Life or Death: Stop Smoking NOW! SmithEveryone was starting to notice that I had a problem. My wife would ask, “Are you O.K.?” as I hacked and coughed every morning. My friends would joke about how I would run short of breath just from walking to the car. My wallet was really talking to me! Somehow I managed to lose five or six dollars a day somewhere between home and the convenience store. But the only voice I would heed had to come from within myself. Finally one day it did.I had been debating quitting smoking for the last few months. I would get very angry every time I went out to buy cigarettes because the prices seemed to change weekly. Every week there was a new tobacco settlement, and a new price hike. The “victims” of big tobacco were paying their own settlement it seemed. I grudgingly paid the $3.58 for a pack of Marlboros, while I thought about the Value Meal I could have purchased at the local McDonalds for roughly the same price. I was spending close to one hundred fifty dollars a month for the privilege of smoker’s cough and the smell of an ashtray. In retrospect it doesn’t seem like a very good bargain. Of course I was also concerned with my health, and so was my family. My mother would see the yellow stains on my fingers and shake her head. “Imagine what your lungs look like!” she would say. I could just picture the little passageways in my lungs being choked off by the tar that stained my hands. My wife insisted that I quit smoking. I woke up hacking every morning. It had become part of my morning ritual. She couldn’t understand why even short walks on the beach would have me wheezing Smith, 2.and fumbling for a cigarette. I used to be able to swim out to the breakers, but now I was relegated to the beach. I didn’t enjoy swimming any more. To make matters worse, there was the ever-present discrimination and segregation. If I could smoke i...
