I`D Rather Smoke Than Kiss

611 Words3 Pages
I`d Rather Smoke Than Kiss “Smokers have become the greenhorns in the land of sweetness and health, scapegoats for a quintessentially American need, rooted in our fabled Great Diversity, to identify and punish the undesirables among us.” The article “I`d Rather Smoke than Kiss,” by Florence King explains her background as a smoker and takes on the anti-smokers and the way they are treating smokers today. King is a 54 year old, who started smoking at the age of 26. She has been around people who were or are smokers before she was born. Her mother started at the age of 12. The reason that she started smoking was because she is a writer and that she is thrifty. One day in a drugstore, she seen a box of Du Maurier English cigarettes, and thought the boxes would be ideal for keeping my paperclips in. She decided to buy two. She uses the cigarette boxes to keep paperclips in them, and she decided the cigarettes were just messing up the desk and going to waste, so she tried one. King tells how passive misanthropes (someone who hates people), or “smokists” are brutally attacking the society of smokers. Smokers are content to die solitarily, until it was found that second hand smoke can kill. The “smokist” uses this argument, as the basis of their complaint. The “smokist” uses then went on the hunt for smokers; restaurants, airplanes and airports were the initial battlegrounds. Smokers on the run, King explains the consideration the Federal government has given to the plight of smokers. “Passive Americans” are starting to get their points across through anti-smoking campaigns. She states that the author of the government reported that if people quit smoking it could be hazardous to the pension system as smokers would live longer and collect more Social Security. Health Nazis, King explains the “public-service ads” that are being shown on T.V. to portray how

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