Smoke 'em if you've got 'em

I remember watching old black & white movies, noir stuff maybe, from the 40s.  Back then practically everybody smoked.  And still, when someone was about to light up, they'd say, "Mind if I smoke?"

Now, even though the tobacco companies have had to pay MILLIONS to people for hiding the ill effects of cigarette smoke (in some cases even seeming to promote smoking as a health aid) there are still lots and lots of smokers.  And in compliance with the rage of the age, they all feel entitled to smoke.  They have a right to smoke.  Ok.  I don't guess I disagree...to a point.  Smokers have a right to smoke, right up to the point where it infringes on someone else's right to breathe.

Seem fair?  My mother never smoked a cigarette in her life, but guess what?  She has COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is what killed her mother.  My mother lived in houses with smokers her entire life.  I grew up with cigarette smoke everywhere I went.  It was Kentucky.  Tobacco, whiskey and horses are kind of their thing.

Somehow, I managed to not become addicted to smoking.  Thank God.

I've watched people try to quit.  It's hard as hell. 

I got a glimpse into how hard once when I had a patient who used to come to the ER all the time with shooter's abscesses or overdoses.  IV heroin user.  I didn't see her for a couple years, and because she had been a rather frequent flyer, I noticed.  We sort of assumed she'd probably OD'd.   Then, one day, a very well dressed, nice-looking woman came to the ER for a cut on her hand.  She'd been making breakfast and trying to slice something, sliced herself instead.  At one point while caring for her, she said, "You don't remember me, do you?"  Then I realized...it was the junkie.  But she wasn't anymore.  She had been college educated when she got hooked on IV drugs, now she was off drugs, had a great job and was making a life for herself.  A true success story.  But, she told me, even though she'd been able to get off heroin, she could not quit smoking.



So, I understand what a grip cigarettes can have on people.


...but, why do they seem to make some people into assholes?

Why is it, that when patronizing a facility, such as a restaurant, that has a no smoking policy, smokers will then gather in hordes immediately outside the door to said facilities so that everyone who wants to go in or out is forced to walk through a fog of cigarette smoke?  Do I get to sue these people?   I mean, no one forced  anyone to spend their money on cigarettes, people chose to do that, but they were able to hold cigarette companies liable for the outcomes of their own decisions.  Now that there is no doubt in anyone's minds and there have been warning labels on cigarettes for 50 flippin' years, who is responsible? 

NOW can we hold the individuals responsible who will spend money on cigarettes even when their houses foreclose for lack of money?

And then there are coworkers who will take break after break after break to go smoke -- and want/expect me to cover their patients.  A nurse whom I have always liked just became my idol, because she said out loud to another nurse, a smoker, what I've wanted to say for years and will now always say, "I will not cover your patients while you go smoke.  Put a nicotine patch on and get back to work."  There is nowhere on hospital property, no hospital in this country anymore, really, where smoking is allowed.  So, suck it up, buttercup. 

And who do I hold responsible when I can't catch my breath from coughing after having to walk past or through someone else's cigarette smoke?

And, if I dare try to politely ask someone to please, at least move away from the door so that I can try to avoid the poisonous fog they're spewing, I get responses like, "I can smoke if I want." Don't I get an opportunity to NOT smoke if I want????

Why be a jerk?  If you want to suffocate slowly over time, mazel tov, but I have the right to breathe.  That one is actually in the constitution.  I never saw the "right to smoke" amendment.