Hodapp's
Smoking LoungeHodapp's
Smoking Lounge
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The Indianapolis Pipe SOciety |
Currently in it's organizational stages (a bunch of pipe smokers loitering around bars, drinking and puffing and railing against the hypocrisy of our time), the desire is there for a more useful gathering to discover, promote and educate pipe enthusiasts. We are contacting area pipe shops to see if there is enough interest to keep us all off the streets and properly in more cozy surroundings. We meet randomly at Apres Jack's, the back bar of the sprawling Daddy Jack's complex at 96th and Meridian Streets, but this changes. Contact Chris Hodapp at 926-3335 or Corky Aiken for details of our next meeting.
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The hysteria that has swept this country over the smoking issue is finally out of hand. The smoker has been turned into the equivalent of a child molester in the modern day definition of cultural degeneracy. The popular wisdom is that smokers and their evil masters who manufacture their horrid cigarettes are beneath contempt, sadly bound to their devices of death. Surely no one could object to balancing the federal budget on their backs. After all, there are only 50 million of them and 200 million of the morally righteous, upstanding, healthy citizenry who stand ready to squeeze every drop of cash out of their pitiful little wallets.
Never mind that 60 percent of smokers make less than $40,000, and that by raising the cigarette tax to $1.10 a pack raises a smoker's taxes by $600 to $1000 every year. Never mind that tobacco is a legal substance enjoyed by a huge portion of society ever since Sir Walter Raleigh offered Queen Elizabeth a puff of his Cuban cigar. Never mind that Congress and the President are lying out their cakeholes when they say they are raising these taxes merely to fund anti-smoking programs aimed at that divine, nebulous entity, our children. Be not concerned in the least that they know that such taxes will not cause smokers to quit, only that it will be a continuing money slop bucket to nourish the swine that grows into the pork they claim to despise so much. Any kid who can wheedle out of their working parents $200 for a set of Air Jordans or $500 for the latest leather Nautica jacket or $150 for their marijuana or even $40 for the latest video game cartridge isn't in the least bit fazed by $5 a pack for smokes.
Emotions have supplanted common sense; rhetoric has closed off even scientific debate; children have been turned against their parents; bars and restaurants have been closed; all because of a vocal, well-heeled anti-smoking industry that is every bit as deep pocketed as the tobacco companies themselves. In fact, it can be argued that they have MORE money than the tobacco companies, since much of their money comes from the government itself. Your taxpayer money now goes to organizations like the American Cancer Society to pay them to lobby Congress for more money to lobby Congress for more money to lobby Congress. You pay for organizations like ASH, which uses your taxes to teach lawyers how to choke the courts with tobacco lawsuits. Your money pays for groups like the appropriately named SmokeScreen, whose web site features software that lets you flood Congress with letters to make it appear that there is a groundswell of opinion in favor of taxing smokers into the grave far faster than any cigarette could take them.
Do these organizations educate the public about the dangers of smoking? Frankly as a social group, smokers are extradordinarily well educated on such dangers (in fact, surveys show smokers actually OVER estimate the health risks and links between smoking and lung and heart diseases). Anyone in America, including "our children," would have to be living in total sensory deprivation to not have heard that cigarettes are bad, smelly things that will cause you to cough, erupt in lip sores, wind up speaking through a hole in your throat, and die a lungless, wheezing death. So why do 50 million Americans withstand the cold alleys, withering glares and mock choking from their enemies, and light up every day anyway?
They enjoy it. Smoking is not a disease, nor is it a physical addiction. Most are addicted to the habit, not the nicotine. It helps them think, calms them, or just provides them with five minutes of pleasure. There are 40 million ex-smokers out there, and most of them have quit without help. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows they can quit without turning into a straitjacketed fiend in a padded cell. They smoke because they like it. And if you badger, hector, browbeat, tax, shun, despise, and exile them from polite society and they STILL smoke, they apparently must just like smoking.
More than they like you.
The one group, it seems, that REALLY can't give up tobacco is the government. If smokers went along with the Great American Smokeout and it stuck, Congress would have to go on the Great American Taxout, and the coffers would quickly come up empty. Overnight, alcohol taxes would soar, fatty foods would look tempting as a revenue source, and Hostess and Little Debbie would be the Axis powers in the new evil empire.
With any luck, smokers will finally rise up and coughingly shout "Enough!" No other group of 50 million stiff-necked, pleasure-seeking, freedom-loving Americans would just take this kind of abuse at the hands of government goons, fatcat lobbyists and pesky do-gooders. They have been flogged so much that they really do believe they are scum on the pond of society and should hide their dirty habit out back next to the dumpster. Government has turned into society's Mom, going through our drawers, rifling through our closet when we're not looking, and victoriously screeching 'a-HA!" when she finds out we're engaging in risky, adult pastimes.
Isn't it time we moved out of the house and told the old bat to mind her own business?
LETTERS TO THE BUTTINSKYS |
In this fighting spirit, I ask that you join in the battle. Smokers have no idea how much time and money is being expended to seize your right to choose to bahave like an adult. There are 50 million of you - no other minority would be treated this way, nor would they allow the government, trial lawyers and health police to treat them in this manner. This is an assault, not on the tobacco companies, but on YOU! RJR, Phillip Morris, B&W and the rest would just as soon get out of the cigarette business anyhow, since they have no visible, vocal support and nothing but enemies on Capital Hill. Your only weapons are the ballot box and the pen. Write to Washington. Respond to the idiotic, wild-eyed claims you hear endlessly on CNN (they seem to have a policy of airing one anti-smoking story a night. Write them one letter a week.). Join a pro-smokers organization like FORCES or the National Smokers Alliance or the American Smoker's Alliance. Follow the research links on their sites to delve into the truth about shams like the EPA study on secondhand smoke, or the World Health Organization's study on cigars. Find out just what Clinton and the other pickpockets in Washington have in mind for all of your tobacco taxes.
What follows are some of the letters I have sent to various news organizations and government officials. It takes five minutes to write a fast note, ten to write a more thoughtful one.
On April 26, 1998, CBS' 60 Minutes featured an Andy Rooney commentary
thanking Big Tobacco for giving the whole country a common group to
hate, and choking up over his good friend Harry Reasoner who died
from lung cancer ("We had some colleagues at 60 Minutes who were
smokers."). My reply:
60 Minutes
524 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019Dear 60 Minutes,
I have always wondered about the business wisdom of wasting five minutes of prime television time letting the addled ramblings of Andy Rooney drone on year after year, but he has finally crossed a line with me with his cute little rant against the tobacco industry.
It is not enough that the current winds of fashion have blown against the five hundred year old smoking habit, nor is it enough that smokers have been tarred with the social equivalence of child molesters. Now CBS and Andy seem to think if you can't stomp out smoking by forcing smokers out into the street and taxing them to death faster than any cigarette will kill them, the time has come to just plain encourage the other eighty percent of America to go ahead and "hate" the tobacco companies.
The funniest thing Andy said all evening was that Big Tobacco is addicted to money. I see. And the President and Congress who sat greedily rubbing their hands together in anticipation, not of stopping smoking, but of raking in all that lovely, new tobacco tax money? I suppose they're not addicted to money at all. Alcohol has killed far more people considerably faster than smoking ever has, but I don't hear Andy advocating hatred of Seagram's for profiting from human misery, or tearily sniffing about fellow 60 Minutes staff members who drank themselves to death. Or perhaps Andy and the rest of you think an 'after the show' drink is acceptable, but a smoke is not. The reason no one advocates prohibition of alcohol again is because of our horrendous, national experiment in it once before. But no one ever wiped out a family of four by driving on the wrong side of the interstate because his "one for the road" was a Winston.
Almost twenty percent of Americans continue to smoke, and the vast majority of those who successfully quit do so on their own without aid of drugs, patches or classes. Most are addicted to the HABIT, not the nicotine. It calms them, helps them think, passes the time, or simply provides five minutes of pleasure. And if you harrass them, hector them, tax them, treat them as criminals, toss them out of bars and restaurants, make them social outcasts and they still continue to smoke, they must be doing it because they like it.
More than they like you.
Cool the hysteria. When does the head of Philip Morris get his five minute, uninterupted counterpoint?
Sincerely,
Chris Hodapp
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I wish to express my dismay and ire over your recent attempts to punish 50 million Americans and bring a legal industry to its knees. I refer to your meddling in the Tobacco Settlement, that has resulted in a walkout by the tobacco industry. The Settlement was a carefully crafted deal that no other industry in the world would have voluntarily agreed to, and in one afternoon, you proposed to double the penalties against them, raise taxes, deny them protection from wild-eyed lawsuits, and, in short, shut their doors. I hope you get lots of votes for your grandstanding play.I know it's exceedingly popular these days to pile onto the tobacco companies (the business equivalent of hating Arabs in the Seventies), but put the proposed Tobacco Tax in perspective. Any way you tabulate it, smokers make up 20% of the population, and you are about to double - DOUBLE! - a tax they pay every day. If anyone with any media savvy at all were to attack this properly, they would point out the segment of poor people who smoke, and the horrible burden you are about to saddle them with. Sixty-six percent of the current cigarette taxes are paid by Americans making under $40,000. It's remarkably easy to go after smokers, since they have become the modern day equivalent of lepers and second only to child molesters in the popular culture's estimation of moral degeneracy, and I'm sure the temptation to balance the budget on the backs of just a bunch of filthy smokers was simply too much of a win-win for you. You can cast it any way you see fit and wrap yourselves up in moral and public health puffery, but the fact is you are adding $360 to $700 or more PER YEAR to the tax burden of 50 million Americans. That pretty much wipes out any pitiful little tax cut you so glowingly boasted of this session.
And that pretty much wipes out any hope and respect for the Republican Party I once had.
Are the Republicans to now be the Party that raises taxes, attacks legal industries, and marches in lockstep with the forces that believe big government will protect us and care for us and see to it that we all live forever if we just go along with ceding away our rights and signing over our paychecks? Is this the way you will balance the budget, by picking an unpopular activity enjoyed by a minority of Americans and taxing it into oblivion? How then will you fund the pork you claim to detest so much?
Sincerely,
Chris Hodapp
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Links to organizations fighting for smoker's rights, or just simply in favor of them. Stay tuned for information hopefully leading to the 50 Million Man March!
FORCES USA - Tons of articles, references, and news.
NATIONAL SMOKERS ALLIANCE - Go to the Speakeasy for a lively pro-smoker's rights discussion group.
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Tobacco Shop of Indianapolis Support your local pipe shop!
Pipes Web Page This is a huge site with tons of helpful links
OoOPS Not updated anymore, but a massive site as well
The Pipe Smoke Ring Jump on and follow around the web
Back to Chris & Alice's Swanky Love Pagoda
have
been here so far. Gotta light?
