As much of a vehement non-smoker as I am, I can’t believe I’m put in the position of defending a tobacco company . . . but I try to be a person of principle, and I believe in individual responsibility.
I am absolutely aghast that a jury has awarded a lifelong smoker $3 billion – $3 billion – for his own stupidity. I can only hope that this award comes way, way down on appeal.
This moron started smoking in 1957, when he was 13. Seven years later, the Surgeon General’s Warning began appearing on cigarette packs. Did he stop? Hell, no. He smoked at least 2 packs a day for the next 40 years. And it’s not as if the dangers of smoking only popped, fully-formed, into existence in 1964. People were well aware of the health risks for several decades before that.
And what does he get for this stupidity, this exercise in incredibly poor judgement? Well, for one thing, he got lung cancer, which I’m truly sorry for – I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but I do recognize that it often happens because of activities fully within one’s control. I took on a slightly increased risk of prostate cancer when I got a vasectomy, but I weighed the risk and took it. But he also go $3 billion for this stupidity.
I am sick and tired of seeing smokers, who make the decision to smoke even in the fact of clear and obvious health risks, rewarded for this goddamned bad judgement. I want my $3 billion. I had parents who both smoked until I was 15 years old, and they breathed that shit in my face all the time. Both of my maternal grandparents smoked. The aunt and uncle who I saw most frequently both smoked. My sister started when she was 12. I was surrounded by a cloud of this foul crap for half of my life.
And yet, againt all the odds, I never started. Never even tried. For all I know, a cigarette provides a feeling ten thousand times greater than the best orgasm you can conceive of, but I’ll never know, because I’m never going to stick one of the foul things in my mouth. Throughout my life, I’ve had to put up with the morons who smoke in the no-smoking sections. I’ve had to empty my parents’ filthy ashtrays. I’ve had to wash dishes and deal with the disgusting pigs who butt them out in their food, for chrissakes. I’ve had to come home from gigs so inundated and permeated by that smell that I have to shower and wash my clothes before I puke. I’ve had to wade through the seas of butts left by impolite smokers all over the streets, the sidewalks, the Metro stations, and everywhere else.
So, for all this inconvenience, I’ll take my $3 billion now, thanks. Or not – whatever. But stop rewarding people for their own bad judgement. Don’t stop trying to curb tobacco use; by all means, create a market in which the social undesirability and expense of smoking far outweighs the benefit. But this other crap has to stop.