Posted on 10/01/2015 5:50:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
I quit. Or, more exactly, I’m quitting. Not a job or writing, I’m quitting smoking. And does it ever suck.
I haven’t had a cigarette since the day I got married, Sept. 5th. It hasn’t been easy. It’s not “pass a stone” or “give birth” hard, but I have had moments of “I’d kill everyone in this room for a drag.”
Less now, and less thanks to something politicians across the country are moving to ban – a vaporizer.
Vaping, as it is called, is the ingestion of water vapor infused with nicotine and some sort of flavor – tobacco, sticky buns, cotton candy, pretty much anything you can imagine. The “juice” is heated quickly by an ion battery, and you inhale and exhale a cloud of “smoke.” It simulates smoking without the smoking part.
But vaping looks a lot like smoking, so a lot of busybody liberals want to treat it the same way.
There are two simple reasons for this: 1.) they’re idiots, and 2.) they need a hobby.
Speaking of idiots, enter Washington, D.C.
What would the city be without progressives who want to intrude on every aspect of your life? A literal swamp, which it was, rather than the figurative swamp it has become.
But this intrusion isn’t by the federal busybodies; this one comes locally. All stupidity starts somewhere, and this is starting in the nation’s capital.
In the name of “health,” the DC city council decided to treat vaping exactly like smoking. In addition to banning it in public places and forcing people who have quit smoking through vaping to go stand with smokers on the street (which is like making people on methadone use the drug in a heroin den), the city now taxes it like smoking.
DC has imposed a 67 percent tax on e-cigarettes, as they’re called. Yes, 67 percent.
For all the talk of wanting people to quit smoking, the city fears the loss of revenue from tobacco taxes more, so it’s taxing the hell out of an extremely effective smoking cessation tool. Because “the children,” or something.
The tax is so high that two of the four existing vape shops in the district have said they’ll be forced to close. The other two won’t be far behind.
DC expects the tax to bring in an additional $380,000 next year, which means it will budget as if that revenue is real. But with the tax driving the shops out of the city, well, we all know how this game works.
District residents still will be able to get their supplies from Virginia and Maryland, but many won’t and will return to cigarettes. Governments get so much revenue from cigarettes that one can’t help but think this was the plan all along.
As addicted to smoking as most smokers are, it pales in comparison to how addicted politicians are to the tax revenue tobacco taxes generates. Anything that offers an exit strategy for smokers is a threat.
Tobacco tax hikes are always couched as a way to discourage smoking, but if politicians really wanted to discourage smokers, they would impose a shockingly high tax in shocking fashion – not 50 cents or $1 at a time but all at once. The shock to the system would force many smokers’ hands. That’s why you’ll never see it happen.
Politicians see smokers the same way drug dealer view their customers – as suckers. That’s because, well, we are.
Like a junkie, I’d hide my cigarettes from my fiancé, now wife, thinking I was fooling her. A breath mint or gun covered up the perfect crime. Or so I thought.
I wasn’t fooling anyone but myself, and not even really that. Well, on the day I got married, I was done. I smoked my last cigarette and said goodbye to the taxes the government has been getting from me.
I used vaping to quit, and it has worked beautifully. Now governments are starting to go after me again. Not gonna happen.
Living in Maryland has spared me from the attack from leftists seeking to “help,” but only because we had the good sense to elect Republican Larry Hogan our governor. DC isn’t so lucky. And other quitters across the country won’t be so lucky either.
My advice to those of you still smoking: Join me in quitting. I understand the appeal of those infernal sticks, but there’s a pretty good crutch out there to help you step away. Give them a try and stick to it.
Do it now, before those so concerned with public health they have to constantly dip into your wallet make their move on e-cigarettes too. Use spite as a motivator – don’t smoke yourself to death, and don’t let government tax you to death either.
I smoked for 50 years. My parents smoked, hell...the whole world smoked then. Sunday drives to gramma’s house, me and my sisters in the back seat while mom and dad flicked ashes out the vent windows of daddy’s Galaxy. Fast forward to 2014, I go to Sheetz every week and plunk down $35 (Virginia prices) for another carton of Pall Mall Light (Lights..yea right). Last December 18th, I was fighting a bad cold. I had gone to the menthols, the usual method of smoking while you have a chest cold. I started coughing, and then had that moment that must be what it feels like to drown. I couldn’t breathe, the docs said my lungs started to spasm. I was able to get to the phone and dial 911 and croak out the words, “trouble breathing....” After four days in ICU I finally got the hint. Have quit 9 months and counting...and yes I still have a crave now and then. Probably always will. But of all the ways I may die, flopping around on the kitchen floor like a fish out of water is one of the least attractive. Trust me on that one. Plus there is the added bonus of flipping off the tax man.
Vaping got me off cigarettes easily and I can do it in hotel rooms and airports and any other place where smoking is verboten - it’s not smoking!
The people who want ban or restrict these e-cigs are murderers, period. Their motive, less tobacco tax revenue or rank stupidly.
I seriously want to punch them all in the balls/ovaries. E-cigs don’t kill and they don’t stink up my air like noxious cigarettes do, great invention. I’m happy to say my stupid little brother got off the death sticks thanks to them.
Tried the gum in the early 80s. Didn’t work — for me.
Tried the patch in the mid 90s. Didn’t work — for me.
Finally puffed my last in January 2003, finished off the half pack, and never bought another.
One big factor was the constant increases in taxes/price.
I quit for one whole day in 1979,
I quit for another whole day in 1985.
I quit for good in early 2003. I found my hard cravings happened 3 times per day. The actual craving lasted less than 20 seconds. If I would outlast that (which I did), I could get through.
A whole day. Then, a week. A whole month. The cravings subsided to almost non-existant. Then, about about 6 months later, I started having hard cravings again. They did follow the same pattern — 3x per day for about 20 seconds. I lasted through them. After about a month, I didn’t have the cravings anymore.
I sometimes reminisce when I see a smoker on TV, but I have a philosophy:
A puff leads to a cig which leads to two cigs which lead to a pack which leads to a carton which leads to a habit.
I will start my 13th year in January. Whenever I want to upgrade computers or get a splurge item, I say I can afford it out of the money I have saved from cigs. At current prices, that is around $3,000 per year that would have otherwise gone up in smoke.
It can be done!
After smoking for 25 years, I quit cold turkey 20 years ago. IMHO it is the only way to do it. Replacing one habit with another is just a waste of time.
I also quit drinking 19 years ago but that took 2 months in intensive care. lol
Bravo for your bro!
Yep. Like always, follow the dollar$...
The State harassing and punishing people who have quit using tobacco is sick. We know liberals are not in this sin tax nonsense because they stand on some high moral ground or love human life and want to protect it. That is not their thing. Taxing, bullying and shaming people - that is their thing.
Oops - thought it said, “On being a QUILTER” “;^<
It is amazing. I LOVED smoking Marlboros. Never realized how much they were limiting my life.
I am not saying that I never smoked. I did try it and after a while I noticed that I did not enjoy it. So I smoked less and less. The thing that helped me was that I never learned to inhale. One time though I tried to and after I took the first inhale it went like cough, cough. I took the cigarette out of my mouth saying to my self 'I don't need this'. I tore the cigarette up and threw the the pack away and that was in the mid seventies when we were stationed at Fort Riley, KS
Good on you. Just don’t fall back. One thing that could help you is to think abut the ugly smell of your clothes because of the stinking cigarette smoke.
I didn’t know Derek Hunter is a Freeper. LOL
It looks to me like you are way of the subject.
Breath mints come by caliber?
Congratulations to your daughter. Just help her to stick with it.
Sorry, dear, don’t know what you mean.
Did I post to the wrong person? I meant I was afraid you would quit FR.
Pardon, but you did not use vaping to quit. You used vaping as a substitute for smoking. The liquid used in vaping contains nicotine just like cigarette smoke. And it's the nicotine that is addictive.
Speaking as an recovering-smoker (quit in 1999 and still want a cigarette every day), there is only one way to quit smoking: quit smoking.
Gum, patches, prescription medicine, etc. are just substitutes for smoking.
Of course someone has to have the will to stop smoking. Without the will nothing will help
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