The passport to smoking pleasure
‘ When it’s sunup in Malibu, it’s midnight in Monte Carlo! When Rio strips for the day, LA rides the high rolling sky! The vibrant and racy world of Peter Stuyvesant! The international passport to smoking pleasure!” If this means anything to you, how are you doing? How bad are your knees and your back, and do you have swollen feet? You must have been born no later than 1980.
The opening lines of this column were plucked verbatim from a cigarette advert from 1985. Boy, were those ads entertaining and aspirational. They showcased beaches with clear water and pristine white sand, speedboats, bikini shots and Rio Carnival scenes.
The two-minute ad featured exclusively a bunch of obviously monied white folks with peroxided hair, perfect suntans and pearly white teeth.
Look, this was 1985, Pee Wee Botha was wagging his finger at us, warning us to not push him too far. The global ad campaign was created in Reagan’s US and mirrored adverts in Thatcher’s Britain, reflecting the fact that black people or folks of colour were only invented in 1985.
But that’s a story for another day. We can all agree that they were impeccable ads.
I don’t smoke tobacco, except for New Year’s Eve when I light up a cigar from time to time. It’s a habit I started about 20 years ago at a Harties game lodge to impress the women and to make myself appear more interesting.
At some point, I was rabidly antismoking and disgusted by the habit. As I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered that my stance has become softer. By the time minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told us: “When they zol, they put saliva on the paper” ,I was on the smokers’ side.
I felt they were being bullied into quitting. I have a strong libertarian streak residing close to the surface, you see.
Life’s hard, people! Whatever you do to deal with your daily stresses, I say, “Give it to you”.
That’s why I also have no moral quandary about brothels; the world’s a better place when sex addicts walk among us without any sperm retention issues.
That’s my way of saying my relationship with smokers is complicated.
Whatever your views on the state “nannying” us with draconian anti-smoking legislation, you must admit they’ve had a huge impact on society. As a non-smoker, I’ve inhaled 5% of the secondary smoke I used to inhale in the first 25 years of my life, before Dlamini-Zuma went on her crusade against public smoking in the late 1990s.
I’m grateful she yanked us kicking and screaming into the current reality. Maybe a reflection of my hermit tendencies in my mature years, but I’ve hardly ever had to deal with the smell of tobacco on my clothes and hair in the last 15 years.
Studies on how effective the legislation has been insofar as deterring the population (especially the young) from picking up the nasty habit vary according to who’s funding the study.
I find that smokers have become significantly considerate to nonsmokers in this country. As recently as the turn of the millennium, you’d suffocate from five oblivious folks puffing away inside a Toyota HiAce from Durban Station to Park Station. At that point you might as well lock yourself up in a toilet stall, burn and inhale a kg of tobacco.
On one particular taxi trip, I swear, I could hear the cancer hurtling towards my lungs at breakneck speed, there was so much smoke.
I can relate to a smoker’s dependency on nicotine because my relationship with messrs Glass and Daniel’s is pretty unhealthy — and I’m in perpetual awe of the sense of community among smokers.
It crosses all boundaries — gender, age, sexual orientation, race, culture. Whenever a smoker needs a drag, every smoker within a 5km radius will fish out a fag to offer, with lighter or matches. How many friendships have blossomed out of a bond created by the habit? By the second tea break of any weekend-long conference in the Magalies, every smoker in the room knows who the other smokers are.
I’m so jealous of this camaraderie, I got into the habit of travelling with a lighter and cigarettes so I could respond in the affirmative when asked for a ciggie. It’s unmatched as a social ice-breaker.
I’m raising three young people at an age when they’re making decisions about alcohol, dating, smoking tobacco and other legal substances.
The hypocrite in me doesn’t extend the libertarian spirit to my own children. I’m fervently discouraging it. Lung cancer, yellow teeth, nicotine withdrawal ailments … none of these impress young people much.
I’ve found one thing that works — the fact that kissing a smoker is like kissing an ashtray. I made them each sniff one for five seconds — we all agreed, it’s disgusting.
I hope our president finds breathing space in his hectic electioneering campaign going to dilapidated squatter camps, promising that together we can do more of the same as the last 30 years, inhaling old women’s Ntsu sniffing tobacco.
I hope he confers the Order of Isithwalandwe on good ole Nkosazana for saving us from passive smoking.
It crosses all boundaries — gender, age, sexual orientation, race, culture ... How many friendships have blossomed out of a bond created by the habit?