Cigarettes and Tobacco News

Sep 17, 2006 -- Warning: This column is not for anyone under the age of 18; anyone who suffers from being too “PC;” or anyone who lives righteously by “morals.” I want to declare that cigarettes make you look cool, but only if you know how to smoke in the sexiest way possible. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death, and that the death toll caused by tobacco-related products is at nearly five million people a year. By the year 2020, the number of deaths will double to ten million a year if the current smoking patterns continue.

But, to a smoker, do statistics matter, or does that warm, oakey, satisfaction in your mouth and throat matter more?

Besides the taste, cigarettes and smoke rings provide an air of mystery. Why would one smoke if he did not want to be the ultimate in sexy? People aren’t stupid. I could write about cancer, yellowed teeth, bad skin and other disastrous effects of lighting ciggies, but those effects are already known and disregarded. I could blabber on about being a role model to children, but that argument is too cliche.

The bottom line is that women smoke to be as elegant and classy as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Men smoke to be wild and mysterious like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Besides that, smoking is an enjoyable activity after a stressful day. The Marlboro Man embodied that rugged sexiness one can create while smoking cigarettes. Although, ironically, the two actors who portrayed him, Wayne McClaren and David McLean, died of lung cancer, we as a nation will never forget how the Marlboro Man taught adults, teenagers, and children what it really meant to be “cool.”

It saddens me to see smokers on campus not enjoying their cigarettes correctly. They walk, hunched over, their cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. They blow their smoke in front of us non-smokers and receive looks of disdain. Smoking while walking is not alluring. Smoking in a crowd of non-smokers is worse. Being annoying is not seductive.

When a person is walking, they can’t really enjoy their cigarette, so what is the point of wasting one of those precious, expensive sticks of wacky tobacky? Put a patch on if you can’t wait to savor the flavor.

Smokers are at their sexiest when they are outside in a dark corner, brooding and staring off into the sky, away from public entrances. It is at this moment when smokers really channel their inner Johnny Depp or Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City. Sometimes it’s sexy to smoke when giving phone interviews or creating artwork alone in a studio. Sometimes it’s sexy to smoke in an alleyway in the winter with a greasy man and a haggard woman, while all the happy non-smokers are inside.

That is where smoking belongs. Either when the smoker is alone or when the smoker is in a dark, alluring area away from the general public. Smoking should not be done while walking on campus, or dining out, or near building entrances. Receiving dirty looks is not sexy. According to a call to the Free for All, the next person who smokes on campus while walking is unsexily going to get farted on. Keep that in mind.

Lo is a Coffeyville senior in History.