Andy Rooney died at the ripe old age of 92. Just found out. Always wondered what he would say about
vaping....something like.
You know when I was growing up I had a smoke here and one
there. They didn't really do much for
me, especially after my Aunt Emily caught George Franklin and me behind the
woodshed puffing on granddad’s corn cob pipe. Still can feel that hickory to
this day. We didn't think much of
cigarettes then, they were just something people did. Somewhere in World War II some scientist
noticed that people who smoked died faster. I don't know his name, don't know
if he smoked, but he sure put up a ruckus that's with us today.
Used to be real sophisticated to smoke, movie stars, smoke
filled rooms that solved the world’s problems.
Maybe that's why the world has so many more problems, people
don't have anything to do with their hands anymore, and the Chinese ambassador
can't bum a fag from the American consulate.
Fag- that what the British call them.
Funny those Brits they can get away with words that will put you in jail
in the US. Maybe that's why they didn't
fight too hard to get this colony back; they knew the kind of people that left
Britain to settle here.
Nowadays it's quit smoking and live longer. We have gums and patches, bans and second,
third and probably before long fourth and fifth hand smoke. And the world still smokes on.
Then there was this guy Eddie over at CBS that was carrying
around a black metal stick and blowing out smoke. He called it vaping, said it was not smoke
and he had stopped cigarettes and only used these now. Had nicotine and
something that sounded like what my mother used to rub on her elbows to get the
callouses off them, Vegetable something.
He said it didn't burn anything just made a vapor and he avoided all the
carcinogens.
I asked him which tobacco company had come up with this and
he said none of them, it was a Chinese guy first (probably said fag to the
wrong guy and didn't want to get embarrassed again) and now there were millions
of people not smoking, just vaping. The
President even used one, didn't get him anything but tabloid pictures.
I thought to myself when medical science and the government
fail, it's the little guy that always finds the solution. Well since then everybody and his brother
that were on the anti-tobacco bandwagon have been trying to regulate and
eliminate these electronic cigarettes.
They are going to make a lot of scientists and bureacrats rich or famous
making names for themselves taking Eddies way of quitting what he called
analogues (sounds better than fags to me) away from him.
That is the American way now. When I was a kid you found a way to get something
to help yourself, like the day I realized Mr. Parson had apple trees that he
didn't want the fruit from and I could gather as many as I wanted- that was hog
heaven. Now if you find something that
makes it safer according to Boston Department of Public Health they start
talking about experts needing to prove it safe and that it might be
dangerous.
Whatever happened to American ingenuity? Whatever happened to being responsible for
your own health? It just all amazes
me.
Eddie sure looks and sounds better.
My take on it, the government didn't think of it first. I hope that Eddie doesn't have to go back to
those smoking again.
If he did I'd have to go cut a hickory branch, but I doubt
I'd be going after him... who is the head of the FDA now. I want to know just in case.
