burst of
> approximately ten IQ points to the average citizen.  Smokers can handle
> complex problems more readily than non-smokers as a result.
> 
> In my office, there are two rules of decorum:
> 
> First, do not throw your cigarette or cigar butts on the floor.  The
> ashtrays are there for a reason.
> 
> Second, please remove your hat on entering this office.
> 
> I have far more trouble enforcing the second than I do the first.  I have
> lost one (1) client over twenty-five years because I allowed smoking in my
> office, and so be it.  I offer my legal abilities for sale, not my
> lifestyle choices.  (The small and medium-sized law firms in this area of
> western Virginia are generally non-smoking:  the large firms all allow
> smoking as their clients, the executives of companies, generally smoke.
> Again, go figure.)
> 
> I will die of something, someday.  I am not going to greet death willingly
> but there is a time and place when I shall pack it in and go on to the
> hereafter.  If the current pleasure of smoking brings me to a briefer end
> than a more unhappy existence here would bring, then, so be it:  I am going
> to die someday and whether it be today or tomorrow or in fifty years, there
> will come a point at whcih I am to die.  I am 54 at the present and can
> accept death today, though there are many things I have yet to do -- those
> books on Voigtl?nder, Kilfitt, and Novoflex remain unwritten! -- but others
> can fill in the gaps if my time comes soon.  If not, I intend to remain
> productive until that point.
> 
> And, yes, as a smoker of Latakia blends, I, too, find most cigarette odors
> blandly offensive.  The stuff I smoke clears out entire city blocks and
> engenders EPA Red Alerts.
> 
> Marc
> 
> msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
> 
> 
> 
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