Note to self: quit smoking

Right upto a decade ago, governments in general and tobacco companies in particular vehemently denied any links between smoking and what's that called, cancer of the dungs or bungs or, ah, its lungs. They cited several very competitive studies involving, let's say, a 1000 people. If less than 10% of the population studied did NOT get lung cancer from smoking, the study concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support a link between lung cancer and smoking. So you could smoke wherever you wanted and the tobacco companies were happy with all the revenue, government was happy with all the additional tax revenue, celebrities were happy with all the endorsement revenue and the lousy lout who paid for all this was happy thinking it was cool to do so. All was fine and dandy. The sun shined and birds chirped and all that.

Around a decade ago, a particularly chirpy lad sat up and said, hang on, if less than 10% of the population did NOT contract a disease of some form or the other, it means 90% did. To add insult to injury for the tobacco companies, the lad found people around smokers, were more badly affected. That's not a good thing. This lad being well connected, lobbied and lobbied hard. Suddenly, the fashionable thing to do in government circles was to ban smoking in public places. 

Considering I'm not a smoker, and detest any form of smoke, I'm all for banning smoking in public places. However, like all good things, there was a catch. Anything relating to banning is required, by law, to be brought about by the government. Paragraph 1 above clearly demonstrates that the government is not very good at defining things. True to their reputation, they messed up on the definition of public places. They included almost every place but the kitchen sink within their definition of public places, making smokers an exiled species, who were forced to go outside every time the urge to light up got the better of them. It was no longer fashionable and they became the equivalent of social outcasts. In all their wisdom, the government forgot to include the most of public of public places, sidewalks and pavements.

This blasted oversight has created more smokers than before. Thanks to this loophole, non-smoking walkers were left with two choices. They could walk in a smog of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nicotine, acetone, acetylene, formaldehyde, propane, hydrogen cyanide, toluene, and many others or they could walk in a smog of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide and particulates. Each option is less appealing than the other. However, most pedestrians choose the slow route to hell simply because they prefer not getting run over. 

It's extremely annoying when one is walking along the pavement, minding your own business and pottering about and you're stuck behind a block-head with a death stick, who is also, incidentally, pottering about. One then speeds up and overtakes said block-head, only to get stuck behind death stick toting block-head in front of the one one just overtook. The result is that one is always smoking if one is walking. 

In light of the above, I can do one of two things, I can quit walking or I can quit smoking. I have decided to do the latter, but in order to do that, I need help in raising money to do so. I will be gratefully accepting any monetary assistance from philanthropists who would be willing to help a poor bean counter buy a gas mask. Thank you.