Osler's Razor

As one with a severe allergy to tobacco smoke (and no desire for reefer smoke), I am glad that I have less exposure these days. Besides, what other habit makes people smell bad, causes significant health problems including cancer and heart disease, and stains teeth and fingers -- oh yeah, chewing the stuff.

BTW, one of my children has a very severe allergy to tobacco smoke and to some evergreens, so Christmas is a threat to her life and health.
 

I was always suprised by how many people -- boys, mostly -- smoked in law school. I remember one guy (a friend of mine) being very troubled that he wouldn't be able to take a cigarette break DURING a final. To be so addicted to something so expensive, unhealthy and time consuming must be difficult.

Also, speaking of evergreens -- I hosted a Xmas party yesterday for my church group. One of the girls found out DURING the party that she is, apparently, allergic to my tree. She actually had to leave my house and go to the hospital. Party fail.
 

Want to see smokers? Come on down to NC? When I drive to the gym in the morning people are either talking on their cell phones or smoking a cigarette and sometimes both. I heard this week that NC has spent almost NO money on smoking cessation programs and advertising. This goes a long way to explaining why insurance premiums are higher in this state.

Being a lifelong swimmer I have been around very few cigarette smokers in my life. Pipes and cigars, yes, but not cigarettes.
 

Cigarettes are awesome. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
 

At Columbia, smoking is not banned just around the perimeter of the Presbyterian Hospital it is banned around ALL the research buildings on the campus. So smokers have to go either across the street of their building or on bad days at the edge of the sidewalk which is after all public space. It is how some of my colleagues go to smoke and they do have that aura (aside from tobacco fumes) like they’re committing some shameful infraction, but they still do it, rain or shine, snow storm or deep freeze. However I did have a colleague who would take great pains to keep his smoking a secret, he used to go on the far sidewalk behind the building by the loading dock and he always came back chewing Peach Trident, a super vile combination with that residual cigarette smell. He is now back in Switzerland where he resumed his clinical job…an oncologist. Perhaps I should mention I work at the Cancer Research building and all my smoking colleagues do cancer research work.
On a different (and strangely coincidental with the Razor subject at hand) note, I just found out an acquaintance who has never smoked in her life and never been around a partner who smoked or any such secondary exposure is battling a lung cancer so aggressive and so asymptomatic it spread all over her system. Perhaps RRL knows something none of us do…
 

You should remember that your experience is not necessarily the national experience. I spend half my time in Oklahoma (there is a reason we gave it to the Indians is the joke around here). Smoking is still a big part of the culture.
I guess a lot of it has to do with the reservation culture and tax free cigarettes at Indian Smoke Shops (that is not being racially insensitive its what tobacco shops on reservation land are called here).
Restaurants and bars still allow smoking across the state. In fact, there is a state law that prohibits a municipality from enacting an ordinance with stricter smoking regulations than found in state law. So even if a 100% of the electorate in a city votes to ban smoking in a public park or in a bar they cannot do so because the Oklahoma Smoking in Public Places and Indoor Workplaces Act.

Oklahoma, home to Mary Fallin, the Satanist Capitol Memorial and one of the last bastions of Big Tobacco. There is a reason the state motto is Oklahoma's Ok.
 

Big Tobacco is still fairly big here in Kentucky. When I moved to Louisville, I was amazed to see so many people smoking on the sidewalks downtown where I work. And I see at least one smoker in his or her car during my commute to and from work. Thankfully, Louisville has banned smoking from public places, restaurants, bars, etc. And UofL is a smoke-free campus. But the sidewalks are not part of the campus -- they are owned by the city -- so smokers huddle there to get their fix. The saddest site of all is to see a patient with cancer -- sometimes hooked up to an IV -- smoking outside our cancer center. It just shows how horribly addictive smoking is.
 

The CEO of the company I used to work for smoked. She was very careful. She tried to never smoke during the day while at the office, she chewed minty Nicorette instead. On the rare occasion when she was driven to smoke at work she wore a coat outside that she left at the office, washed her hands immediately when she came back upstairs, and hung the coat in a closet no one used behind reception. And this was before any smoking bans. It always reminded me of a quote from Florence King (I bet she's not oft mentioned on the the Razor) "No matter which sex I slept with, I never smoked in pubic."
 

Sara reminded me of the old joke: "Survey question, do you smoke after sex." Blond answer, "I don't know, I'v never looked."
 

I do know a secret smoker. She works at the court house here in Waco. She sneaks out on the balcony to smoke. Often, she is mistaken for a sexy gargoyle.
 

You had me at "Sexy Gargoyle." I'm coming back to Waco!
 

I had a secretary who was a secret smoker during the entire interview process and for the first month she worked for me. She used a vaporizer discreetly (I discovered this later). After that, she just started smoking cigarettes again. She did not make it through her probation phase (for many reasons beyond that one).
 

Nah! But my friend,Eunice had a great joke about cigarette smoking. She always made me ask her: "Do you smoke after sex? " Then Eunice would say,"I don't know...I never looked!! And then we would laugh like friggin' hyenas.