Breath of fresh air needed in smoking debate

Most smokers want to quit - making them feel worse may not be the way to help them

By: Penni Mitchell

  When former CTV broadcaster Avery Haines' boss discovered that her flubbed intro had mistakenly been aired in January, he did what any caring, sensitive friend with bad news to share would do. He put his arm around her and said, "Let's go for a cigarette."
  A friend of mine whose husband quit smoking confessed that she liked her husband better when he was a smoker. "He didn't used to get mad at the kids," she says. "He's grumpier now."
 

Most smokers already feel bad. Bad for being addicted. Bad for not being able to quit. Bad bad bad. Puff puff puff.

  As adults, I think we can openly admit that people smoke because it can help take the edge off life's stresses. Smoking is a crutch, a coping mechanism and a dirty, filthy, disgusting habit. It is all of these things. And so much more. A woman who finally beat her tobacco addiction after taking the smoking cessation program at the Women's Health Clinic said that, "Smoking was my best friend."
  And yet, in the public debate over whether Winnipeg should ban smoking in restaurants and bars, talk about people's relationship to their smoking habit has been strikingly absent. It's not surprising, given the shame that surrounds tobacco addiction, and the fact the health risks that come with long-term use are well-known. But however smelly, expensive, unhealthy and socially unacceptable (in middle class circles mainly) smoking is, people do derive pleasure from it. Those poor sods who huddle on porches at parties and shiver outside office buildings when it's -30 below actually enjoy the camaraderie of being with other smokers.
 

Remember when smoking was glamourous? Penni Mitchell does.

  Somewhere in our lean towards respecting non-smokers rights, the issue has flipped into being against people who smoke. You even hear second-hand smoke being likened to a form of abuse. One recent letter to the editor said that parents who smoke are depriving their kids of nutritious foods to pay for their addiction. She'd seen it herself in the grocery store. Federal Health Minister Allan Rock actually used the words "national evil" to describe smoking when he announced that gross photos of damaged lungs and flaccid cigarettes will be put on packages to remind people that smoking is bad.
  I'll tell you something though. No one needs to tell a smoker that smoking is bad. Most smokers already feel bad. Bad for being addicted. Bad for not being able to quit. Bad for not being able to stay quit. Bad because they can't cope with the ups and downs of life in a more acceptable way. Bad, bad, bad. Puff, puff, puff.
  You get the picture. Smokers are aware that their addiction is bad. But they use smoking as a reward, or a way to relax in bar with a drink, commiserate with a friend, or simply because they can't help it. Tobacco use may be many things, but evil is not one of them. What is unconscionable is that the tobacco industry intentionally made their product more addictive through chemical means so that people smoke more, knowing full well that it would kill many of them. Are there less addictive alternatives, like organic tobacco? One recent study purports that people who smoke less than 10 cigarettes a day may not be compromising their health.
  New research has confirmed that nicotine, one of the active ingredients in tobacco, can have healthful effects on people with nervous-symptom disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Tourette's syndrome. Dr. Paul Newhouse of the University of Vermont, was careful to stress that "no one can in any way use this work as an endorsement of cigarette smoking." Nicotine has also been found beneficial for reducing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, a study last year found that women who were heavy smokers and had a gene associated with a type of inherited breast cancer had a 40% reduced incidence of breast cancer. Scientifically we are able to understand that nicotine has a calming the nervous system. Socially, we need a little tolerance.
  We now have huge billboards along Winnipeg streets promoting a popular antidepressant prescribed to help get quitters over the hump of nicotine withdrawal. Without exception, every smoker I know would like to quit; they have all tried. The upshot is that demonizing smokers, rather than understanding the role that smoking plays in their lives, is guaranteed to backfire. Smokers have been quiet, but perhaps not for long. When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing a column about smokers, he jokingly raised a fist and said, "Addicts of the world unite."

Penni Mitchell is a columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press and the editor of Herizons, Canada's largest feminist magazine. For Herizons subscription details, contact penni@web.net.

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