Heart bypasses (Cigarette products in general)

Member Name: jimblob

Product:	Cigarette products in general
Date:	21/07/02 (1081 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Calming effect on nerves

Disadvantages: Many! mainly health and smelly clothes and breath.

The second(*)most evil thing ever brought back to these shores by an intrepid explorer
has to be tobacco! The "olde dude" is inadvertently responsible for my nicotine habit of upwards of twenty ciggies a day, more than that on a bad day, a coffin nail for every half hour of the day sometimes.

Smoking is bad for you, it causes disease and death with monotonous regularity, it also
has the most calming effect and compliments a mug of coffee at any time of the day.

I went through the usual pressures as a growing lad, peer pressure to smoke was just as great then as it is now, add to that the fact that cigarettes were advertised all over the place like television, cinemas, bill boards, sports events and that cigarette companies spent huge amounts of money convincing us that smoking was a harmless habit with more benefits than drawbacks (It calmed you, only the best looking and glamorous people did it etc)
my father smoked, all my uncles smoked, even my teachers smoked.

When I started smoking it was a cheap way to clog up your lungs, the duty on smokes was very small compared with today’s prices, you could also still buy packets of five woodbines if pocket money was tight, and when you were really skint, the ice-cream van would sell you "singles",but only if you said you were over thirteen!

So what’s the best smoke? well obviously if they could invent a smoke without chemicals, tar, nicotine etc then that would be best, but until they do I will stick to my Richmond Lights.

"Lights" or "Mild" as they used to be called, is probably the biggest con in the tobacco world *all* cigarettes are harmful and I have heard that lights are just as, or more harmful, than ordinary strength ones.
I tried the menthol ones for a while, convincing myself that no possible harm could come to me if I smoked these. Well, apart from getting a hernia that is! Trying to suck a bit of s
atisfying flavour from a menthol cigarette is impossible, it's like smoking a polo mint!

For years, my old dad smoked "plain" cigarettes, that’s cigarettes without a filter tip, real lung busters. His favourite ones were "Players Plain" and as a standby he would smoke Capstan.
I know from experience (well from nicking a few from his packet when I was a young fledgling smoker) just how strong these were, they literally burned the back of your throat off and are probably responsible for making "Old Blue eyes" the singer he was.
After a rather spectacular heart attack, my dad took to smoking a variety of tipped cigarettes (in the vain belief that they would do less harm) before settling on Berkley Superkings, which he now gets through at the alarming rate of at least 40 a day! to the despair of me old "ma"
As the old saying goes, you cant teach (some) old dogs new tricks.

In recent times, some people have taken out law suits on the tobacco firms and won!, their lawyers have built up seemingly air tight cases and finally got the tobacco barons admitting that tobacco is harmful and carcinogenic, they are now faced with paying huge damages and that will mean either more huge price hikes on our individual death wishes or some tobacco firms cutting their losses altogether and going belly up (poetic justice some might say for all their customers who have done the same thing as a direct result of smoking their products)

I personally, would never dream of taking out a law suit against a tobacco company, I knew when I started that it was a less than healthy habit, but I can see why some widows/widowers of smokers may feel the need to, smoking was, for a long time, advertised relentlessly as "the" cool thing to do.

In the meantime, I think that better filters would be a good thing for the tobacco companies to invest in, you can buy little ones that help extract a lot of t
he harmful chemicals as you inhale but they are expensive in themselves and a bit fiddly, if the companies could build them into a pack of twenty then that would be all the better for us poor, dedicated, smokers.

(*)The most evil thing ever brought to these shores by an intrepid explorers has to be semolina pudding!

I will end with a poem written by my good mate helmet, just cos I like it a lot and it mentions smoking.

Crouching over the writing apparatus
attempting creation of lyrical odes,
Dark, empty mind thinking nothing but nonsense
Fingertips idle. Typewriter rusts.
Seconds and minutes are endlessly passing;
continually tracing the lapsing of time.
Marking the moments with total efficiency.
Creating a better, pray fruitier wine?

Time passes.

Electric locomotive passes the window.
Passenger carrier keeping to rails.
Patrons sit blankly staring at nothing.
Well, they don't wave back, anyhow.

Another train passes.

Flame touches paper, smoke starts to rise,
freed from tobacco in tempting disguise.
Lungs' inhalation drawing in deeply;
Nauseous state for no good reason.

Heart by-passes.


Thanks for reading :)

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