I am a smoker. These days that's like admitting your a child abuser or a smack adict. It's known to be bad for you and is publicly announced as harmful and so now it's lost of the cool edge it used to have. The cool has deserted and now hangs aorund the deeper mysteries of class C and above drugs. I go in to a restaurant now now and the people with me look at me with contempt when I light up as though I'd slyly removed my penis from my trousers and was casually letting it lie against my inside leg. It used to be just the people at the other tables who would cough in an exaggerated fashion and look disgusted and befouled but now it's my own friends. Turning up their noses and asking me politely If i wouldn't mind doing that at home. Of course in other people's homes you have to be considerate, but whilst I politely ask if i can step out the back door and have a cigarette Homophobes and racists don't have the same problems. You don't see them saying "Do you mind if I attack gays for a moment? Oh you do, oh i'll just nip outside and slag them off needlessly then."
In any case, smokers have it hard enough. The tax on smoking is horrendous, 20 times what it is in Europe, and why? To fund drug rehabilitation and asylum seekers. Let me smoke in my own country please! And it's not like we're gaining anything from our smoking, we realise this. It's no biological advantage gaining lung cancer and dying before you can pass on your genes. Although put a smoker and a non smoker in a burning building and we know who's *not* going to die of smoke inhilation. When it comes to it, we are hated people. Along with The French, Ginger people and That paperclip in microsoft office, there are few people more hated. But really, is it that bad? Well, probably. And to be honest, I can't find much defence. I admitt it's bad and certainly bad for me but that's exactly why I want sympathy from others, I have a problem, it's costing me a huge amount of money and making me socailly alienated so please, next time you see a smoker, don't shun him, but takew him to your non-cancerous heart.