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Puffer's Paradise
I sometimes wonder about numbers in the gazillions, and specifically, do the Chinese smoke more cigarettes on an average day, or do North Americans consume more French fries? Those numbers must be out there somewhere, and I really should do my job as a dedicated weblogger to provide them for anyone similarly interested. My guess would have to go to more cancer sticks being inhaled in China. There are few places off limits to smokers, and while they are fairly strict on airplanes and some trains, buses and elevators still see their fair share of putrid air. While the Chinese often say a real man can hold his liquor and should be proud to show of his drinking prowess, I would like to politely counter by saying that in my books, a real man abstains from both drink and smoke. I know a few Chinese gentlemen who just say no and they have my utmost respect and admiration It is not easy in this country where tobacco products are cheap and cigarettes (along with alcohol) are the gift of choice among men, especially in business circles.
In Canada, the government has to foot the bills for its citizens’ maladies, and the long-term health costs must certainly outweigh whatever tax revenue they can garner otherwise I doubt there would be such a concerted effort to stamp out smoking. In China, most people have to cough up (no pun intended) for their own hospital bills, and the government happily pads its coffers with income from sales of cigarettes. Little more than lip service is paid to anti-smoking campaigns, although you do hear of them from time to time. Indeed, many of China’s highest leaders have been the leading advertisers for the tobacco industry, especially Chairman Mao and Deng Xiao Ping.
Smokers back home are relegated to isolation chambers to smoke, and exiled to the great outdoors, where the truly addicted gladly brave the minus 20-degree winter weather to suck their precious weed. So, while few people smoke in Canada compared to China (and considerably less than Europeans as well), smoking is a socially accepted vice that permeates this society in a big way. You certainly don’t see those “SMOKING KILLS!” warnings plastered all over cigarette boxes anywhere on this side of the Pacific.
It bugs me when people ignore the no-smoking signs in buses and on elevators, especially when my now 20-month old daughter has to breathe their second-hand smoke. At home it is easy -- we banish smokers in our apartment to the balcony where they can puff to their lungs’ content, but in public places I have learned to adopt the proper words and attitude to ask offenders not to smoke in front of my child. Most people are fine about it and stamp them out right away when put on the spot, but there are an insensitive few that think their rights are being infringed upon if someone dares to embarrass them in front of others. Once, a chain-smoker I politely asked to desist looked at my daughter and said, “sooner or later she is going to have to get used to smoking, so she might as well start building up a tolerance early” (my exclamation point!), like head-on-fire him billowing smoke in our faces in such a compact area with little ventilation was somehow good for her! Others I ask to stop on buses just grunt their disapproval or ignore me completely. I guess if there were 500 million more crusaders like me across this country, we would have all smokers feeling pretty bad about themselves. The Chinese word for chain-smoker translates back into English as “smoke demon”. Pretty apt description I would say.
last modified Jun 14, 2004 at 6:51
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