Just as most of us became keenly aware of other smokers feeding their mind's endless need for new nicotine once we quit, on occasion others who were trying to quit within your community may have looked upon you while publically smoking nicotine, with the same sense of keen awareness. If so, not only were you probably unaware that they were looking, it may may have been one of those almost mechanical replenishments where you were mentally occupied with other things and smoked almost without even realizing it yourself.
Have you ever looked down at an ashtray while busy with some activity and all of the sudden it was full and the pack was empty? Many of us spent much of oimageur smoking life engaged in a process of almost mechanical nicotine replenishment. But, unless always alone without ever having visitors, the smoke, smells, odors, and act of smoking itself, probably didn't escape the non-smoker's notice.
Even the young people in our lives and communities, who yearn to be adults long before their time, are watching. With so many of us out there it can't help but have an impact. We probably never payed it much attention but they were watching. Although they didn't understand it, they saw us take that first big big puff and then get that ahhhhh look on our faces as within 8 to 10 seconds we sensed our nicotine tank being filled. They couldn't see inside our damaged lungs and clogging arteries nor did they know that our brain dopamine circuitry was begging to be fed and that the act they'd just witnessed was a mandatory replenishment.
As the lady with cancer in Joel's above article said,
"When my children were small, they always pestered me about my smoking. I told them over and over to leave me alone, that I wanted to stop but couldn't. I said it so often they stopped begging. But now my children are in their twenties and thirties, and two of them smoke. When I found out about my cancer, I begged them to stop. They replied to me, with pained expressions on their faces, that they want to stop but they can't. I know where they learned that, and I am mad at myself for it. So I am stopping to show them I was wrong. It wasn't that I couldn't stop smoking- it was that I wouldn't!"
Yes we were being watched the whole time. In fact, there were enough of us out there in our communities that an entire generation of youth had a sufficient number of aahhhhh looking adult faces that they just knew they were missing something. Put that together with the the pretty colored boxes, the glamour ads and them being conditioned to believe that smoking was an adult choice issue, is it any wonder that here in my home state, South Carolina, that 41.5% of our 9th through 12th graders have smoked at least once in the past 30 days.
I've always loved this piece by Joel. I'm so thankful that my two daughters (ages 20 and 22) have never smoked. Like the lady above, I tried to be honest with them as possible, and I freely admitted that I felt powerless. As a parent, I was lucky. It could have turned out otherwise. I see so many tobacco control programs aimed exclusively at teens while ignoring their nicotine dependent adult role models. If we're not going to take the time to educate all those ahhhh looking and smelly -- but otherwise often healthy looking adult faces -- that our youth see each day, how can we expect them to believe some school tobacco prevention educator over what they see with their own eyes!
Any credible tobacco control program must involve educating the entire community. Some may not like the message but it's time the truth was known. Unlike nicotine delivery products, pills, or even complete reliance upon a hypnotist, education can not fail any of us. Freedom is a tool which can neither take credit for being used nor fault for being ignored.
The beauty of this place is that all who study here will forever carry with them an understanding of how a powerful chemical called nicotine works, the tremendous conditioning it fosters, and the process of withdrawal, adjustment and recovery. Even more important is that they'll each leave with one very simple truth, as long as they NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF of nicotine, or bring any inside their body, they will never relapse again. John