On cigarettes

There’s something to be said for cigarettes. Most of it, of course, is bad. Cigarettes smell awful. The stench lingers and invades long after the cigarette is gone. Cigarettes, of course, also kill people. Lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking (mostly cigarettes, but also pipes) killed my father. It’s kind of amazing that fire from a cigarette left smoldering as he fell asleep didn’t kill him, the way it has so many others.

The anti-smoking messaging I got in school as a kid was effective. But so was a lifetime of popular culture. For as much as smoking disgusts me, I can’t change the fact that it looks cool. Vapes could never.

More importantly, though, cigarettes have a way of forming a connection between strangers. Lighter or matches not working? That’s a solvable problem. Out of cigarettes? Someone will give you one of theirs. There’s no judgement, no expectation of repayment. It’s just a prosocial thing you do. Someday, you might depend on someone else doing the same. I think that’s beautiful, even though the smoking part is gross.

On the whole, society is better off with fewer people smoking. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t lost a little something along the way. Cigars can fuck right off, though.