Why can’t people under the age of 18 smoke cigarettes or any other fine versions of tobacco? Apart from lacking the cognitive sensibility towards adult-orientated actions that is immediately convalesced at the ownership of an ID card, there is no reason that teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to smoke. Not that’s it’s stopping them; these days, and every other day that has existed, I see more teenagers smoking than adults. They may not be legally allowed to buy cigarettes or smoke them in public, but they manage to acquire them anyway and are free to smoke them without curious authority figures intervening in their unfairly illegal loitering.
I don’t just think teenagers should be allowed to smoke, I think they should be forced to. The physical effects of smoking will be far more evident on teenagers than adults. Most teenagers exercise, whether it’s extra-curricular at school in better hopes of getting into a top-banana university without having the required education and receiving tax rebates, biking to one’s house to and fro because they don’t have licenses yet, or mandatory forced Physical Education at school with more focus on ‘Physical’ than ‘Education’. If teenagers smoked and continued with these arduous activities, the exhausting effects of smoking would be felt pretty soon and soon enough they would give it up, even before the nicotine plants itself in the most vulnerable, softest segment of the brain. But adults can never really feel the negative effects of smoking because they never exercise. They have cars to take them anywhere they want, their sports only exercise the fingers through Tolstoy-length accounts of the follies of adult-hood and through highly unspecific comments made about individuals on Facebook expressing disapproval with their highly unspecific comments made about individuals, and most adults lose weight via puking so exercise is rarely a routine in the life of an adult.
My theory, which I have legally patented, is tried and true. Most people I knew who smoked in high school have given it up completely just a few years before or after graduating and everyone in high school who were all like “ewww, smokers are gross, I’d never put that disgusting stuff into my body LOL” now smoke like they’re in Mad Men. Your parents will always tell you two things; “always give it a try” and “never try drugs”. People should definitely try cigarettes, but only at a vulnerable age, when they are at their most physically dependant. People say young adults are bullet-proof, and it’s true, but it’s only until they reach mid-life that the exit wounds start to show. A whole decade of heavy smoking will most certainly bring about you cancer, STIs, sneezing fits, sexy nightmares, smoker’s cough and smoker with lung cancer’s cough, so you might as well smoke yourself to death, rather than trying to recuperate any possible free years you have in your life peeing blood into a plastic bag and being the only person in the hospital whose family members and friends aren’t afraid to chastise about your disease. Smoke yourself to heaven. It’s like what Kurt Vonnegut said, it’s a classy way to commit suicide.
In fact, I’m gonna take up smoking now, as AN ADULT, but give it up and be subject to praise by my friends and colleagues. That pisses me off. Giving up certain habits is a good thing, but no-one should be congratulated for it. Just a mere “ehh, good for you, douchebag” should suffice. I don’t get people that give up smoking, crack, heroin, or being a paedophile and they get praised lapped on them and people think they’re the hottest shit in the world. Giving up smoking is a popular way to accumulate unwarranted praise and I’m fucking sick of it. You know what’s better than giving up smoking; not smoking in the first place. Nobody’s ever said to me “hey, man, that’s so great that you never decided to smoke. Way to go, B. Awesome stuff! That makes you the greatest person ever. I just want to hug you. You’re my favourite customer”. But no, to achieve that amount of praise I’d have to degrade myself by smoking, deteriorating my physical, mental, and psychosexual well-being, be a really unruly cunt to everyone for no reason and then when I give it up, I will announce it to absolutely everyone I know and I wil do so through a variety of modes, such as via Facebook, email, MySpace, tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, text message, over the phone, fax, and least of all in person.
This will be my new year’s resolution, since my new year’s resolution to quit masturbation didn’t last very long at all since I actually wanked myself into the new year. I will take up smoking for a while, then give it up, and then like every single person who ever existed in the history of the universe that quit smoking, I will start smoking again once all the praise directed at me wears out and I will repeat this process at least eleven times. And I will counter against any long-term physical effects such as lung cancer by becoming bulimic. Light up!
