February 25, 2000

The Husband Kurt and I used to smoke tobacco. Between the two of us we smoked five packs a day! As a newspaper editor back then, he smoked 75% of our combined daily habit's worth, and having begun his journalism career when a cigarette hanging from the lip seemed to come with the typewriter, he wasn't pressured to quit. Besides, this was way back when the going occupational joke was that someone was taking up a collection for an editor's funeral and the first guy asked to contribute a dollar to bury the editor says, "Here's a sawbuck, go bury ten of them." (It's important for me to note here that times have changed and nobody thinks of Mr. Huddleston that way.)

Anyway, back in 1981 Kurt and I stopped smoking, cold turkey. This was before nicotine patches, but we weren't tense at first: We were semi-comatose. That initial phase quickly gave way to acute crankiness, overeating, and temporary alienation of affection. It wasn't long before my own mother suggested we resume the habit to save our marriage. Instead we began daily walks, Kurt stocked up on low-calorie hard candy, and I chewed on toothpicks, which by the way provide a powerfully effective fiber source.

On top of that bad tobacco history, my mother smoked for more than 40 years, not quitting until she got cancer. Yes, cancer does cure smoking, but unfortunately it kills, too. Mom had no trouble quitting, though, because the malignancy had metastasized to her skeleton, and she was prescribed morphine for her excruciating pain. Morphine definitely took her mind off nicotine withdrawal, and she didn't even have to kick that habit because--well, again--she died.

After experiencing such troubles and tragedy from the filthy habit, one would naturally think we would be against Proposition 28, which seeks to overturn Proposition 10's additional tobacco taxes, but we're not. Even though it appears likely that anti-tobacco zealots will eventually link every social ill to the industry's corporations, Kurt and I admit there is only one thing to blame for our former addiction: our own stupidity for ever voluntarily starting to smoke. As for Mom, she took it up during her "Rosie the Riviter" phase, but she was honest enough to acknowledge she should have quit.

By extinguishing Rob Reiner's scheme, Proposition 28 can halt some of the opportunistic tax-grab on the tobacco industry that only perpetuates more government and encourages black market cigarette sales.

© 2000 Cynthia Hahn