Tobacco’s grip remains one of life’s mysteries

For quite a spell I thought Twinkies were right up there with indoor plumbing and turn signals as man’s top contributions to a better world. This Twinkie romance wasn’t quite an addiction, but it was serious. Now I can walk past them in the store without blinking — besides, they have shrunk. Addiction is a deadly word, as you know — thousands of Cubs fans, being hooked on losers. Maybe counseling would help. Nobody wants it, I suspect. Addictions like that may be harmless, something to laugh about.

The addiction to cigarettes is neither harmless nor funny. I was reminded of that when I re-read John Grisham’s book “The Runaway Jury.” It involves a woman’s suit against big tobacco companies, blaming them for her husband’s death from lung cancer. It is a piece of gripping fiction involving real issues, like whether a long-time smoker can just give it up, and how smokers get hooked. Did the Marlboro Man have an effect? Do kids see their parents smoke and think it is OK? What about the old movies where the stars puffed away as if it was in the script?

Maybe it was. I never got the hang of it — a few times I got so sick after smoking cigarettes that I was afraid I might die before I could leave a note blaming some other kids for urging me to light up. I still have their names, but I never told. It seems a mystery to me, even now, light years away from those “Twenty Grand” experiments, how anybody could get sick and then go out and do it again until smoking seems natural and important. Being a slow learner, I reckon, was good for me. I tried it again in the Army, along with poker, and I was not good at either. Poker didn’t make me physically sick, though, just mentally upset thinking that even my war, safe near Supreme Headquarters, was hell. When I was about 4 years old, my dad quit smoking.

He was an Old Golds fellow. It may have been easy to quit because my mother asked him to. After that, nobody ever smoked in our house. My mom was quietly firm, and even now, I am glad she kept our houses smoke free. One of my uncles chewed Beech Nut and I crammed some into my mouth one day while looking for four-leaf clovers. Very soon, I was dizzy and could not see the clover well enough to count to even three. I was a poor spitter. There must be something about tobacco that is insidiously inviting and, well, addictive.

We all know smokers who say they want to quit but can’t. And we all have seen people standing outside their workplaces, puffing away. In my early newspaper days, the newsroom was smoky and loud. Now newsrooms generally are smoke free and sadly quiet. It is a new era. Restaurants are generally smoke free. Some of us think the food tastes better. In my kid days, I got the feeling that smoking was a sin. For sure, it was wrong. My mom said so. When I got sick on cigarettes, I wondered if she had put a hex on me. I tried pipes for a brief period at work — it made me look studious, which I never was. I burned holes in my pants — actually I was inept with pipes. Not as bad as I was with the chewing tobacco, though. Only smokers know how powerful the habit is, and it is their business, not mine. It just remains a mystery to me, an old nonsmoker.