T. Kid on Tobacco

Tobacco field in Cuba. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

As a pot smoker, it’s nice to see the country changing its mind on my drug of choice. Part of the transformation is practical—allowing medical use, keeping nonviolent criminals out of jail, and so on—but it’s the shift in social acceptance that really makes it OK to smoke weed in America. We smoked lots of weed while it was still illegal, after all. We had to keep it on the low, and not just because of cops who might be sniffing around. It was possible that a random civilian who happened to see you smoking weed in the park would either call the cops or personally confront you.

Most adults agreed that weed was a bad drug plaguing the nation’s youth, and it seemed like it would take a century for things to change. Instead, the kids who smoked grew up and retained their views on pot, altering the national psyche and bringing about drastic changes—not only in what is legal but also in what is socially accepted. But along with the acceptance of weed, Americans are building an intolerance for my second favorite thing to smoke: tobacco.

After the decadent heyday of cigarettes, when 20,679 doctors endorsed Lucky Strikes, people started catching on to the imminent health risks of heavy smoking and the world turned on tobacco, for good reason. The scientific and medical communities unanimously agree that cigarettes are terrible for you, and over time the downright evil tactics of tobacco companies have come to light. People are changing their minds. Fewer people are smoking. But I haven’t changed my mind yet.

I started smoking regularly when I was 15. A grubby senior at my school bought me packs of Marlboros for a dollar markup. Every time I got a new pack, I’d smoke one in the boys’ bathroom during my math class.

I got away with it until a substitute teacher stopped at my desk while she was passing back test papers. “Is that you?” she asked. I gave her a confused look. “I smell smoke." I admitted that I'd been smoking. She didn’t write me up or send me to the vice principal’s office. Instead, she shamed me in front of the whole class by sternly saying, “Well, you stink!”

I wondered if she would say the same to a kid who stepped in dog shit, or one with chronic BO. It seemed like a harsh and damaging thing for a teacher to say to a student, but because she was talking about cigarette smoke, she was right and I was wrong. This struck me as unfair, because it’s completely subjective whether or not cigarettes smell pleasant. I mean, I don't like mayonnaise, but if someone eats it in front of me, I don’t say aloud that their breath will be disgusting.

I’ve received plenty of other verbal reprimands akin to that one, but most of the judgment I receive is from strangers—mainly those with children. When I’m walking down the sidewalk smoking a cigarette, parents corral their kids away from me with a sense of urgency. They don’t want my poisonous fumes anywhere near their family, even though they chose to live in America’s most congested city with kids who are just the right height to directly inhale a car's exhaust. It's also occurred to me that perhaps it's not the smoking that bothers them. Maybe they are just steering clear of the long-haired, bearded, brown guy wearing headphones and bobbing his head uncontrollably to Lee "Scratch" Perry. Either way, I can’t really blame them.

I enjoy smoking cigarettes, and I’m the only person I know who admits it. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about a habit that’s becoming increasingly restricted and taxed. The negatives are quickly beginning to outweigh the positives, so I’m sure it won’t be long before I kick the cigarette habit. Even when I accomplish that, it will be hard to smoke weed without tobacco.

My brother taught me how to roll a joint when he returned from a trip to Amsterdam. As is the custom in many parts of Europe, he rolled big cones filled with a two-to-one ratio of weed to tobacco. From then on, it became my preferred method of smoking. A joint of weed alone doesn’t give you the same bite in your throat when you inhale, and it might not burn as well, depending on the weed. A spliff has the perfect balance for me.

If I’m smoking with other people, I always ask before adding tobacco to the joint, and if anyone objects, I don’t insist. Anything less would be discourteous. However, the reactions I get don’t reserve any scrutiny. Instead of simply saying, “No, thanks,” people will say something like, “No! That’s disgusting!” Somehow, blunts are totally OK, but the sight of a cigarette is enough to evoke a lecture. In their mind, it’s OK to belittle someone’s preference for tobacco. They don’t consider that they’re giving it the same unjust treatment that weed suffered under for so long until now.

Admittedly, weed is far better than tobacco in many ways, and if I had to give one of them up, I would cut tobacco right away. Come to think of it, I should also do away with my dependence on over-the-counter pain relievers, screen time, and thick-cut bacon, but none of those have a national campaign encouraging me to quit. It’s widely admitted that we’d be better off without such things, and yet we leave it to individuals to decide for themselves how much of a bad thing is enough. At a time when enthusiasm for a long-prohibited drug is at an all-time high, it seems counterproductive to go the other direction with another.