Last updated on June 23, 2015
Why don’t you give us a name? How can a group of 40 Million people just here in the USA walk around with an addiction and not have a name? We are called “smoker” but nothing bad about the name at all. No warning about what we really are…ADDICTS!
“Alcoholic” that’s a name it stands for something. This name gets whispered behind peoples back. or we look into a drunken face with disrespect and call them by their name “you are an alcoholic…shame on you! Go home, sober up..get help…get a life!”
“Junkie”, that’s another name. Not so much whispering there, this name gets called out loud, thrown into people’s face with disrespect and without any sympathy. “Just another junkie, what a hopeless case”, a lot die of an overdose but still, we have no sympathy. We show our disapproval openly, because we are so much better (REALLY?)
“Smoker” I am so lucky I was just a smoker. I shared my “name” with a BBQ grill, it’s a harmless name. I could hold my head up high, there was no whispering behind my back. For rich or for poor…we stick together and hang onto our addiction. We don’t get disrespect thrown into our faces. We are harmless and so is our addiction. We don’t hit rock bottom, we don’t lose everything we have, we don’t lose our families and we don’t end up in jail. Just harmless!
Wait! Let me think about it…maybe it’s not so harmless after all! Here are some boring facts:
- Nicotine is a drug, it kills people. It’s addictive like Heroin and one of the hardest addictions to kick. A Nicotine fix lasts between 5 minutes and 2 hours. To keep us happy in our addiction we have to smoke at least 20 cigarettes a day. What a coincidence that we find 20 cigarettes in a pack. Our daily fix!
- Cigarettes contain more than 4000 chemicals. Besides Nicotine, the most dangerous are tar and carbon monoxide.
- Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in both men and women in the United States. In 1987, it surpassed breast cancer to become the leading cause of cancer deaths in women.
- Lung cancer causes more deaths than the next three most common cancers combined (colon, breast and pancreatic). An estimated 159,260 Americans are expected to die from lung cancer in 2014, accounting for approximately 27 percent of all cancer deaths.
- Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year. Yes, there is more than just lung cancer; there are many more crucial and long ways of dying.
Do we need another name? Or just more awareness about the addiction and the price we pay?
Maybe we could ask the Tobacco Industry to not fool us anymore, would they listen?
Nicotine is an addictive substance. You don’t give an addict less of the addictive substance to make them quit! You don’t give an alcoholic a patch that contains alcohol and you tell them“well you will quit with less alcohol”. You don’t give them a gum that contains alcohol and tell them the same fairy tale “you just chew your alcohol gum; it will help you quit drinking”. You don’t tell the junkie “here use a smaller syringe, this way you will stop using in small steps”.
There is no magic wand! Only one thing makes an addict overcome an addiction…it’s the willpower to do it!
There is light at the end of the tunnel….believe me, I followed it!
The Tobacco industry invests a large amount of money in politics and lobbyists. So, they are not likely to allow the naming of Tobacco as an addicting drug.