Second-Hand Smoke

Night­shade, solanum, nico­tiana tabacum, sounds a lit­tle omi­nous. Cig­a­rettes, cig­ars, pipes now it doesn’t really sound as omi­nous, does it. But if you look into what is in the smoke that is pro­duced when the leaves of nico­tiana tabacum are burnt then it sounds very omi­nous — tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines, ben­zene, formalde­hyde, arsenic, cad­mium, lead-210, polonium-210, ammo­nia, car­bon monox­ide, hydro­gen cyanide, nico­tine. Many would argue that if you do not choose to par­take of the smoke of the leaves of nico­tiana tabacum, then you should not be con­cerned about those that do. But there are aspects of smoke that are dif­fer­ent for some other per­sonal habits.

As much as smok­ers do not like to admit this, after they par­take of the addic­tive habit, the chemical-filled smoke clings to their body and their clothes. It takes some time for this smoke to dis­si­pate. Prob­a­bly the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion of non-partakers and non-addicts are either not both­ered or only very mildly both­ered by this resid­ual pharmacologically-active, car­cino­genic air. How­ever, there are some indi­vid­u­als who are for rea­sons of birth, past med­ical his­tory or injury extremely sen­si­tive to this con­t­a­m­i­nated air. Recent changes in laws in many locales have made life in pub­lic places for these peo­ple much, much less dif­fi­cult than it was in the past. But as one of those indi­vid­u­als, the num­ber of times I have had to enter a pub­lic build­ing hold­ing my breath because the par­tak­ers are con­gre­gated around the entrance is impos­si­ble to count. I often have stepped out of the lift to my office floor when joined by a large group of par­tak­ers on their way back from one of their fre­quent addic­tion fixes. Has my action elicited com­ment? Yes and often not very pleas­ant com­ment. But you see, the con­t­a­m­i­nated air that fol­lows the par­tak­ers is enough to trig­ger spasms of my dam­aged res­pi­ra­tory sys­tem. Cer­tainly not in a life-threatening man­ner, but in a dis­tinctly uncom­fort­able man­ner that lingers for an extended period of time. The reac­tion is one that very few peo­ple rec­og­nize is real mostly because there are no appar­ent symp­toms. Hon­estly, for years I tried to just “grin and bear it”.

A few months ago, Still Here Too and I were at the extended and joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of the hope­fully final wed­ding of one of her clos­est friends from her sec­ondary edu­ca­tion days. The entire sis­ter­hood and most of their part­ners were also there. One of the sis­ter­hood and a cou­ple of the part­ners are, very unfor­tu­nately, par­tak­ers. Need­less to say there were many trips out­side from our mul­ti­ple venues for their addic­tion fixes. There is one addi­tional detail to add before I tell you just how poorly I han­dled the sit­u­a­tion when the strain of being around the second-hand smoke finally got to be too much for me and I stopped “grin­ning and bear­ing it”. The mem­ber of the sis­ter­hood who suf­fers from addic­tion to smoke of nico­tiana tabacum has recently under­gone treat­ment from severe dis­ease and really should not be partaking.

The moral of this story? Second-hand smoke sucks! If you are addicted, I have real sym­pa­thy for you. I know it must be very, very dif­fi­cult to deal with. But this shit is bad for you, bad for your rela­tions, bad for any­one around you. So from now on, I declare myself a non-violent, mil­i­tant anti-smoking activist. If you par­take of the smoke of nico­tiana tabacum in my pres­ence in a way that I am forced to be exposed to the shit, I am going to directly express my dis­plea­sure. But I really don’t mean to offend you. I really hate to see you do so much harm to your­self. Sorry, I really didn’t mean to raise my voice so much …

Is Still Here